Re-enactment & mise-en-scène in Japanese reality TV

[Alice V. Massa]

i don't think the re enactment is so frequent just because japanese are 
childish and theatrical (though this may plaly its part), i would go for the 
way they have of managing fear.  in japanese tv the main part of re 
enactment are the ones of accidents, killings and so on. there are also just 
the computer run     reproduction of an event (just think about how many 
times on japanese tv they showed digital twin towers fall, or just this 
morning the 2year old child who fell from the escalator). so i think it's a 
kind of way of exorcizing fear, to live it again and let it go or something 
like that. i think it's something very near to the reason why we watch 
horror films. by the way, there are lots of re enactments with american 
actors, dubbed in japanese. does it means re enactment are popular in us 
too?
then there are the animated re enactment (like the wednesday night trivia 
ones), but i think this has more to do with the manga culture...

alice

ps: markus, did you see the following week the salaryman who died because he 
didn't have his cavity filled? that was really scary...


>From: Mark Nornes <amnornes at umich.edu>
>Reply-To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>Subject: Re: Re-enactment & mise-en-sc?ne in Japanese reality TV
>Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 09:17:43 +0900
>
>
>On Jun 23, 2004, at 12:30 AM, anne mcknight wrote:
>
>>Does anyone have a
>>sense where, when, how re-enactment and modelling acquired what
>>seems to be
>>their out-of-proportion presence? Do most of them, as my sense is,
>>have to
>>do with managing fear in some way?
>
>I have not read anything about this, nor do I have anything profound
>to say about it. However, I was watching a delightful Takeshi show
>last week called something like Takeshi's Medical Horror Hospital.
>It was the usual structure: talent looking alternately delighted or
>horrified by reenactments and dramatizations. For this show, they
>pick serious medical topics and plug it in.
>
>Last week was skin cancer and gout. The former enabled them to show
>many genki young girls in bikinis and then threaten them with
>terrible, beauty-defacing illness. The latter was dramatized with a
>man who lives the typical salaryman Life---working hard, drinking
>hard---that suddenly shows a crazy set of symptoms and then suddenly
>dies over dinner with his wife and daughter. This is rendered with
>all the conventions of the horror cinema (canted angles, noirish
>lighting, dramatic music), and each sequence ends with the entry of
>a real doctor who examines the talent and pronounces them healthy or
>near death.
>
>It was great fun, but scared the bejezus out of my 4 year-old son.
>He spent much of the show standing behind my chair, but couldn't get
>his eyes off it.  It made a huge impression. Now everytime I crack a
>beer he warns me, "Watch out, you might get tsufu!"
>
>Recommended viewing.
>
>Markus
>
>PS: There have occassionally been controversies over reenactment.
>Some have been discussed on KineJapan in the past and you could dig
>them out with a search. Before the 1960s, the debate seemed to have
>been more about the degree of reenactment that's allowable in a
>documentary. But after Hani's direct cinema-like documentaries about
>children in classrooms came out, you started getting words like
>yarase thrown into the mix. The two main debates were around Record
>of a Single Mother (Hitori no haha no kiroku) and the White
>Mountains (Shiroi sanmyaku). The debate around the latter is the
>easiest to find, as it's reprinted in the Best of Kinema Junpo
>volume.
>

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