Thursday, October 1, 2015
Ringu
Remember how to look at a film through a feminist lens? Choose a five-minute scene in Ringu and examine the role of women and how they are portrayed in your selected scene and in the film as a whole. How does the director show us? Be sure to discuss this topic CINEMATICALLY. Back up all of your statements with evidence from the film. Your response should be 3 well-developed paragraphs. You must reference one of the big names (from feminist film criticism) such as Tania Modleski, Laura Mulvey, and Molly Haskell. You must state the title of the essay and use at least one quote. I have plenty of books in the library to help you with this.
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ReplyDeleteThe scene where the girl in Ringu finally comes completely out of the T.V. while the man is watching it helps explain Japan’s view on women. Tania Modelski in the essay of “Feminist by Design” criticizing the film Vertigo she states “fascination with femininity that throws masculine identity into question and crisis”. That statement is extremely relevant to this scene as the man is in a crisis and he backs away from the T.V showing that he is afraid of this women and basically emasculating him.
Japan also represents the women killing everyone as an evil female spirit. This ghost story involves a woman being abused and killed. Then her angry ghost comes back for revenge. It originates from male shame and fear.She was murdered by her father, that ultimate symbol of male authority. The evil spirits rage can be seen to have avenged the injustices committed by men against women throughout history. The evil spirit emerges as a symbol of resistance against conservative patriarchy.
There are many ways one could analyze Ringu through a feminist lens, it all matters or opinion and interpretation. Laura Mulvey's essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” states that women are primarily portrayed as sexual objects and that they are essentially what the male character thinks of them as. In Ringu I don't believe this is the case. Overall I believe that the film portrayed women in a very high and respected manner, not sexual at all. One of the main characters Asakawa is shown to possess many positive strong qualities such as bravery and determination yet at the same time doesn't lack in displaying very feminine qualities as well. Near the very end of the film several high angle shots are utilized to show Asakawa being lowered into the well to find Sadako's body. This highlights Asakawas great bravery and determination to find a solution to the curse despite her fear and great anxiety over losing her and her sons life. The only undesired characteristic one might argue that portrays her in a weak way is her frequent fainting episodes. The one moment she loses strenght in the ending scene is when she collapses of exhaustion from lifting the heavy buckets of water. It could be argued that there are some elements which depict her in a less progressive way. Another piece of evidence to back up the argument that she is not weak and sexualized is that when news of her Ex Husbands death reaches her she doesn't break down and lose sight of her life. Her grief only further drives her to solve the curse and analyze what she did and what he didn't. In the end Asakawa is the dominant surviving character, aside from her son. This reveals strength and implies the importance and persistence of women and that they are not always side characters dependent on the male like Laura Mulvey believes.
ReplyDeleteThe women of Hideo Nakata's Ringu are depicted as powerful and independent. The protagonist, Reiko Asakawa, is a female reporter who risks her life in the pursuit of justice after involving herself in a case involving a mysterious videotape with a curse. The "monster" of the film, Sadako, is a female spirit whose presence causes people to perish in fear, having control of them through the spirit world into the real world. Even though females are sometimes in a weaker position in the film, they still play a strong role. For instance Sadako was viciously murdered by her villainous father. Overall though, the female characters are the driving forces behind the narrative and the most strong-willed and powerful characters in the film. A pivotal moment in the film is when Asakawa goes to investigate the story behind the mysterious tape. Upon watching it, there is an influence from lighting on the meaning behind it all. The lighting helps to show how women are both independent and vulnerable. The lighting is very bright when she first arrives at her point of investigation, but gradually becomes darker. This represents Asakawa’s increasing vulnerability. She was not cautious enough to believe the stories about the video, so she watched it and now has put her life on the line. She was independent as she tried to solve these deaths, and she did not need a man to accompany her, until the help of her ex-husband came into the picture for assistance. The lighting was dark when she watched the video though, to represent how little she knew about the subject at hand. Cinematically, during the video playing, Asakawa was at a high angle, which again, shows her vulnerability to the matter. Even though there is a form of vulnerability, it is often connected within the spiritual realm rather than in real life. In reality, she shows courage in solving the mystery. Upon entering the cabin, she seems powerful and courageous, because she is not afraid to enter the room where those children watched the video. When the man looks through the records for her, the man who offers to find the school the dead teenagers went to was small on screen as she left. This shows her power and authority, handing a situation herself. Asakawa is very professional looking as well. She looks independent, not the ‘eye candy’ with a gorgeous body, but an average looking woman who is also a single mother. She does not look for men’s approval either or looks for love, but focuses on her job and her son. The costume of Sadako shows the independence and innocence of women.
