Page 83 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

70 Nightmare Japan

that literally turn the audience’s perspective (and viewing experience) on
its side, the almost refrain-like repetition of specific shots and actions,
and the deliberate imposition of seemingly irrelevant objects (a lamp, a
chair) between the camera’s lens and the object of the camera’s gaze.
Sato Hisayasu’s Muscle, then, raises three crucial, ultimately
interconnected questions. First, what socio-cultural perspective, if any,
does Muscle challenge? Second, given Muscle’s persistent inter-textual
referencing of Pasolini’s Salò, how does Sato’s filmic consideration of
Sadeian excess anticipate Naked Blood’s preoccupation with orgasmic
intensity? Lastly, in what way might Sato’s film offer an alternative to
Pasolini’s correlation of de Sade’s eighteenth century libertines to fascist
ideologies?

Terrorising the Imagination: Sato’s Sadeian Excess

Sato references Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò repeatedly in Muscle, both by
having characters specifically mention the film, and through multiple
compositions clearly intended as visual citations of the Italian director’s
controversial final feature. The invitation-only masquerade at Lunatic
Theater, with its distanciating long shots, recalls the expansive, cavernous
interiors of the chateaux in the fictional ‘Salò Republic’; Riyuzaki and
Kitami’s stiff, silent waltzing in one of the film’s earliest scenes, and
again in its closing shot (as previously mentioned), deliberately echo the
final image in Pasolini’s film. To analyse the logics behind these inter-
textual references more completely, an understanding of the social and
political critiques informing Pasolini’s adaptation of one of the infamous
Marquis’ most difficult novels is required, as is a careful evaluation of
philosophical agendas informing Sato’s protagonists’ behaviours.
In defense of his decision to film Salò, Pasolini writes that his film
should be read as a ‘cinematographic transposition of Sade’s novel The
120 Days of Sodom’ (2004: para 2). In keeping with this description,
Pasolini explains his approach as one that, despite temporal – and, as
such, sartorial and geographic – displacements, nevertheless adheres
‘faithful[ly]’ to ‘the psychology of the characters and their actions’: