Page 201 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema
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188                                           Nightmare Japan

                              Shimizu’s obsession with  engaging not only the forces that compel us to
                              consume  cinematic texts depicting horrific  events and scenes of physical
                              trauma,  but also  the  very  cathartic  release  that  makes  film  and  other  art
                              forms appealing, and quite possibly indispensable, in the  first place. The
                              correlation  between  ‘F’’s  blood  consumption  and  her  increased  (though
                              by  no  means  complete)  acclimation  to  human  society  is  not  simply  a
                              convenient plot device. Masuoka literally feeds ‘F’ blood and carnage to
                              sustain her most vital systems, but is this not what humans do figuratively
                              everyday  in  a  media(ted)  culture  saturated  with,  and  ideologically
                              buttressed  by,  images  of  corporeal  trauma?  To  this  extent,  Shimizu
                              provides  his  audience  with  an  initial  gesture  towards  an  archaeology  of
                              horror.  By  identifying horror  film  as a cultural  product  in a manner that
                              avoids  the  trite  self-referential  game-playing  of  far  too  many  works  of
                              ‘postmodern’ terror, Shimizu, in short, recognises the power that images
                              (including  those  generally  deemed  ‘abject’  or  ‘horrific’)  have  upon
                              contemporary  culture.  Through  the  fabrication,  consumption,  and
                              perpetuation of visual representations of the body as a sight of biological
                              crisis  in  the  visual  arts,  we  –  as  viewers  –  devour  ourselves;  we
                              cannibalise  ourselves  through  images.  Moreover,  these  framed  and
                              otherwise  occluded  depictions  evidence  a  socially  constructed  desire  to
                              codify  and  categorise  our  ‘selves’  and,  perhaps  more  importantly,
                              ‘others’.
                                     Masuoka’s  quest  to  experience  intensity  through  an  encounter
                              with  ‘unspeakable’  fear  should  not,  however,  be  understood  as  an
                              exclusively  negative  quest,  but  as  a  potentially  liberating  sojourn  that
                              frees  him  from  narrow,  dualistic  convictions.  It  is,  in  Masuoka’s  own
                              words, a kind of “mad’ness that drives him to seek out alternatives to his
                              existence  within  an  alienating  postmodern  terrain.  Like  the  decentred
                              network of rhizomic subterranean tunnels reminiscent of Borges’ ‘garden
                              of  forking  paths’  (1964:  19)  in  their  unexpected  and  possibly  infinite
                              bifurcations,  mortal  fear’s  intensity  is,  for  Masuoka,  a  way  of  breaking
                              free from ‘all that stifles’ (Bataille 1994: 19). Shimizu likewise articulates
                              this privileging  of an  ideological position  grounded upon  an  embrace  of
                              multiple corporeal and cultural possibilities in his broaching, and eventual
                              dismissal,  of  what  Francois  Lyotard  calls  ‘modernist  grand  narratives’
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