Compare two Horror Films. Describe and Account for the
Major Similarities Between Them. What do they say
About the Concerns of Modern Japanese Society?
The two horror films in question are Ring and Audition. They have many
similarities, such as the message, the plots, the protagonists and the themes.
These similarities portray and tell us about the concerns of modern Japanese
culture.
Aoyama saw Asami as polite, beautiful, classy and obedient, because of her
looks and what he read about her. So, in modern Japanese society people
treat others differently because of their differences from others. This is a
concern because it portrays Japanese society as “blind”, because Japanese
society doesnˇt seem to look within a person.
The plot of Ring is a mysterious video kills whoever views it, unless that
viewer can solve its mystery. The plot of Audition is that lonely Aoyama
wants to get married again after his wife died, and has an audition and gets
drawn to a young woman called Asami, who does not appear to be who
Aoyama thinks she is. Both films have mysteries which end in twists, which
are common in horror films. In Ring, the stock-situation is one of gothic
horror, without any blood and gore but mysterious deaths. The colour for this
type of horror film is black, as it is dark and mysterious. By contrast, the stock
situation in Audition is full of blood and gore. It is more like the modern
horror films. The colour for this type of horror film is red, because it is full of
blood and gore. Both films teach us about vengeance in modern Japanese
culture, which is inevitable. They tell us that there are some people that like to
kill others that are innocent.
The main protagonists of Ring are Asakawa and Sadako, heroine and
villainess. The main protagonists of Audition are Aoyama and Asami, hero and
villainess. In both films, the hero/ heroine and the villainess are connected.
In Ring, the heroine is Asakawa. She is the victim of a dysfunctional family, as
she has divorced her husband, Ryuji. She neglects her son, Yoichi, since she
has a job as a news reporter and needs the money. She wants to remarry
Ryuji and thus have a perfect family. Asakawa is supernatural, as she can read
minds. In Audition, the hero is Aoyama. He is also the victim of a
dysfunctional family, as his wife has died. However, he does not neglect his
son, but becomes closer to him after the death of his wife. He feels lonely and
depressed though, as he misses his wife, and had a perfect family. As a result
he holds an audition for possible future wife. Both films have major
similarities as Asakawa and Aoyama are victims of dysfunctional families and
crave for perfect ones. This shows that some families in modern Japanese
society are dysfunctional and are in search for a perfect family. The concerns
of this are that those families donˇt usually become perfect, and sometimes
become even more dysfunctional. However, some families do become perfect,
so this is one concern that can be fixed.
In Ring, the villainess is Sadako. She is mentally ill and supernatural, since
she can kill people using her mind. She kills people out of vengeance because
of the grief she endures as her mother was treated like a circus freak (whom
is also supernatural, because she can predict the future). This tells us that
Sadako was also a victim of a dysfunctional family. She was also the victim of
child abuse, as she was put in a room with only a television, because she
was different. Here she created the videotape which would be the cause of
so many deaths. Her stepfather, Dr Ikuma also killed her, but she came back
to life and became a curse to human kind. The only person she doesnˇt kill
who has watched the videotape is Asakawa, because she hugged her dead
body and Asakawa has a scar which was left by Sadako. In Audition, the
villainess is Asami. She is a psychotic ex-ballerina, showing vengeance by
abusing and degrading men to show how she suffered from child abuse and
grief. She made the head of a music company into her “pet”, feeding him
vomit and cutting his tongue and legs off and putting him in a bag. She goes
for the audition and meets Aoyama, and nearly makes him into her “pet”
too. Both films have villainesses that make innocent people suffer because
they want to show them how they suffered, and enjoy causing agony to
others. They believe that they are teaching their victims more about
themselves, by making them experience the kind of pain they received. The
villainesses portray bullies in Japanese culture, who bully others because they
get bullied themselves. This is a concern in Japanese society because it
shows that there are people who enjoy causing grief to others, just because
of the grief caused to them.
The themes of Ring are vengeance, grief, dysfunctional families and the
supernatural. The themes of Audition are vengeance, grief, dysfunctional
families, depression and loneliness. Both films have similar themes, as they
both have vengeance, grief and dysfunctional families. In Ring, vengeance
was caused by Sadako inflicting death on human kind for her past treatment.
Grief was caused by the death of Tomoko (the niece of Asakawa), the death
of Ryuji and the dysfunctional family of Sadako. Divorce between Asakawa
and Ryuji resulted in another dysfunctional family. In Audition, vengeance
was caused by Asami, abusing men because of her past treatment. Grief was
caused by Aoyama mourning his wifeˇs death, and that death resulted in a
dysfunctional family. This shows that vengeance, grief and dysfunctional
families are the worst concerns in modern Japanese society, as both films
portray them as their main themes.
In conclusion, both films teach us that Japanese society is full of vengeance,
grief and dysfunctional families. In Ring, Sadako has a dysfunctional family,
which causes her grief, which causes her to have vengeance. In Audition,
Aoyama has a dysfunctional family, which causes him grief which in turn
causes him to be a victim of Asamiˇs vengeance, who also has grief. This shows
that the concerns of modern Japanese society are all connected, with one
being the input (dysfunctional families), one the process (grief) and one the
output (vengeance).