Page 100 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

Ghosts of the Present 87

The ghosts that haunt Nakata’s Ringu and Dark Water, then,
assume two distinct, yet ultimately interconnected forms. Firstly, they are
supernatural beings, conforming to the vengeful spirit (or onryou) motif
by imposing their phantasmic distress upon the living. Secondly, they are
culturally-coded entities in that they function allegorically, their demises
inextricably linked with social transformations and the anxieties that often
accompany such changes. Consider, for example, the scene in Ringu in
which a roomful of exclusively male journalists’ vehemently reject
Samara’s uncanny psychic abilities and apocalyptic predictions. The men
are threatened by more than Samara’s possession of a knowledge that
exceeds that of the patriarchal scientific community; it is her ability to
vocalize this knowledge and, thereby, insert herself into the realm of
public discourse that evokes a virulent fear from the male audience. It is
this incredulity turned into fear and anger over Samara’s skills that
evokes Sadako’s demonstration of her even more powerful, and
consequently more threatening, mental acumen: her ability to kill with a
single thought. It is thus fitting that Reiko’s scientist ex-husband, though
instrumental in the discovery of Sadako’s corpse, cannot break the curse
that provides a posthumous outlet for Sadako’s prematurely silenced rage;
it is finally the investigative journalist, Reiko, who uncovers the
simulacral secret of the young Sadako’s technologically inscribed
vengeance – the cursed videocassettes representing a mode of mass
communication that the psychic mother’s and daughter’s male
persecutors, given their violent rejection of the very notion of a woman’s
will made at once increasingly present and increasingly pervasive (and
increasingly abject), would have found too terrifying to even imagine.
Like Samara, a lone maternal figure whose prediction of a volcanic
eruption had the potential, if heeded, to save many from certain death,
Reiko’s discovery of the logic behind the cursed videocassette may very
well allow her not only to save her child (an action Samara’s suicide
precluded), but also the lives of countless others, if only through a
process of eternal deferment. It is no mere coincidence that the first to
view the viral video will be Yoichi’s grandfather, a clearly patriarchal
figure. Hence, to break a contemporary cycle of literal (within the film’s
diegesis) and figurative (socio-cultural) fear, tragically and historically