More reflections on pink films and other popular genres

[Jim Harper]

Not wishing to sound confrontational here, but I'm not sure how much of this paragraph I can agree with. For myself (and many acquaintances with similar tastes), part of the attraction of watching Japanese horror or yakuza movies is the cultural differences. Certainly the similarities can provide an easy access point to the films, but exploring the different approaches to horror from other cultures can also be extremely interesting. It's not enough to make a specific film entertaining in cinematic terms, but exploring (for example) the Indonesian fear of flying severed heads can make for interesting viewing.
   
  I don't know if there's any status to be attached to rejecting trashy American slasher movies in favour of allegedly highbrow Japanese films. The vast majority of Japanese horror fans I'm acquainted with are also fans of horror throughout the world, and it's not rare to find discussions of 'The Toolbox Murders' alongside debates about the works of Kiyoshi Kurosawa; few people I know (if any, to be honest) actually claim to be just a fan of Japanese horror (my own collection of trashy US slasher movies runs into the hundreds). Besides, viewing more than a handful of Japanese horror films makes it clear that there are just as many boring, badly-produced and derivative efforts made in Japan as there are in the US.
   
  Jim Harper. 
  
Alexander Jacoby <a_p_jacoby at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
            It strikes me that whatever explanations there are for its popularity among Japanese audiences, Western cinephiles like yakuza films because they are basically very similar to Western gangster movies and require minimal cultural context to understand. The same can be said of the modern wave of Japanese horror films, whose fundamental compatability with conventional Western tastes is demonstrated by the fact that Hollywood is greedily remaking them. I suspect also that these films tend to appeal to people who enjoy experiencing the basic emotional stimuli associated with the onscreen portrayal of sex and violence, but also wan! t to appear intellectually respectable. Simply, it sounds better for one to profess an interest in Japanese horror films than in Hollywood slasher movies, or J-porn than Europorn (notice how we happily borrow the term "pink film" since it sounds less crude than "pornography"). In terms of the actual content of the films, however, I don't se!
 e much
 difference. (This paragraph, by the way, is also not intended to be insulting to anyone - I accept that each of these genres has produced some films of aesthetic interest in Japan, as comparable genres have elsewhere; there are writers who acknowledge this, and who, rather than concerning themselves with the symptomatic interest of the genre, single out individual pink films, horror films and yakuza films as worthy of serious aesthetic appreciation.)






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