Week Four - Weird Stories

             The "Weird" stories always attract people, and I think it is because the mood from those stories linger on people's minds.

             I read The Snow Child and this story can tell what's the mood of weird stories. The Count in the story just said he wished he had a girl as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the bird's feathers. However, the girl who the Count exactly wanted just showed up and stood on the road. The story doesn't tell why she is there and how she was created. In my opinion, this mood makes people curious and it could be why people are attracted in the weird stories. In the end of The Snow Child, the girl picked a rose because the Countess wanted to get rid of her. She pricked her finger on the rose's thorn and she was just gone. Literally, she went nothing; There was nothing left of her but a feather was dropped. I think this sentence could make readers think about who is the girl.

             Also, I read The Werewolf and this story was really interesting to me. I thought about Red Riding Hood which is a fairy tale and I guessed The Werewolf is based on that tale but this story is really weird and horrible version. I was so shocked when the child cut the wolf's fore-paw off, and shocked more when the fore-paw was no longer a wolf's paw. If people don't know about this story and read at the beginning, they would thought about Red Riding Hood like me, but at the end they would be shocked. I think this could be one of attractions of "weird" stories.

             This movie is not on the required movies list on course website, but I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button because I thought it could be very weird movie. The story of this movie is very fresh and shocking. In the beginning, a baby who looks like an old man was born and he grew up but not like normal people. The more time went by, the more he became younger. The picture on above is Benjamin Button was young. I thought that people couldn't really imagine this weird situation and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button made it happen. 

Week Three - J-Horror : Asian Supernatural Narratives

    I think "horror" is one of genre that shows clear differences between eastern and western style. People must feel fears of different things and have different thoughts about horror. I felt what's the feature of eastern horror when I read Kwaidan for sure, because I'm a Korean and I think Asian horror things all have this feature.
    Kwaidan is about Japanese strange story. I think variety of eastern horrors are not much as those of western horror, and almost movies and books are about spiritual beings. Like Mujina in this book, spiritual being who doesn't have its eyes, nose and mouth can be a theme of oriental horror story.
    One of the episodes in Kwaidan, Diplomacy was about people's psychological fear of ghosts who have vengeance. As a result of this story, nothing at all happened and dead man couldn't do anything but people were seized with panic and fear. This shows that what's the feature of eastern horror very well because almost of eastern horror story arouse fear using spiritual beings or bizarre situations psychologically. On the other way, I think western horror is almost about mysterious beings or monsters like Frankenstein, zombies, or murderer. For example, there are a lot of animations that show this feature; Paranoman, Corpse Bride, or Casper. Those are all about mysterious beings that arouse our curiosity.
    I think Of a Mirror and a Bell was also similar case. In the story the author already said "You must know that the last wish or promise of anybody who dies in anger, or performs suicide in anger, is generally supposed to possess a supernatural force". I think the author emphasized the feature of eastern horror very well. Like those stories, there are many movies or books about advanced horror stories that was passed down orally and personal spiritual experience. They also usually use everyday objects like bell and mirror in this story. In my opinion those stories are really good examples for Asian horror- but I'm not sure other people can understand it because there was some superstition like "a mirror is the Soul of a Woman".
    Actually I felt interested in fact that people from all over the world must feel about "horror" in different way. For me, I'm not really scared of ghosts or spiritual things; I'm scared of disturbing and brutal horror stories like one of western horror styles. Kwaidan was quite simple and ordinary for me.