Page 161 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

148 Nightmare Japan

frequently in the global and national imaginary with the dizzying highs of
a prolonged economic surplus followed sharply by the deep lows of a
protracted financial recession. Likewise, the atomic desolation of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while by no means absent from the
contemporary consciousness, does not possess nearly the same
ontological weight it did for previous generations. A film like Suicide
Circle, then, engages a very different, ‘postnuclear’ culture, presenting a
social body inflected with a mode of ‘modern alienation…anomie, ennui,
[and a]…desultory attitude towards nuclear destruction and collective
suicide: a cosmic “What’s the difference?”’ that reflects a ‘supremely
indifferent’ attitude towards ‘the possibility of an end’ (231).
At once a pernicious ‘media tool’, a ‘symbol’ of a ‘suicidal’
cultural trajectory, and a brilliantly banal metaphor for the effacement of
social resistance, the all-girl prepubescent pop band whose inane
melodies and discretely revealing lyrics punctuate Suicide Circle’s
apocalyptic narrative serves a vital role in Sono’s social critique. Variably
spelled throughout the film as ‘Desert’, ‘Dessert’, and ‘Dessret’, the pop
band’s transforming moniker is one of Suicide Circle’s most compelling,
albeit initially perplexing, components. As ‘Desert’, its most frequent
spelling, the band’s name connotes desolation and isolation, a beautiful if
barren emptiness. Moreover, given both their blatantly commercial appeal
and their simulacral interchangeability with any number of similarly
composed Japanese pop bands, the name ‘Desert’ can be understood as
evoking Jean Baudrillard’s ‘desert’ of the ‘real’ (1995), the postmodern
phenomenon succinctly described by Slavoj Zizek as ‘the ultimate truth
of the capitalist utilitarian de-spiritualized universe…the de-
materialization of the "real life" itself, its reversal into a spectral show’
(2001: para 3). Similarly, as ‘Dessert’, its second most frequent spelling,
the band’s name provides a clever commentary not only upon the young
girls’ readily commodified and consumable image, but also upon their
achingly saccharine catalogue of pop hits and, ultimately, their lyrics’
seemingly hollow and unsubstantial content. The name ‘Dessert’, then, at
once compliments and expands upon the connotations of ‘Desert’, a
social critique made all the more effective by a humorous sequence in
which Sono cross-cuts scenes of multiple, often brutal suicides