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Blouin, Michael J.

English

2008

MA

This thesis is a study of Japanese horror cinema that concentrates on the formation of national identity through its spectral signification on screen. These narratives about "ghosts" are symptomatic, I argue, of an unstable self-recognition within modernity. To locate what it means to be "Japanese" in discourse is to pursue a phantom: a body that is both dead and alive, a product of the present that intends to be a remainder of the past. The horror fiIms I discuss represent these tensions in multiple, fascinating ways that I contend could only take place in the cinematic medium. The schism created by modernity (an "unknowing" of History) is forever at the core of Japanese culture. From the Meiji Restoration on, Japan would become the fastest nation to modernize. This foundation of uncertainty and heavily articulated identity would be progressively repressed beneath what would be labeled an "authentic Japanese-ness" by State officials and artists alike. Within a psychoanalytic framework, I begin to question what happens when the unanchored, modern uncertainty returns from its place of repression. My project holds particular relevance at the moment due to the recent exchange of horror films (and their respective re-makes) between Japan and America. I question why, at this historic moment, the two countries have begun to tell each other ghost stories. How then does the Uncanny function in a "globalized" culture? Can we locate shared anxieties and fears? Is the Uncanny a universal concept that crosses national boundaries or is it culturally specific? My project hopes to illuminate the broad possibilities of this exchange, including an understanding of how American films continue to repress national uncertainties in the face of post-modernity.