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My Books
Outlaw Territory
(with Melike Acar)
24Seven Vol. 2
(with Walter Pax & Jack Kaminski)
24Seven
(with Ben Templesmith)
Complete story - "The Workman"
(courtesy of New York Magazine)
The horror, the J-horror
Thinking a lot about writing lately. The theory of it. Now that my writing partner Matt has moved to Portland, I’ve been talking about it, as well. May as well start writing about it. So bear with me while I try to figure out what the hell I’m doing.
Saw a short documentary about J-Horror on IFC tonight. Brief history of Japanese horror, discussion of some of the big tentpole films in the genre, interviews with important directors and film historians — pretty standard stuff. The most interesting part was a discussion about the fundamental differences between Japanese and American horror, and how those differences reflect the religious beliefs of each culture.
In Western (read: Judeo-Christian) horror, things are extremely straightforward. Light is good, dark is bad. The Devil has a face, and it’s more or less like ours. Plus, in Western horror, there’s the promise that if you say the right words or perform the right action, you can banish the Devil — or at least trick him.
The predominant religion in Japan, Shinto (which I freely admit I know little about), tends to view the spirit world as something huge and rather beyond our ability to comprehend. Shintoists also believe that ghosts and spirits are everywhere — thousands of them, millions of them — and all we mere mortals can realistically do is hope that the good spirits do whatever it is they do to keep the bad ones at bay. That feeling of helplessness and incomprehension is really the hallmark of J-Horror — the idea that ghosts, demons, etc., are going to do whatever the hell they want, and you don’t have a hope of even understanding it, much less stopping it. It’s the same idea that makes Lovecraft’s stories so unsettling.
Okay. I’m too tired to write a conclusion. Luckily this is my blog, so I don’t have to. You may now commence with calling me names for not understanding how Shinto works.
7 Responses to “The horror, the J-horror”
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October 23rd, 2006 at 7:42 pm
n1
November 1st, 2006 at 2:25 pm
So, in short:
The big difference between Whitey Horror and J-Horror is that J-Horror has a lot in common with Whitey Horror’s most inflential writer, or something.
November 1st, 2006 at 7:30 pm
You really think Lovecraft is our most influential horror writer? I think a lot of writers cite him as an influence, but other than cribbing his monster designs, I don’t see a lot of Lovecraft in modern horror. That sense of incomprehensibility that made his stuff so scary — no one’s really tapping into that. Even in horror literature, it’s mostly just dudes in rubber suits who can be vanquished by some well-timed violence.
November 2nd, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Yeah, I suppose he is. I can’t imagine making the case for anyone else, at any rate. Consider obviously derivative works across media
Video Games
- Call of Cthulthu
- Quake (big bad was Shub-Niggurath)
Movies
- In The Mouth of Madness
- Cast A Deadly Spell
- Evil Deads
Comics
- Hellboy
- Planetary/Authority
- Lovecraft
- Lovecraft Adventures Image thingy
- Endless Adaptations (Marvel/Caliber/Eerie whatever…)
Add in the roleplaying game, endless short story collections, and the cottage industry of plush cthulhus and Miskatonic university merchandise, and the dozens of others I’m forgetting, and yeah… Influential. King is certainly more widely read, but it’s not like you see a lot of people make careers by co-opting say, Pennywise.
You’re totally right that the inspiration has been almost purely surface level. Western Horror tends to draw from European folklore and Catholic myth. We’ve had demon and vampire tales up the wazoo. The rest are largely generic restless spirit types (Christine, Jason) or the super-generic zombie. The Japanese wind up plumbing their own folklore, with largely similar results. It’s not a demon, it’s an Oni, now. Whatever. What Lovecraft brought to the table was an entire mythos, a pantheon of old, implacable, and merciless gods. He invented whole clan of deities defined by their inhumanity, and that idea has inspired everyone from Mike Mignola to Harold Ramis.
In the case of ANY influential piece of media, the adherents are following surfaces. DKR and Watchmen were massively influential works, and their influence can largely be seen in nineties’ comics trenchcoats and stubble. Nirvana led to a legion of bands with Big Muff pedals and silly lyrics. SEVEN brought about an aeon of sinister pictures with twisty endings. Clive Barker’s spawn brought deviant sex to the forefront. The deeper things were left untouched, and that’s the way it always is.
“That sense of incomprehensibility that made his stuff so scary — no one’s really tapping into that. Even in horror literature, it’s mostly just dudes in rubber suits who can be vanquished by some well-timed violence.”
Eh, there’s a few. I think Romero nailed the pure hopelessness, and Danielewski is far, far better at presenting the monster as pure enigma. And I’m okay with that. I don’t neccessarily care for incomprehensible monsters with unfathomable objectives. Most of the time, I want to know that the monster want to eat my brains/kill Sara Connor/avenge his death.
One thing I think you may be missing: In most horror I’ve seen, the badguy can be subdued. In the final reel, the survivors beat the monster and all is well. For a moment. Freddy laughs last every goddamn time. A reprieve is the best you can hope for.
This is getting lengthy, so Imma gona stop there.
November 8th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
I bought a couple of the original J-Horror pics and it’s almost the opposite of what you’re saying with American horror — they’ve got the hopelessness part of Lovecraft down, but they’re absolute shit at plot and direction and, well, having a point. Lovecraft is *pure* plot — the fucker has like less than 10,000 words of dialogue in his entire written output. “This happened, and then this happened, and then Nyarlathotep came along and did some wicked weird shit…I fear I must not tell you…the All-Touching Eye Of Ma’ma’bootay….”
I’m not knocking Lovecraft here, he did what he did and I dig it. I’m knocking J-Horror, which is some madly overrated bullshit. Folks, if you’re so goddamn bored of Saw sequels, do an Amazon search for the names “Dario Argento” and “Mario Bava” and go to town on some non-American horror.
(Danielewski is a pomo literary writer, which means that nobody expects his shit to have a plot, but he’s very good at the idea that something cosmically weird and massive and totally inhuman is on the other side of the door. Chuck P did it pretty well in *Haunted*, but as far as I know, he still hasn’t read Lovecraft. Or Steve King. Which, no matter what you may think of them as prose stylists, is pretty much required when you’re sitting down to write horror. It’s like trying to write a literary Western without ever having read Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry or Louis L’Amour.)
November 10th, 2006 at 12:21 am
Funny you should bring him up.
For my money: McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN is the single greatest horror work, in any medium, by anybody, ever.
November 10th, 2006 at 12:24 am
And oh yes, UZUMAKI aside, J-Horror is shit.
Love to be proven wrong. Send non-shitty examples thru the usual channels.