The Reception of Violence in Japanese Cinema:

Essay by ScandleUniversity, Bachelor'sB, February 2008

download word file, 20 pages 5.0

The Reception of Violence in Japanese Cinema:In this forth coming essay I am going to investigate the psychological and cultural reception of the violence integrated throughout Takashi Miike's contemporary Japanese films. I am then going to further this investigation into what extent the brutality depicted in these films exceeds the boundaries of social responsibility and morality.

The social reception of film violence has been an public debate throughout cinema history, many people point their fingers at violent cinema, claiming that it is responsible for societies darker misfortunes. For me this cause and effect argument is simply an unproven exhibition of personal opinions, therefore in this research paper I want to discuss more productive ways of debating screen violence by exploring the reasons behind audiences emotional responses toward film violence and I believe the work of Takeshi Miike will prove to a good focal point for investigation as throughout his career he has produced movies that demand emotional, grotesque and psychological responses from his audience.

The greater part of Takashi Miike films have only recently been exposed to the vast majority of western filmgoers with his most successfully acclaimed box office production, the Audition (or to give it its proper Japanese title, Odishon) being the main vehicle behind his expose. However recently Miike's work has been exposed to the western film audience he is by no means a newcomer to the industry, in fact his film career so far has been a very prolific one, making 34 films in the decade prior to the production of the Audition. Throughout his career Miike has almost been a "Director for hire" working on demand rather than striving to produce personally orientated projects. Whilst this work by demand system may, in the western film industry, would appear to be a methodology that...