Saturday, October 18, 2008

Movie Review: 交霊 (Séance) [2000]

Halloween is coming! 

And seeing as it is my favorite holiday, I'm doing a few reviews of horror films to celebrate the spookiness. I'm a minor horror geek, in that I have a love for gore flicks but they are by no means my passion. Horror geekdom (like the rest of geek culture) is still largely a male-dominated area (though in my experience, some of the most hardcore fans of the genre are women). The reason women typically stay away probably has less to do with the fact that it's "scary," and more to do with the American slasher flick's origins as a backlash to the second-wave feminist movement. Everyone knows the stereotypes; the "slut" (read: sexually-empowered woman) is always the first to die while the virgin is always the heroine. The intersection of sexual mores and gore has resulted in a recent surge of "torture porn," in which a sexualized female body is mutilated and dismantled. With all this fun stuff, it's no wonder that women tend to stay away from the genre. Even so, the horror genre holds a certain attraction over me. Like science fiction, I think the horror genre is fertile ground for exploring societal phobias. The film I am about to review is a great example of this fact.


As part of our October Horror-thon, my boyfriend and I recently watched Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2000 film, Séance. The film revolves around a husband and wife who are drawn into a kidnapping plot that results in the death of an innocent young girl. The main character, Junco, is a dissatisfied housewife with psychic powers who holds séances for grieving families. When a kidnapped young girl shows up at the couple's house, the couple decides to use the situation to their own advantage. Junco, in an attempt to legitimize her skills as a psychic, leads the cops along a fake trail while hiding the child in her home. When the child mysteriously dies, the couple is besieged by the child's angry spirit and creepiness ensues.

Kurosawa's film exemplifies a universal paranoia concerning shifting gender roles in the home.  In the beginning of the film, the husband is the bread-winner—a sound engineer for a TV station—while Junco stays at home. Junco repeatedly expresses her dissatisfaction with housewifery. She tries to enter the work force, but her psychic powers allow her to see disturbing visions surrounding customers at work so she quits and returns home. Dissatisfied and out of options, Junco jumps at the opportunity to prove herself as a psychic when 
the kidnapped child appears at her house. If she were to attain respectability among the police, her name would be disseminated in the news and she would never be in want of paying clientele. It is this possibility that drives her to concoct the bizarre plan that leads to the child's death. 

It is strange to me that such a reasonable desire would result in the death of a child. Children are often used to make a moral point in film, or function as a film's moral center. If this film is to be read similarly, the death of the child would indicate that Junco's desire is morally wrong. Furthermore, I want to note that the film couple is childless. In Japanese culture (as well as in American), there is a societal expectation for couples to have children (for instance: try to recall a heterosexual thirty-something married couple portrayed in a film that has no children, and no explanation as to why they don't have children). Couples who do not choose to have children can even be regarded as "selfish," as if their disinterest in children is correlated with their interest in themselves. Keeping these conventions in mind, it is easy to see the subtext: Junco's desire to enter the workforce is selfish and morally corrupt. If she had been content with her present life, the child would have survived, and the metaphorical film "family" would have remained intact.

I don't mean to assign this viewpoint to Kurosawa himself. The screenplay was adapted from a 1961 novel by British writer Mark McShane entitled Séance on a Wet Afternoon. Because I'm not familiar with the book, I can't say for sure exactly what Kurosawa changed. Regardless, the film presents a perfect example of the social fear surrounding shifting gender roles in the home. By seeking her own power Junco upsets the balance of the film "household," resulting in the death of her husband and "child."

Friday, October 17, 2008

letters of introduction

Welcome to Grrl Geeks!

Before we get down to business, we feel some explanation and a little history is necessary. In high school, Maggie and I were socially defined by our geekiness. Like many of our fellow girl geeks, we were awkward, intelligent and somewhat socially stunted. However, we had great passion and imagination concerning the things we loved most. We spent hours discussing the various philosophies of Trigun, and we cried our way through the ending scenes of Final Fantasy X. We read His Dark Materials and Harry Potter. We played Magic cards, we read comics, and delighted in all things that pertained to our geeky subculture without much discretion.

When we went to our separate colleges we began subconsciously distancing ourselves from most of the things we enjoyed as teenagers. Thrust into new environments, we became more and more conscious of the poisonous attitudes toward women that inhabit our culture. We further developed our own identities; I explored my queerness while Maggie found female empowerment. We both found ourselves outraged at some of the messages about women that we had willingly accepted as participants in geek culture. And so, we each came to an impasse in our identity formations; were we to ignore the blatant sexism in the geek products we consumed and thus compromise our feminist identities? Or should we wholly denounce our geeky interests for the sake of the cause and deny a huge aspect of ourselves? We found neither acceptable, so we founded this.

This blog is an attempted reconciliation of geek culture and feminist thought. We believe that by maintaining a critical eye, we can sort out the media that promotes unhealthy cultural attitudes toward women from the media that challenges and empowers us. Although historically a male-dominated culture, women are beginning to even the playing field as both producers and consumers of geek products. And they deserve a voice. Girl geeks should no longer be required to act like "one of the boys" and objectify female characters when playing their favorite games. Girl geeks shouldn't be made to feel awkward about their bodies because their favorite anime characters are unrealistically proportioned. And above all, a girl geek should never feel like she shouldn't speak out about what she feels is an unfair treatment of her sex, just because her boy geek friends will make fun of her for being "too sensitive."

We dissect geek culture because it's what we love. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think that geek culture could hugely benefit from a feminist reading. We would greatly appreciate it if readers would leave any defensiveness they have about their hobbies in order to partake in unfettered intellectual discussion about them.

We are grrls and we are geeks! Let's start the discussion!

Sarah



Fellow Feminists!

There isn't really much I can add to Sarah's brilliant and inspired introduction, but since I can't seem to keep my big fat mouth shut (ever, in any situation) I would like to take a moment to stress how our intention in the creation of this blog is ultimately one of celebration. We are not trying to roundly dismiss geek culture as sexist--instead, we are looking to uncover and support those amazing comics, web comics, video games, manga, anime, YA lit novels (my personal poison), fantasy and science fiction novels, and any other geek products that break through the rampant sexism of the industry, that encourage us to love ourselves and our bodies, and that tell us women really
do kick ass (the sneaking suspicion we've had since high school despite mass media telling us otherwise). That isn't to say we won't call out the total sexist bullshit that we come across (Twilight, I've got your number). Or that we won't pan the banal and boring (...I'm still talking to you, Twilight), but we also hope to promote a whole lot of awesome shit.

As you can tell from Sarah's letter, we were not very discriminative in high school. We watched shitty, self-hating anime like it was our job. And we definitely went through that whole girl-bashing, gender-role enforcing yaoi thing and somehow made it out in one piece. In fact, I think our earlier lack of discrimination gave us the kind of exposure that we need to be informed and helpful (and empowered) critics.

And while we love all things geek, since we are just starting out on this blogging adventure we will probably be sticking to our strong points for awhile (We're both huge reading geeks, and so you'll probably see a LOT of book reviews to start with) we are serious about covering as much of geek culture as possible. So just stick with us! It will be an excellent ride!

Luv,
Maggie