5/15/2023 0 Comments Lost in random give up the ghostsDespite the diversity of the Asian underworld, Sadako has become its sole representative to the Western audiences, easily overshadowing her one and only contender from the past – Godzilla. Though much younger than Frankenstein’s creature and Dracula, Sadako Yamamura (created by Koji Suzuki in his Ringu novel and popularised by the films of Hideo Nakata under the same title) has already secured her position in the horror monster pantheon as an instantly recognisable icon of terror. Since the described phenomenon can be seen as a feature characteristic of contemporary Japanese horror cinema, this article will focus mostly on Japanese horror films and those Korean, Hong Kong and Thai films that seem to follow the Japanese model or exist in intertextual relations to it. This article focuses on examining the ways new media and visual technologies affect the representation of ghosts in contemporary Asian horror film, in effect producing a new variety of spirits, named here “ghosts in the machines.” These new spirits materialise within photographic and video images, transmit themselves through television frequency waves, become embedded in an electronic code, scramble the signal of video surveillance cameras, clone themselves using cellular technologies, replicate through text messages and emails, hack computer systems and infect the cyberspace better than any computer viruses known to man. Nowhere is this more visible than in contemporary Asian horror cinema, perhaps to a certain extent also because unlike in the rationally repressive west, many Asian cultures do not rush to deny spiritualism, but rather negotiate the ways in which spiritual experiences can apply to media and technology-infused global societies. But today, like anything else in this world, if they want to survive they need to adjust to the present, if not future. In popular imagination, ghosts, or the spirits of the departed have always existed as traces of the past.
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