ReplyDeleteRingu is one of the most interesting and indefinite films I’ve seen when it comes to feminist film theory. Women seem to represent power through the infinite power of Sadako but also can be shown to be week in Reiko. A scene that interprets this perfectly is the psychic scene when Ryuji goes into the mind of the man on the island. The scene even begins with men surrounding the stage where a psychic woman sits. The woman is above the men and in a seat of power and she herself is more powerful. The presentation of her ability commences and one of the men stands up to call her a monster. It is at this point that the true power of women in the film is shown as Sadako instantly kills the man who yelled at her mother. The power Sadako has is shown to be immense and dangerous leading to the thought that this is a film centered on the power of women, but as soon as Sadako does this she goes over to Reiko and grabs her wrist hurting her. Reiko is weak and falls out of the dream with scars left on her wrist from the psychic journey. Juxtaposing the earlier view of women in power Reiko is now showing that women are weak.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to say what viewpoint the film takes on the power of women. Reiko is constantly shown in points of weakness where she is troubled with a difficult task and comes up as the damsel in distress. On the other hand the person with the most power in the film is Sadako also a woman. Laura Mulvey once said in Visual and Other Pleasures that a heroine is “the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, or who makes him act the way he does.” Reiko takes on this role as the heroine that shapes Ryuji. A viewer could say that Reiko solved the mystery but she would be dead with Ryuji. Scenes like the well scene show how the film can make Reiko the weak female character that appears in many horror films. But this film is different from an ordinary horror film. Any viewer can see that Reiko can be portrayed as a stereotype of a weak woman throughout the movie. She is used to represent the traditional Japanese culture of the woman who is subservient to men. This film uses her to put the point across that those traditions are changing. They do this by using Sadako as a representation of the new powerful Japanese woman. In a way the film is a statement on Japanese culture and how women are beginning to gain more power in it.
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ReplyDeleteHideo Nakata’s Ringu can easily be analyzed through a feminist lens, with a main character, Reiko, who is a female journalist, the first on-screen victim who is a teenage girl, and even the “monster” of the film who is a young girl who was murdered by her own father. Lauren Mulvey believed that women in film were “playing on the tension between film as controlling the dimension of time (editing, narrative) and film as controlling the dimension of space (changes in distance, editing), cinematic codes create a gaze, a world, and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire” as stated in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)”. Nakata uses this play on tensions very well within the horror film. Reiko can be viewed as ultimate feminist symbol being a strong, independent journalist who investigates the cause of and solution to the curse; however, she seems to rely more on the help of her ex-husband than on her own actions as the film progresses. Cinematically, Reiko is much more dominant, often appearing in high angle shots. Through these, she is given power while still being a truly human character with real flaws and fears.
ReplyDeleteThe ghost-like “monster” of the film can be analyzed through the feminist lens through her backstory. Sadako was a young girl with supernatural powers which caused her to be rejected by society and further lead to her father pushing her into a well. It is indirectly the male dominated society and directly her father that leads to her horrific death. The video-tape can be seen as two things: a way for her to get her revenge, a way for the world to see how society has mistreated her (the person who watches the tape can only be saved if they copy it and show it to another person, allowing more people to see her death). In the final scene, Sadako is shown attacking Ryuji, which is the final victim before the puzzle is solved. The irony is that she herself was killed by a male, her father.
