J-Horror, Week of Sep 11

J-Horror, Japanese Horror, is a horror genre developed in an odd way. It was originally made without knowing the western horror basics. Yet the themes are coming in to the recent Japanese works.
Lafcadio Hearn collected old Japanese horror stories in his book, Kwaidan. The stories are not about an innocent versus an immortal foe like western European stories. Japanese horror stories are traditional more about balance.
The balance between man and nature. Normally featuring a working class protagonist who runs into a supernatural force by chance. The human character often wronging the super natural being and being punished for that. (Hearn)
These values are present in modern works but, not without American influence. In Haruki Morakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, the author uses the working class call to action of the early Japanese works.
The lead is called to action on a mythical sheep that he is to find. It’s a real sheep and one of it’s own breed. There is no other sheep like it. The people who have seen it has a cosmic bond with it that cannot be explained. (Haruki)
            It takes a leap between Japanese horror and cosmic horror of the European/American genre. This is me trying to wrap my own American millennial mind around this novel.  It has an early 20th century American feel. In a way, like Edgar Allen Poe. The line between the supernatural and the real is odd because the supernatural is called unexplainable.  Without proof it’s hard to say that it ever actually  happens.

Cited Works
Murakami, Haruki. A Wild Sheep Chase. Vintage Books, 1982.


Hearn, Lafcadio. Kwaidan. Western Standard Publishing Company, 2013.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All Readings from the Year.

Long Reads (16) Frankenstein Interview with the Vampire A Wild Sheep Chase (All of) Kwaidan John Dies at The End Lonesome No More The Witches The Hobbit American Gods Foundation (All of) I, Robot Left Hand of Darkness Do Android Dream of Electronic Sheep? Ubik Kindred (All of) Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Short Stories (4) The Tell Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Pearl, and (Part of) Night Circus
Read more

Heroic Journey, Week of the Oct. 2

I feel like my responses have have gone from well researched into me explaining my emotional reactions to the genre and things around it. Now I am going to reflected on the Heroes Journey as a whole.  My problem with the Heroic journey is how much of a formula it has become. This is really not negative in the right hands. Some people are able to take the tropes and make interesting characters and adventures with them. It’s not relying on twist endings or tongue-in-cheek parodies of these stories. A modern story that sticks to the Heroic Journey very strictly and does not try to create a warping or parody of it is the first Kung Fu Panda (Osborne) movie. You can argue that the fact that Po is overweigh and goofy makes him a parody but, it actually helps show how the stages of the journey is affecting him. Side note, I was going to write more about high fantasy and live action works after this, I decided to stick with Kung Fu Panda. I love The Lord of the Rings Series, Princess B
Read more

Satire, Week of Nov. 20

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a really good fit for me because I have a love of BBC radio plays. The humor just works really well in spoken word. It’s absurdity lets your mind go to crazy places. I have seen the film and tv show before and everyone was telling me that the radio show was better and they were right.             Satire is perfect for Science Fiction, technological advancements are a place to bring in comedy and comment on what people seem to care about and ideas that people think will bring about positive change. There are two major examples of this.             The Babble Fish is an alien creature that swims into your head and translates any language. This has caused the bloodiest wars of all time. I really don’t want to explain the joke but people normally have said that if we understood each other there would be no wars. This is not provable but, it is pretty safe that no one will debate you even when there are so many people who speaks the same language as
Read more