Transnational Horror Cinema (eBook)

Sophia Siddique is Associate Professor in the Department of Film at Vassar College, USA. Her research interests include Singapore cultural studies; representations of trauma and memory in Cambodian, Indonesian and Thai cinema; and the impact of new media on Southeast Asia’s moving image culture. Sophia teaches film history, contemporary Southeast Asian Cinemas and genres (horror and science fiction).Raphael Raphael lectures at the Center for Disability Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he is also Associate Editor of The Review of Disability Studies. He is co-editor of Transnational Stardom: International Celebrity in Film and Culture (2013). His film and media scholarship is also informed by his practice as digital artist.

Notes on Contributors 5
Contents 8
List of Figures 10
Acknowledgements 11
Chapter 1: Introduction 13
Theoretical Intervention: Mikhail Bakhtin and the Grotesque Body 15
Theoretical Intervention: Dis/Ability: Destabilizing Cultural Scripts of Embodiment 17
Part I: Questions of Genre 18
Mike Dillon 18
Kevin Wynter 19
Sangjoon Lee 20
Part II: The Horrific Body (Disability and Horror) 21
Julia Gruson-Wood 21
Stefan Sunandan Honisch 22
Moritz Fink 22
Paul Rae Marchbanks 23
Part III: Responses to Trauma 24
Mary J. Ainslie 24
Raphael Raphael 25
Sophia Siddique 26
References 26
Part I: Questions of Genre 28
Chapter 2: Butchered in Translation: A Transnational “Grotesuqe” 29
Unrated and Unauthorized 33
(Mis)Translation 40
The Generic Image of Torture (Porn) 44
“Grotesuqe” 47
Notes 48
References 48
Filmography 50
Chapter 3: An Introduction to the Continental Horror Film 52
Phases of the Horror Film 54
The Rise of the Serial Killer 56
Without a Trace 60
Continental Horror 65
Morbid Curiosity 66
The Stranger 67
Contingency 68
The Banality of Evil 69
Notes 70
References 72
Chapter 4: Dracula, Vampires, and Kung Fu Fighters: The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and Transnational Horror Co-production in 1970s Hong Kong 73
Runaway Production: From Europe to Hong Kong 77
Before the Legend: The Birth of Kung Fu Cinema 79
The Legend Begins: Between Kung Fu and Horror 81
Reading the Legend 84
Epilogue 86
References 86
Part II: The Horrific Body (Disability and Horror) 89
Chapter 5: Dead Meat: Horror, Disability, and Eating Rituals 90
Monster Slash: Severing Inside/Outside Boundaries 91
Scare Tactics: Disabling Evil and Normalizing Catharsis 96
Supernaturally Disabled: Flexible, Powerful Monstrous Bodies 99
Dishing Out a Scare: Disability, Monstrosity, and Eating in Horror 102
Monsters Feeding Off Death 103
Developing a Taste for Life and Death: Consumption Rituals in True Blood 104
Manners and Mad Gods: Meat, Mental Disability, and Monstrosity in True Blood 107
The Food Critic and the Freak: Grotesque Banquets and Disability Identity 111
Conclusion 113
Notes 114
References 117
Chapter 6: Music, Sound, and Noise as Bodily Disorders: Disabling the Filmic Diegesis in Hideo Nakata’s Ringu and Gore Verbinski’s The Ring 120
Horror Films: Monstrosity and Transnational Fictions of the Normal 120
Disability as “Narrative Prosthesis”: Musical, Sonic, and Noisy Representations of Disability in Transnational Horror 124
Musical, Sonic, and Noisy Representations of Disability in Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, and Gore Verbinski’s The Ring 128
The Future of Music, Sound, and Noise in Transnational Horror Films 135
References 136
Chapter 7: An Eyepatch of Courage: Battle-Scarred Amazon Warriors in the Movies of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino 139
The (Disfigured) Amazon 142
Exploitation Film Revisited: Women Warriors and Transnational Cinema 144
An Eye for an Eye: Revenge in Thriller 146
“Kill the Bitch”: Kill Bill’s Eyepatched Villainess 150
The Eyepatch as Eye Catcher: Machete’s Super-Amazon 152
From Go-Go Girl to Zombie-Killing Machine in Transnational Borderlands 154
Conclusion 158
Notes 159
References 161
Filmography 163
Chapter 8: Scary Truths: Morality and the Differently Abled Mind in Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom 165
Bloodied Stitches: Amalgamating a New Brand of Horror 166
Masters of the Cosmetic: Western Medicine and Intellectual Difference 168
Dishwashers with Depth: A Counterpoint to Medical Eugenics 172
Notes 179
References 180
Part III: Responses to Trauma 183
Chapter 9: Towards a Southeast Asian Model of Horror: Thai Horror Cinema in Malaysia, Urbanization, and Cultural Proximity 184
introduction 184
The International Growth and Urbanness of Thai Cinema 187
Thai Horror in Malaysia—Cultural Proximity and a Southeast Asia Model of Horror? 192
Difference as Attraction 196
Censorship 201
Conclusion 204
Notes 205
References 206
Chapter 10: Planet Kong: Transnational Flows of King Kong (1933) in Japan and East Asia 209
Towards Understanding an Especially Ambivalent Text 209
Chronotope of King Kong (1933) 212
“Good Kongs” and “Bad Kongs” 214
Notes 221
References 223
Filmography 224
Chapter 11: Embodying Spectral Vision in The Eye 225
Introduction 225
The Eye as Transnational Text 228
Phantasmic Geography 231
Grotesque Bodies: Mun-Ling and Film-Spectator 233
Conclusion 237
References 238
Index 239