In the final scene, Sadako is symbolic when she is finally seen in full form. Prior to this scene, Sadako had only been shown in grainy images, reduced to merely a myth in society. Sadako not as a typical female or womanly figure in the scene, but as an ominous creature. Her body appears to be twisted and her hair completely covers her face,the she doesn’t have any distinct facial qualities other than frightening eyes, shown briefly in an extreme close-up. Since the she is given almost asexual characteristics, Sadako could have been seen as either female or male, if the audience hadn’t had previous information. This can be viewed in a positive or a negative light: Nakata does not stress much importance on her physical appearance, making her lack individuality, also risking making her a cliché. Yet, Nakata is able to place even some sympathy in the viewer for the “monster” of the film. The characters are real humans, not dramatized feminists. The women in the film are given the power: Reiko must save her and her sons’ life, and indirectly chooses that her ex-husband dies, and Sadako has power over the end of people’s lives.
Ringu is an odd movie to analyze from a feminist perspective, in that the women in the film are at different times shown to be either the most powerful people in the movie or among the weakest. I know it’s not really one scene, but look at the juxtaposition between the scenes where they dig up the Sadako’s body, and the experiment scene in which the man is killed. When the dig up the body of Sadako, Reiko seems almost completely dependent on Ryuji to do the literal dirty work, and in this sense, she seems almost comically inept, completely dependent on Ryuji for strength, seemingly haven given up. In sharp contrast, however, is Sadako, who is the supposed “monster” of the story, and is shown to have extremely immense power. We see she can easily kill anyone she wants, and her rage is the only reason the videotape exists at all. This juxtaposition between her and Reiko – both women – creates this kind of duality of the female characters in the film. However, what is more interesting note is the seeming removal of most feminine qualities from Sadako, to the point of dehumanizing her. Because humans very much associate masculinity with power/strength and femininity with weakness, her costume design seems entirely based on removing any thing that could be construed to be feminine: we never see her face, only that long mane of black hair and a single, solitary eye. She wears a long white gown that serves only to cover her, in contrast to Reiko who wears much more traditionally feminine clothes. By taking away said feminine from Sadako, she becomes the most powerful character within the movie. And yet, she is still the biggest object of pity; we are made to empathize with her, to understand what she went through. Even though she is a cold-blooded character and monster, we are still made to identify with her, and I would say it is due to the fact that she is a woman. Had Sadako been a son, we probably would not have empathized with her; it is possible that her tragic backstory may have not even been included, in favor of something more similar. But because Sadako is a woman, we must identify with her, understand her plight; we are so unaccustomed to seeing woman portrayed as evil monsters that even when they are, we need them come with baggage that allows us to pity/understand them. Even though Sadako is made in every sense to have the feminine removed, taken from her, because we cannot reconcile the idea of women being evil killers in our heads, we are made to empathize with her and understand what she went through, and I would say that would definitely not have happened if she were a guy. Reiko is interesting as well, in that she starts off as a very stereotypically female character (in contrast to Sadako) and remains such throughout the movie (my god, she is static), but in the end, she is the only one to figure out how to survive the curse; passing it on. In such a sense, Reiko can be seen almost as an extension of the final girl archetype we see in horror movies; she is seemingly the weakest, and yet turns out to be the only character to survive.
ReplyDeleteBut don't you think that the portrayal of women on both sides of the power spectrum poses an interesting, if not vital to our understanding of social behavior, notion about the variability of the value of humans absent the consideration of gender? If both portrayals easily acheive verismilitude independent of one another, does that not shed light on the stupidity of viewing a woman as lesser, rather than greater, if the latter is just as easily attainable? Also, in order to truly empathize with any character, with any role, monster or not, and truly understand them, they are required to have said, "baggage,"- that is not something only attributed to women, even in the film world. We empathized with Kane in, "Citizen Kane," because we understood his plight, and his rocky childhood. We felt deeply for Michael, in The Godfather, because we were able to understand the aspects of his life and his struggle to uphold a normal relationship with his wife-and what is more monstrous than a full fledged Mafia? I don't think I identified with her, "because Sadako is a woman." I think I identified with Sadako, because she was a character that we were provided a horrible backstory of, which would inevitably yield pity. If Sadako was a boy, who had been killed by his mother, and born of a father with similar supernatural-telepathic abilities, and all of the genders associated with the historical context of the cursed videos were switched, I would still identify with Sadako the same way. Because he would still have been a person, a human being. I am not more apt to empathize with someone because they are a woman, personally. In that of itself, isn't that sort of a little bit biased to say "we are still made to identify with her...due to the fact that she is a woman?" Because she is a woman, we must pity her? We may be made to pity her based on how she is portrayed cinematically as a female, yes, but not for the sole fact that she is one, in my opinion.
