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Guinea Pigs and Entrails 21
informed by metaphors of imperiled ocial bodies, co-exist in the larger
cultural imaginary. Likewise, as Davis shows, both positions depend
upon an understanding of nationalism as an invention made possible only
through the acknowledgement of a ‘relative’ as (as opposed to binary)
difference that re-affirms the inescapability and permanence of cross-
cultural ‘syncretism’, or contamination (Davis 2001: 65). Furthermore,
the contesting ideologies that were discussed above can be understood as
Image 1: Buñuel revisited – Satoru Ogura’s Devil’s Experiment (© Ecclectic DVD
Distributors)
having achieved varying degrees of metaphorical translation through the
iconography and dominant scenarios of Japanese horror cinema,
to the nation state.’ See Martinez, D. P. (1998) ‘Gender, Shifting Boundaries, and Global
Cultures’, in Martinez, D. P. The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting
Boundaries and Global Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 10.
