Hello! A Self-Introduction...

Sylvia Chong schong at hooked.net
Sat Mar 13 02:48:33 EST 1999


Dear KineJapan,

I was led to this list by Miryam Sas, who's in the Dept. of East Asian
Languages and Comp. Lit. and UC Berkeley.  I am a graduate student in
Rhetoric at Berkeley, and my main interest is cultural studies/pop culture,
which of course leads me in a million different directions.  As for
Japanese cinema, my main exposure is through Miryam's undergraduate
"survey" class on the topic, but I'm more drawn to the pulpy mass market
stuff (at least for research purposes) than art cinema.

I was pleased to see Linda Williams' book "Hard Core" recommended on the
list earlier -- she's also here at Berkeley, and has taught a film genre
course on pornography based on this book.  None of her syllabus dealt with
pinku eiga, but I ended up doing my research for her class on ero manga and
s/m.  I found Anne Allison's "Permitted and Prohibited Desires" very
helpful, although again it doesn't deal directly with pinku eiga.  The
chapter on censorship law is very relevant though.

If anyone on this list is familiar with Allison's book, I'd be interested
in what you think of her use of the Ajase complex (a variant of the Oedipus
complex proposed by Kosawa in the 30s).  I've found very few mentions of it
anywhere, but it was a fascinating contrast to Freudian psychoanalysis, and
I ended up using it to propose a "Japanese" model of sadomasochism.  How
Japanese it really is is anyone's guess.  Comments?

I'm also writing right now about the "pornography of violence" in 1970s
samurai flicks, in particular the first Kozure Okami (Lone Wolf and
Cub/Sword of Vengeance, 1972) movie.  I've chosen this movie to epitomize a
movement towards explicitness and gore in fight scenes in the popular
samurai movie.  I know that Sanjuro (1962?) has a particularly gory final
scene, but I can't think of any other movies that compare to the Kozure
Okami films in terms of gore.  Any suggestions?

Sorry for the lengthy introduction.  I'm excited that this list exists! I
look forward to your responses.

Sylvia

Sylvia Chong
Department of Rhetoric
University of California, Berkeley
schong at hooked.net




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