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DeleteIn the scene where the well is discovered by Reiko and Ryuji, there are several shots between eye level shots of Reiko pulling up the buckets of water, and extreme high angle shots of Ryuji in the bottom of the well. In this instance, Reiko is seen as the audience’s equal, regardless of what gender the audience may be, and Ryuji is seen as the inferior. Although this is done to foreshadow Ryuji’s impending doom, where Reiko has found a loophole, it also spews forth implicitly the rise of feminist power. I find this seen to be climactic not only in the movie, but in the role of females in both the diegetic world being viewed, and the feminist implications about the reality of the world that surrounds it. Although feminism in America has exceeded traditionalist Japan, there has never been a stand-still in any region of the world and their journey toward gender equality, thus it is impertinent to view how an uprise of feminism is portrayed by the film. Furthermore, the lighting of Ryuji versus the lighting of Reiko speaks volumes. Where the dim light shone on Reiko is steady, and unchanging, the light on Ryuji at the bottom of the well displays itself as a pattern that changes intensities based on the movement of the flashlight, and how it reflects the water-nonetheless, this lighting, when juxtaposed against the lighting that is associated with Reiko, is nothing short of flurried, chaotic, and seemingly unorganized. Again, this makes the female in this scene seem more constant, and by that, powerful.
ReplyDeleteConversely, we can view this film as an oppression of feminism in the moments where Ryuji surfaces from the well, and confronts an exhausted Reiko. When he emerges, we see him in first an eye level, and then a low angle shot, we are intimidated by him, as if he is looking down on us, when in reality it is a shot of him looking down upon Reiko. When he was in the well, he was always in the center of the frame; Reiko, however, was always toward the left of the frame. In the moments where Reiko wakes up from exhaustion as Ryuji confronts her, she is in an extreme high angle shot, and any hint of feminism we once saw is now obliterated in those few seconds. Furthermore, Ryuji’s costume design is much darker than that of Reiko’s yellow blouse, making him seem as the dominant individual, even though he will be the one who is killed, not her.
“The man controls the film phantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator, transferring it behind the screen to neutralise the extradiegetic tendencies represented by woman as spectacle.” (Mulvey, 1975) This is reiterated in the instance that Ryuji LITERALLY EMERGES, from the well, to re-establish his place of power as the male in the film. When we see these high angle perspective shots of Reiko on the ground, we are looking through the male lens onto the female, who is but a spectacle now. We are empowered through the male lens, and suddenly, regardless of our gender, we ourselves feel as a superior to a seemingly weak woman spectacle.
ReplyDeleteRingu is a very interesting film to analyze from a feminist point of view because there are many different ways that the film can be interpreted. Though I would have to go with the side of the film showing how female roles have changed in "traditional" Japanese film, where women are usually weak and helpless, not being able to really do anything on their own. Ringu breaks this mold by having a female protagonist who is not only a single mother supporting her child but also is literally is the only person who knows how to save her child's life (not including the school girls) after he watches the tape. And she is not very over-sexualized like many women in many Hollywood films. "The magic of the Hollywood style at its best (and of all the cinema which fell within its sphere of influence) arose, not exclusively, but in one important aspect, from its skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure." (Laura Mulvey, 1975). So not only does Ringu kind of take away the utter sensuality of Reiko, aka making her a tired, working class mother who's whole existence is pretty much to take care of her son. She doesn't really wear dresses or bright colors, mostly just casual business/work atire because she's almost always coming home from work, working or about to go to work. Her strength can be shown cinematically in the scene where Reiko and Ryuji are on the pier and then on the boat, Reiko takes up more space in the frame than Ryuji does, signifying her strength. She is also very often almost in the middle of the frame, only a few inches to the right/left, which not only signifies her strength, but also her importance to the story.
