Witches

Everyone has a preconceived notion of what a witch is supposed to be. For me, it is the green-faced, wart-riddled, cackling crone riding a broomstick into the night while her monkey henchmen come in to do the dirty work. Their goals are nothing short of your annihilation or abject humiliation and servitude. They use foul, dark magic to achieve their aims – often hunched over a bubbling cauldron stirring their evil into the world. This is an example of the stereotype we’ve created around these characters. Aware of this, Diana Wynn Jones delivers us a new idea of witches while incorporating a different set of stereotypes – that of the societal view on powerful women.

Through Mig – our narrator – we encounter Aunt Maria and her friends. It is through Mig’s emotions that ours are influenced. Her distaste and frustration becomes our own. But we have to ask ourselves about the source of that frustration. Is it that we feel that our characters are being mistreated or is it that it is a strong female character doing the mistreatment? Even those who are in service to Aunt Maria do so mostly in fear, even though they agree with her use of power.

Later we are introduced to the character of Anthony Green who seeks to wrest control from Aunt Maria. All the while, Chris and Mig are caught in the middle of the power play (at one point Chris gets turned into a dog). We see how each side tries to dominate the other, asserting their will to the detriment of the other. It is only when Chris and Mig are able to bring a balance by demonstrating the ability to share power that the town is saved.

Diana Wynn Jones delivers a powerful story with its own morals in the tale of Aunt Maria. We should be mindful of this story when we think about the division of power in our own lives. 

The New Weird

People have long been interested, or at the very least – aware, of the weird. Tales throughout history demonstrate this. It isn’t too hard to understand. After all, a story about the ordinary is hardly a story at all. As time marches ever forward, the things we considered weird have evolved into even weirder things. Consider it an escalation of force perhaps. In order to appease our desire for weirdness we seek out ever weirder subjects. Sometimes, as is the case with Cabin in the Woods, we acknowledge and somewhat parody the tropes that comprise what we consider weird – thus making it something that is slightly weirder, if not a little silly.

It is this introduction of new ideas that brings me to Kraken by China Mieville. We are all familiar with the ideas of cults but Mieville turns it on its head and makes something of a parody of it by making it a cult devoted to what is essentially a giant squid. The weirdness doesn’t stop there as we are witness to other strange things throughout the book. I did find parts of it moved rather slow and took a while to get through but I was able to appreciate what was there. I felt like it fulfilled the concept of new weird by continually raising the ante while delivering us an entertaining story.

With the nature of people being what it is, I wonder what new weird things we will conjure up in the future. We are always looking for that newest thing to entertain us, with older, known things being left behind. This is reflected in our past and will certainly be a major influence in the future. 

Japanese Horror

We spent some time in the realm of Japanese horror for our third week. I read Kwaidan, a collection of short stories and I watched Audition; a film by Takashi Miike. Both media share similarities in the way the tales are constructed, even if they do depart somewhat from each other in terms of endings.

As I was reading Kwaidan it occurred to me how much like campfire ghost stories each tale was. Most of the stories within Kwaidan dealt with the supernatural in terms of vengeful or restless spirits. This is no real surprise considering Japan’s deep spiritual beliefs about nature and the afterlife. A vast majority of Japanese practice the Shinto religion which centers on the connection between the past and present through the appeasement of kami, or gods and spirits. The Japanese also have a deep respect for nature and have designated several spots throughout Japan as places of power. In particular, mountains have always been seen as the realm of the dead and are often considered holy or sacred. I think it’s important to keep these traditions in mind when analyzing Japanese horror as nearly all of its writings, horror or otherwise, have been influenced by its spiritual beliefs.

The Japanese belief in spirits is not just limited to those helpful kami, but also revolves around the Oni. They are depicted as demons, devils, ogres or trolls that seek to destroy or disrupt the individual, especially when that person has done something dishonorable or deserving of punishment. This belief provides a well of material for any Japanese horror writer as the figure of the demon has been present in Japanese art and literature throughout its history.

This style of writing also coincides with the Western tradition of story-telling that often sees the evil-doer getting his or her comeuppance in the end.  It is this similarity that led to me to associate the stories in Kwaidan to our own Western campfire ghost stories. However, I feel that there are still significant differences between the two formats in the way the stories resolve. In a lot of Western folktales, the story ends upon the discovery of the supernatural source, ending the tale very shortly after the climax (i.e. …and they were never seen again). With a lot of the Japanese writings, it felt like the story continued for several more beats after the climax or discovery of the source of the supernatural. This made the story feel stale or slow by comparison and reduced its impact on me. Indeed, a lot of the stories had very slow parts where nothing much happened until suddenly the vengeful spirit appears and is just as quickly gone. Overall, I found the stories to be unrefined and lacking any real strength in terms of their ability to frighten me. I also failed to recognize any obvious moral to most of the stories as it was rarely the main character that had to learn anything. Typically the main character runs across another who had either been cursed or was an Oni in disguise. They either dispatch or aid the other character, depending on their nature. The main character either dies or goes on his way to tell his tale to others. There was so little variation in structure from story to story that reading them in procession was a bit of a task.  I also found that the image of the evil spirit has varied little throughout Japanese history. What scared them hundreds of years ago continues to provide a source of fear today. Note the similarities in the images below.

As for the movie, Audition, I found myself forgetting that I was watching a horror film; so little was the actual horror component. It felt more like a romantic movie until the very end where it turned into a gore-fest that was shocking only in its depiction of violence. I was further distracted by the director’s usage of flashbacks that were not actually flashbacks but some warped reality that the main character was experiencing. It seemed disjointed and took me out of the film rather than pull me in further. Overall, I didn’t find that the main character deserved his fate. I also didn’t feel that there was a moral to the story other than “there are crazy women out there that want to cut your feet off so beware of who you date.”

In summary, I don’t find anything compelling or frightening about Japanese horror and without a convincing reason to try it again I will likely abstain from it in the future.