Ringu
was made into an American horror film less than a year
after its successful release in Japan and both versions
of the film make obvious reference to the American film
Poltergeist, which itself references low-rent zombie
and cold-war-fear drive-in movies from the 1950s
(Williams & Gledhill). These cold war and
zombie movies often borrowed directly from early Asimovian-like
concerns about “ghosts in the machine,”
(Gorman & McLean) combined with all the pop
and subversive manifestations of Shelly’s Frankenstein
mythology and Caribbean voodoo doll narratives as well
as similar Central European stories about animated "spirit"
dolls.
Many of these narrative concerns
can then be traced back through cultural narratives
about spirit-endowed
technological constructions such as the stories
of the avenging clay figure of the Golem in the Jewish
diaspora of Eastern Europe and to similar stories of
animated human figures that arise from the literatures
of Central China and Southeastern Asia.
By following this chain of associations
we can find source material that rolls back into Japan
where the folk literature from the 14th century is filled
with stories of ghost-filled suits of armor acting as
assassins for justice and stories about haunted swords
with minds of their own that turn their bearers into
killing machines, beginning yet one more run around
the ring of culture-to-culture transmission and the
fascination with connecting spirit and ghostly "presence"
to technological invention. |
