Globalizing ‘a rage that never dies’ (but can’t stay the same): shifting dynamics of identification in the transnational remaking of Ju-On into The Grudge

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Grudge was unique among transnational Japanese horror remakes due to several factors: Ju-On’s director Shimizu Takashi was retained for the Hollywood-financed version, as was its Japanese setting, even as the narrative’s protagonists were replaced with an American cast and the film’s plotlines restructured to accommodate this change. Using Iwabuchi Koichi’s notion of ‘cultural odor’ as a theoretical framework, and informed by scholarship on other J-Horror films and their transnational remakes, the explicit intentions of Ju-On/The Grudge’s producers and creators are contrasted with evidence from the texts themselves, and contextualized through an examination of critical and popular reception of the films as cross-cultural products. This investigation reveals fundamental shifts in dynamics of identification: In Ju-On the horror threat resonates with culturally proximate concerns, and the climactic sequence functions to create a circle of identification between the monster, the protagonist, and the viewer. Conversely, in The Grudge, the monster’s nature as culturally abject in relation to the central protagonist forecloses the potential for such identification, and foreignness itself becomes central to the horror affect.