Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Weird

The entire genre of "weird" is definitely something that catches my eye. Since talking about what falls under the category, I've noticed that a lot of the things I watch or read revolve around the weird. The V/H/S trilogy is actually one of my favorite film trilogies. The whole concept of these movies first drew me in because it was found footage and found footage movies are pretty much always good. Even when they're bad, they're still good because at that point it turns humorous at how terrible it is. I'm also a sucker for anything that claims it can scare me. Horror movies nowadays are somewhat predictable but with the V/H/S movies, it wasn't always like that. Sure, it was always known that someone was going to die but I could never quite figure out how or why any of this was even happening. For example, in the first tape of V/H/S it's all about these three guys who bring back these two girls to a hotel room. One girl passes out drunk while the other girl turns into this succubus winged creature and starts eating the guys and then flies away with one. When I first saw that, I was NOT at all expecting her to 1) start eating them and 2) to actually fly away with one of them. The whole thing was just very... for lack of a better word, weird. The whole movie kept me at the edge of my seat because each tape had so many elements of the average horror movie all blended in together, but also had so many twists and turns. Another example would be in the last tape where this group of guys go to a Halloween party but it's not a party at all. They find a girl being attacked by these people and it just looks like a regular exorcism scene. But then arms start coming out of the walls and you're like "what, why is that happening???" That was totally unexpected for me.

Speaking of unexpected things, I read Jack by China Miéville and honestly, the entire ending caught me by surprise. Throughout the story, the way the narrator was talking about Jack, it seemed as though they were friends or they knew each other on a personal level. It wasn't until the line "That's what I did at work today," that I actually understood what the narrator had meant when he said he knew Jack and worked with him. I think the ending was a really good twist to the plot of a very weird story. I thought the whole idea of Remaking was kind of confusing because all I could think was "how will that work?" However after reading the description of what Remaking actually was, I just went along with it. I also think that's what kept me reading the story, was the fascination of the fact that this society of people figured out how to just replace people's body parts with other objects and it just... works. Like these people stay alive with motorknives for arms... that's so awesome! Another reason this story sucked me in was because I really wanted to know what kind of job the narrator had with Jack. I wanted so badly to know how they knew each other. When I found out at the end, I was deeply surprised but also had a sense of relief that I finally knew the relationship between the two.

Monday, September 14, 2015

J-Horror

For this week's reading, I chose the short stories from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn. All of the stories that I read had different life lessons that I wouldn't really consider to be scary in any way. Each story also had their own reflection of a "good" and an "evil." However, I feel like the goods and evils can be interpreted to be different elements of the story. For example, the Story of the Mimi-Nashi-Hōychi could have two evils. The first evil could be the more obvious one being the spirits of Heiké or the Antoku Tennō because they were... well, warriors, but also because they summoned Hōychi basically without his knowledge and approval and then ripped off his ears. The second one, and the one that I would consider to be the actual evil in this story is Hōychi's friend that he was staying with, the priest. He forced Hōychi to stay home and wrote religious texts all over his body, except for his ears, and when the warrior came to summon him that night all he saw were ears and ripped them off. If the priest had just let Hōychi go, he would probably still have his ears. Life lesson: your friends may think they know what's best for you but always follow your own instincts. 

There is definitely a cultural separation if these are to be considered ghost/scary stories. I suppose it's because I've seen and read so many things classified in the "horror" genre of movies and books that these types of stories just don't scare me. All I see are the life lessons that are between the lines and I can't get passed that. Yes they are scary, but they're scary in a sense of 'If you don't get your life together, bad things will happen.' These stories are more or less just vessels to convey values and morals like don't be selfish (Of A Mirror and A Bell), don't always believe everything that someone tells you (Diplomacy), and always give someone the benefit of the doubt regardless of what other people say about them (Jikininki). Overall, these stories were very good, I did actually enjoy them. I just hoped they'd be a little scarier than they were but they had lessons and that's probably worth more than just a quick thrill. 

Vampires

This week's reading, Interview With a Vampire, was all about relationships; how beings are attached to one another and how they become that way. It's clear in the beginning of the reading that there's a relationship between Lestat and Louis. As the story progresses, it becomes very clear that this is not a healthy relationship. Lestat seemed to have some kind of power over Louis and it's pretty obvious that power was one of love. Throughout the entire reading, all Louis wanted was the approval of Lestat and to feel the love being reciprocated but that never happened. Lestat knew that he had complete control over Louis and he barely showed signs that he cared. There was a small hint of love when Lestat brought the little girl back to the hotel room and gave her to Louis but he immediately undid the good deed when he decided to take the little girl as his own, right in front of Louis. It was a very selfish thing of Lestat to do and Louis was heartbroken. He didn't understand why Lestat would do that to him. 
This situation has many characteristics that are similar to an abusive relationship. Louis thinks that Lestat loves him because he sometimes does nice things for him and when Lestat is selfish or mean to Louis, he writes it off as nothing and says things like "But he says he loves me." and "He's not like this all the time, honest." Louis is too dependent and too insecure about himself to realize that Lestat is no good for him and that he can do better. Louis believes that without Lestat, he wouldn't be able to live. This is much like an abusive relationship because Lestat knows. He knows that Louis is dependent on him yet he continues with the relationship anyway. He feeds off of Louis's insecurities to fuel his own selfish desires. He does just enough for Louis that he can "get away with" doing all of these mean things - manipulation at its finest.