Globalizing ‘a rage that never dies’ (but can’t stay the same): shifting dynamics of identification in the transnational remaking of Ju-On into The Grudge

ABSTRACT

The Grudge

was unique among transnational Japanese horror remakes due to several factors: Ju-On’s director Shimizu Takashi was retained for the Hollywood-financed version, as was its Japanese setting, even as the narrative’s protagonists were replaced with an American cast and the film’s plotlines restructured to accommodate this change. Using Iwabuchi Koichi’s notion of ‘cultural odor’ as a theoretical framework, and informed by scholarship on other J-Horror films and their transnational remakes, the explicit intentions of Ju-On/The Grudge’s producers and creators are contrasted with evidence from the texts themselves, and contextualized through an examination of critical and popular reception of the films as cross-cultural products. This investigation reveals fundamental shifts in dynamics of identification: In Ju-On the horror threat resonates with culturally proximate concerns, and the climactic sequence functions to create a circle of identification between the monster, the protagonist, and the viewer. Conversely, in The Grudge, the monster’s nature as culturally abject in relation to the central protagonist forecloses the potential for such identification, and foreignness itself becomes central to the horror affect.

KEYWORDS:

• Horror
• transnational adaptation
• globalization
• Japanese cinema
• Hollywood remakes
• cultural hybridity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this essay, Japanese names are given in Japanese order, with the surname preceding the given name, i.e. Shimizu Takashi, rather than Takashi Shimizu.

2. Steven Rawle further notes that the films Chakushin Ari and its remake One Missed Call are re-envisionings/appropriations of the South Korean film Pon [Phone] in using the mobile phone as a mediator of the horror threat, but that Pon was already incorporating aspects of Ringu’s focus on postmodern technological dread. Rawle notes that, “In some sense then we cannot simply hierarchize the original and remake relationship, with the remake as an inferior copy, since the original is a problematic term here, where commodity production determines the use value of the product. The remake becomes a synergy with the other different versions as the property is exploited or exploitative along regional and transnational lines” (Rawle 2015, 108).

3.. Even in the post-climactic sequence coda to the film, wherein a traumatized Karen is asked to identify Doug’s body, we find that the house has survived and Kayako continues to stalk Karen; this ending not only sets up the potential for a sequel, but reinforces Kayako’s unquenchable and incomprehensible monstrousness.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher Jeansonne

Christopher Jeansonne is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York specializing in film and popular culture media pedagogy. He holds a PhD in Arts Administration, Education, and Policy from The Ohio State University, and an MFA in Film from Ohio University. His dissertation is a qualitative action research study involving the use of critical pedagogy methods in a university-level course on superheroes across media. Before his doctoral work, Chris was the founding chair of a high school media arts program in New Orleans, and had previously taught in Japan at both K-12 and university levels. Chris’s research interests include transnational and transmedial popular culture, media pedagogy methods and theory, and intersections between critical and creative practice.