Onibaba: Art Film or Prestige Horror?
What is or is not horror is defined by the viewer, and with that perspective, it is within my role as the viewer to declare Onibaba, prestige art film, a horror film as well. In the Kawin reading, we are told that "bad horror" is a "spectacle", full of meaningless death and gore, with no investment required by the viewer, or greater message to provide (325). "Good horror" guides the viewer to psychological understanding of human nature and teaches us something worth knowing (Kawin 327). In this framework, the very qualities that may lead one to question Onibaba 's horror credentials- the heavy character work and quiet study of human nature- are what brings Onibaba to the ranks of high horror. Artistry …show more content…
While it could be argued that the characters in the film are entirely comfortable with their sexuality, I believe that what we see in the film could also be perceived as watching the creation of the slasher villain that one might see in "knife-and-sex" horror. Kawin describes horror as belonging to three potential subcategories, "monster…supernatural… [and] psychosis" (342). Through this identification of horror, Onibaba would fit into the knife-and-sex set of psychosis films as well as, potentially, the monster subgenre. Additionally, if ever there was an example of horror as Linda Williams ' "body genre", where emotion is directly related to observation of a, generally female, body Onibaba would be it (Hutchings 149). As we watch the Older Woman jealously observe sexual intercourse through the reeds, it calls to mind every teen slasher movie, with a monster’s POV shot (Redfern 1). To deny that is to let beautiful framing cloud the mind. The Older Woman, rebuffed in her efforts to achieve sexual pleasure from the only local man, then terrorizes the Younger Woman, a woman successful in engaging with a man sexually. The Older Woman also has an established history as a successful murderer and is empowered by a potentially demonic mask. This is clearly a slasher origin story. While Onibaba does diverge from the standard model with a female monster, it is in line with the model in that the threatening …show more content…
While Onibaba does not arise from this same cultural context, the characters themselves exist in a point in Japanese history where this definition is certainly apt. All three of the members of the cast murder strangers in order to stay alive during wartime, during which pacifism and agricultural labor would be fruitless, and would likely result in their untimely death. If an attempt was made to place Onibaba in a cultural context that would relate it to the rise of slashers in the United States, one could consider the damage to the Older Woman 's face as an expression of the effect of the atomic bomb on Japanese civilians- a reflection of a massively significant national moment (Balmain, 59). Onibaba is potentially a slasher in a bubble, an example of a type of convergent evolution in film where two different spheres of directing converged upon a similar brand of storytelling. The circumstances were different, but the result was notably
What is or is not horror is defined by the viewer, and with that perspective, it is within my role as the viewer to declare Onibaba, prestige art film, a horror film as well. In the Kawin reading, we are told that "bad horror" is a "spectacle", full of meaningless death and gore, with no investment required by the viewer, or greater message to provide (325). "Good horror" guides the viewer to psychological understanding of human nature and teaches us something worth knowing (Kawin 327). In this framework, the very qualities that may lead one to question Onibaba 's horror credentials- the heavy character work and quiet study of human nature- are what brings Onibaba to the ranks of high horror. Artistry …show more content…
While it could be argued that the characters in the film are entirely comfortable with their sexuality, I believe that what we see in the film could also be perceived as watching the creation of the slasher villain that one might see in "knife-and-sex" horror. Kawin describes horror as belonging to three potential subcategories, "monster…supernatural… [and] psychosis" (342). Through this identification of horror, Onibaba would fit into the knife-and-sex set of psychosis films as well as, potentially, the monster subgenre. Additionally, if ever there was an example of horror as Linda Williams ' "body genre", where emotion is directly related to observation of a, generally female, body Onibaba would be it (Hutchings 149). As we watch the Older Woman jealously observe sexual intercourse through the reeds, it calls to mind every teen slasher movie, with a monster’s POV shot (Redfern 1). To deny that is to let beautiful framing cloud the mind. The Older Woman, rebuffed in her efforts to achieve sexual pleasure from the only local man, then terrorizes the Younger Woman, a woman successful in engaging with a man sexually. The Older Woman also has an established history as a successful murderer and is empowered by a potentially demonic mask. This is clearly a slasher origin story. While Onibaba does diverge from the standard model with a female monster, it is in line with the model in that the threatening …show more content…
While Onibaba does not arise from this same cultural context, the characters themselves exist in a point in Japanese history where this definition is certainly apt. All three of the members of the cast murder strangers in order to stay alive during wartime, during which pacifism and agricultural labor would be fruitless, and would likely result in their untimely death. If an attempt was made to place Onibaba in a cultural context that would relate it to the rise of slashers in the United States, one could consider the damage to the Older Woman 's face as an expression of the effect of the atomic bomb on Japanese civilians- a reflection of a massively significant national moment (Balmain, 59). Onibaba is potentially a slasher in a bubble, an example of a type of convergent evolution in film where two different spheres of directing converged upon a similar brand of storytelling. The circumstances were different, but the result was notably