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese horror film Ringu (Hideo Nakkata) plainly shows favoritism on women over men. Towards the end of the film, it becomes obvious that Reiko, our protagonist, is seen as the hero of the film. Reiko takes things into her own hands and refuses to include more than a few people when it comes to dealing with her problems. Her being the hero of the film is not only reflective of her independent nature, but it is also representative of her character being a role model figure to other female viewers. This nature is displayed through cinematic language to the audience.
ReplyDeleteI’ve chosen the water well scene to focus on. She goes down in search of Sadako’s dead body, the source of all the killing and torment that has plagued Sadako’s victims. The audience sees Reiko alone at the bottom of said well, darkness enclosing Reiko’s presence, inducing a sense of anxiousness and fear in the audience. In contrast though, her face is super bright. The lighting on Reiko’s face shows that she does not share the same fear the audience has, Reiko is ready to overcome anything that comes her way. This harks back to the role model figure which was talked about previously. In turn, the audience gets a feeling of hope. In addition, the seemingly constant use of medium level shots shows, in my opinion, how Reiko can stay calm in this situation despite the immense fear and nervousness one would normally feel under such circumstances. She doesn’t overreact or freak out and the steady balanced shots reflect that about her perfectly. Reiko’s strength is shown most plainly when she hugs the dead body. In this shot, the body still doesn’t have as much lighting as Reiko. Reiko is the presence with the most light, indicating how she is comforting the spirit. Lighting and camera placement were crucial in portraying Reiko’s strong character.
"In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.” This quote from Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is an accurate description of most films in its time, but I feel that it doesn’t fit the film Ringu. Ringu had male characters which had a passive attitude the whole time and female characters which remained active throughout the whole film. Reiko is not there for the purpose of sex appeal, she is the hero, the protagonist, the strong mother. She made the film what it is, whereas the ex-husband I viewed as more flat in nature and very predictable. As a result, Ringu defied the social stereotype by giving the most influential and important role to a female.
Abstractly, Hideo Nakata’s "Ringu" (1998) can be analyzed through a feminist lens, yet the film does not serve as an example of Laura Mulvey’s Feminist Film Theory of 1973. Films have changed drastically since the early seventies, along with women's social standing worldwide, so it is appropriate that the female protagonist, Reiko, is an independent journalist/single mother living in urban Japan. This immediately expresses Nakata’s overall attitude toward women throughout the film. Consistently, they are empowered, whether through motivation to save a loved one or an eerie supernatural talent.
ReplyDeleteFrom a feminist perspective, Reiko’s representation cinematically is mostly powerful, as she is primarily shot at eye level or from a slightly low angle, except when with her ex-husband Ryuji, in which case she appears submissive and lowly in comparison. Ryuji, however, loses his superiority when he is faced with the horrific ghoul Sadako, who is also extremely significant in terms of how she is portrayed through shot composition. Of the very few shots of the monster included, implicitly shown through cinematic techniques, including framing and shot angle, is the notion that Sadako is dominant. Within the particular scene in which Ryuji is unexpectedly killed, he is first taken by surprise, in an eye level shot, by the television turning on abruptly. As the figure on the screen creeps closer, Ryuji falls backwards in awkward retreat. The shot of his reaction is cinematically meaningful when considering composition, with the TV in the foreground, and Ryuji very small and insignificant when compared to his surroundings. It is here that Ryuji is portrayed as the most vulnerable figure, which is to be expected in the moments before his death.
Sadako, on the other hand, begins to dominate the majority of the frame from the moment she emerges from the TV screen, but appears especially large and powerful in the following medium-close ups. Intercut with these shots are those of the cowering Ryuji, who becomes increasingly small within the frame as time continues. The growing contrast in the way each character is viewed adds to the suspense and increasing sense of Ryuji's helplessness, until finally an extreme close up of Sadako’s eye peeking from behind her long black hair solidifies Ryuji’s fate as he is killed.