Show Notes
What's that awful groaning sound?? Nope, it's not us talking about the Olympics, it's Japanese horror!
Lindsay Nelson tells us all about the world of scary Japanese movies, and seven days later, we die.
Ollie recommends a battery powered river cruise that has run into a familiar problem.
Bobby used to like that quote about how on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero, but now he's worried that the long enough timeline isn't long enough.
Topics discussed on this episode range from:
- Bobby and Ollie's spec script about zombie kappas
- Much to Brian's dismay, some brief Olympic developments including:
Naomi Osaka
Skateboarding
Japan medals
How the Olympics works to conflict us
Heatstroke athletes - The extent of the success of JBRC's first ever video content
- Other, better, Ollie Horns
- What Lindsay's "Haunted Japan" Class covers
- What sets Japan apart from English language horror, and how those differences are surprisingly western-influenced
- Why we watch horror, and how it might reflect our privilege?
- What Lindsay expected vs what she got in terms of her enjoyment of horror during the pandemic
- How mainstream IS horror in Japan? How successful is it at the box office?
- A couple of different answers to the question "Why study Japanese horror?"
- What Japanese horror teaches us about the social issues Japan grapples with including:
social isolation
single motherhood
bullying
suicide
anxiety over new media/social media - How the new media issues are reflected in the story as well as the production of modern Japanese horror
- Bobby discovering that his ideas are sequel quality
- Ollie's anxiety about the word "kaidanbanashi," or ghost stories
- How Japanese horror interacts with Japanese daily life, and the places in which we feel safe
- How Japanese horror that features bullying as an inciting incident can function more as revenge fantasies than straight up scare-fests
Get access to the extras by supporting the podcast for less than $1 an episode by becoming a member at
http://buymeacoffee.com.
Topics discussed on this week's BETSU BETSU 1-on-1 extras include:
OLLIE SECTION:- The movie about the suicide forest, and why you shouldn't publicize a suicide hotspot
- How that movie was actually shot in SERBIA!
- The ban on filming within that forest
- Different religious traditions/takes around suicide
- Obon and Japanese views on life and death
- How people in the West are more terrified of death and want to be distanced from it
- Kaidanbanashi
- Universal tropes around ghosts versus specifically Japanese ones, and how those Japanese topes have spread around the world
- Lindsay's class on Japanese horror movies, and what her students have to do for their final project
- How she had to adapt a class intended for exchange students to a pandemic year where there were no exchange students
BOBBY SECTION (mostly movie geeking):
- The movie about the suicide forest, again, and WHY Lindsay didn't see it as similar to a Japanese movie
- The multiple remakes of the movie the Grudge, including the new Sam Raimi version
- Where the term "J-horror" came from, and what it actually encompasses
- How faithful western remakes of Japanese horror movies have been
- Bobby and Lindsay's movie recommendations
- Did the J-horror movie boom in the early 2000s translate into crossover for Japanese creators?
- How Japanese and Hollywood movie studios went about green lighting horror movies, and marketing them.
- The crazy reason why the director of the Ring, Nakata, accepted the job in the first place, and how he ended up sticking with horror
- The crossover phenomenon with Eastern directors, and how trying to produce movies outside of a culture makes things more difficult, and how the insular nature of Japanese filmmaking contributes to this
- To what extent the western element of misogyny in horror also happens in Japan
- The final girl trope, and how the lack of it in the Japanese movie "Audition" made it very unsettling for audiences
- Bobby's favorite scene in the movie "The Final Girls"
- The deconstruction of horror movies
- Lots of movie recommendations and lots of Bobby going, "Have you seen this one?"
Social Media Links:
Other things to click on
Some are affiliate links because we're sell-outs
★ Support this podcast ★