Comedies of resistance: Shuji Terayama and the politics of visual humor

ABSTRACT

In the context of the Japanese Long 68, this essay explores the work of experimental filmmaker Shuji Terayama in relation to the tragicomic possibilities of visual humor and cinematic gags. Juxtaposing Ryan Holmberg’s exploration of Japanese nansensu with other historical, cultural and political theories, the article argues that visual gags and comedic performativity (going back to silent cinema and the avant-garde) allowed Terayama to both embrace and critique the revolutionary ideals of the Japanese New Left in the late 60s and early 70s.

KEYWORDS:

• Cinema
• politics
• Japan
• Terayama
• humor
• experimental film
• visual arts
• transnational history
• comedy and tragedy
• gesture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Adorno, Kierkegaard. 37.

2. Holmberg, “Hear no, speak no”, 115–141. In fact, the title of this article, “comedies of resistance”, is a modest homage and a quote to Holmberg’s brilliant analysis.

3. For an in-depth study of visual gags throughout film and media history: Garin, El gag visual.

4. Tada, Karada, 229.

5. Terayama in Sorgenfrei, Unspeakable Acts, 304.

6. Baudelaire, 150.

7. Mars, Le Gag. For a critique of Mars’ analysis and definition of gags see: Coursodon, Buster Keaton. The rivalry between Mars and Coursodon, with opposed interpretations of what gags are and can do, goes back to a previous article published by the latter in Cinéma 60, a couple of months before Mars wrote his series for Cahiers du Cinéma: Coursodon, “La tradition de l’absurde et le cinéma américain”.

8. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from non-English sources are mine.

9. Tajiri and Tanaka “The Reception of Samuel Beckett in Japan”.

10. Carroll, “Notes on the Sight Gag”; Jenkins and Brunovska, Classical Hollywood Comedy; and Neale and Krutnik. Popular Film and Television Comedy.

11. Buñuel, 19.

12. Garin, “Running Bombs”.

13. Ridgely, Japanese Counterculture, 6.

14. Garin and Elduque, “Playing the Holes”, 197–214.

15. Edwards, “Crystal Gazing”.

16. Solomon, Slapstick Modernism.

17. Sas, Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan, 91.

18. Fisher Sorgenfrei, Unspeakable Acts.

19. Kobayashi, “Senryu”, 166.

20. “A pattern forms among these poems, in which Terayama’s tanka mock (jozetsu), defile (koyashi), crush (fumikeshite), and kill (uchite) elements within the haiku they invoke. This is certainly not the standard allusive practice within the waka and tanka genres”. Ridgely, Steven C. Op. cit, 1–34. The key influence that Hollywood cinema and specifically Humphrey Bogart (quoted in Throw Away Your Books and The Boxer) had in Terayama’s imagery connects with Michitaro Tada’s point about the lasting effects of US cinema in Japan, which he explicitly embodies in the curves and gestures of a specific film star: “The cultural impact of North America had its origin in the hips of Marilyn Monroe”. Tada, Michitaro. Op. cit., 156.

21. Agee, “Comedy’s Greatest Era”.

22. Chaplin, 302.

23. Guarné, Antropología de Japón., 42, 65, 80. In terms of visual motifs and images, it is very symptomatic that the anthropologist Takeo Funabiki refers to the visual “isolation” or “loneliness” of Japanese presidents in the photographic coverage of G7 meetings as an example of national anxieties and international “otherness”.

24. Bazin, What is Cinema? 79.

25. Villain, El montaje, 15.

26. De Vargas, “Tira los libros, sal a la calle”, 68.

27. Capra, The Name Above the Title, 39.

28. Kerr, The Silent Clowns, 123.

29. Keaton, My Wonderful World of Slapstick, 26, 148.

30. Terayama in Fisher Sorgenfrei, Op. cit., 309.

31. Tada, Op. Cit., 177.

32. Eisenstein, Charlie Chaplin, 21.

33. Ridgely, Op. cit., 116.

34. Didi-Huberman, Uprisings. For an in-depth study of this anti/political motif in the films of Chaplin see: Kràl, Le Burlesque ou Morale de la tarte à la crème.

35. De Vargas, “Japan’s New Left and New Wave”, 9.

36. Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 37.

37. Holmberg, Op. Cit.

38. Holmberg, Op. Cit., 124.

39. Terayama, “Manifesto”.

40. In the same way that musical sheets, orchestra accompaniments and sound effects were a major contribution to silent cinema, Terayama’s oeuvre wouldn’t be the same without the musical compositions of Takaaki Terahara, better known as J. A. Caesar, who established a close collaboration with the artist composing film scores and many different kinds of music – including rock opera – for Tenjo Sajiki’s theater plays. For a contextualization of the role of sound and music in early cinema see: Altman, Silent Film Sound.

41. Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions”.

42. Montalto, Beckett e Keaton.

43. Tenzer, “Interview with Henriku Morisaki”.

44. Ngai, “Theory of the The Gimmick”, 470.

45. Guarné, Op. cit., 24.

46. Agamben, “Notes on Gesture”, 2000.

47. Ibid., 9.

48. Benjamin, Mickey Mouse. For a specific discussion of the concept of dialektik im stillstand as applied to cinema see: Agamen, “Nymphs”.

49. Guarné, Op. Cit., 21.

50. Brenez, “The Forms of the Question”.

51. Tada, Op. Cit., 115.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Manuel Garin

Manuel Garin is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.