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New Terrors, Emerging Trends                            195

                              is, in Tsukamoto’s words, ‘somehow ambiguous as to whether it’s reality
                              or a dream’ (2004).
                                    Another  important  sequence  locating  Vital  as  a  film  concerned
                              with conceptualisations of corporeality, as well as the assorted lengths to
                              which  humans  will  go  to  invest  the  body’s  material  existence  with
                              culturally-  and  historically-coded  constructions  of  a  transcendent
                              ‘humanity’,  transpires  early  in  Hiroshi’s  graduate  studies.  In  a
                              meticulously  composed  montage  of  professors  advancing  theories
                              regarding what it  means to be a sentient  entity, Tsukamoto  cuts between
                              depictions of faculty members from multiple academic disciplines (lensed
                              as if from a student’s POV) speculating on the metaphysical connotations
                              of being alive, and medium shots of an attentive Hiroshi:

                              SHOT  ONE:  A  Biology  professor  standing  before  slides  depicting  human  ova.  The
                              professor states: ‘The ovum, a product of almost pure chance. By means of cellular growth,
                              divergence and migration creates an organism.’

                              SHOTS  TWO  and  THREE:  The  film’s  amnesiac  pro-agonist,  Hiroshi,  listens  (SHOT
                              TWO) as a different doctor lectures on head injuries: ‘This person experienced trauma to
                              the frontal lobe section. This area is responsible for personality and memory.’ Tsukamoto
                              then  cuts  to  SHOT  THREE,  in  which  the  lecturing  physician  gestures  towards  a  large
                              illustration of  the human cranium. The  doctor continues:  ‘From this  we can  conclude  the
                              following: human character is not a constant.’

                              SHOT  FOUR:  A  neurologist  lectures  while  tapping  his  chalk  nervously  against  the
                              classroom’s blackboard: ‘The brain and spinal cord form the central nervous system. Nerve
                              cells are concentrated in this area. I wonder, then, where the soul lies?’

                              SHOTS  FIVE and SIX: A  psychology  professor  sits  on  his  desk  as  he  discusses  Freud
                              and  the  subconscious:  ‘Beneath  this,  however…there  is  the  vast  realm  of  the
                              subconscious.’ Tsukamoto then  cuts  to  another medium shot  of Hiroshi listening  intently.
                              The camera dollies in to accentuate his immersion. In a voice over, we hear the professor
                              as he remarks: ‘It is here that our suppressed desires can cause deep mental conflict as they
                              strive to realise themselves.’

                              This diverse panoply of theoretical postures ranges from the scientific, or
                              ‘secular’, to the philosophical, psychological, or ‘religious’. This contest-
                              ation  between  the  body  and  mind  has  been  a  primary  concern  for
                              Tsukamoto throughout his career and reveals strains of a latent humanism
                              in Tsukamoto’s aesthetic vision. This recuperative inertia is by no means
                              rare in works of postmodern body horror, or in the genre’s not-so-distant
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