ikiru parody

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Ted asked,

>>Dankan (39), a member of Takeshi Gundan (a comedian
>>band of Beat Takeshi) was awarded for his film at Locarno Film Festival
>>of Switzerland.  The film is titled "Ikinai," directed by Hiroshi
>>Shimizu and written by Dankan.  "Ikinai" (I Won't Live) is a parody of
>>Akira Kurosawa's film "Ikiru" (I Will Live).
>
>Has anyone heard or seen of this, and can anyone comment about parody films
>in Japanese culture? I've heard about a nikku-roman porno version of Ozu,
>but never seen it to know if it's a parody per se, or just an appropriated
>style.

Only the title _Ikinai_ is properly a parody of _Ikiru_ since the film 
neither makes fun of the plot nor tries to fool with Kurosawa's style.

The porno version of Ozu is, of course, _Shall We Dance?_'s Suo 
Masayuki's first film, _Hentai kazoku: Aniki no yomesan_. It is less of a 
parody than a film that brings out some of the sexual innuendos in Ozu by 
doing a porno version of an Ozu family in Ozu style.

As for parody films, there are few that are as extreme as the _Naked Gun_ 
films, but there are quite a few directors who put parodic elements in 
their films: Sabu and Yaguchi Shinobu are two recent examples.  Film 
comedy centered on vaudevillians like Enoken is also full of parodic 
elements.  In fact, one can argue that much of Japanese comedy 
(especially on the stage and on TV variety) in general prefers parody (a 
kind of metadiscourse on the diegesis) to diegeticized comedy.

As for parody on TV, did anyone else see _Guruguru Ninety-nine_ on Friday 
night?  The first 25 minutes was a bizarre, clumsy, but still hilarious 
parody of _Jaws_ and _Rambo_.  I especially liked it when Okamura, having 
to yell at the shark in bad English, kept on adding English conversation 
school lines like this:

"I will shoot you!  I will blow you up!  What is your name?  I will shoot 
you!  What time is it?" etc.

Aaron Gerow
YNU