Patriarchy and The Horror of The Monstrous Feminine
Patriarchy and The Horror of The Monstrous Feminine
Patriarchy and The Horror of The Monstrous Feminine
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To cite this article: Valerie Wee (2011) Patriarchy and the Horror of the Monstrous Feminine,
Feminist Media Studies, 11:2, 151-165, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2010.521624
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PATRIARCHY AND THE HORROR OF THE
MONSTROUS FEMININE
Valerie Wee
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This paper compares the gender politics expressed in Ringu and The Ring, paying particular
attention to specific and noteworthy distinctions and crucial underlying cultural differences that
structure and shape the gender politics articulated in the two films. While highlighting the
divergences in the films’ narratives and examining how their depictions of female characters reveal
the fundamental historical, cultural, social and ideological forces that structure Eastern and
Western views of femininity, women, and their roles in society, this paper argues that although
both films reflect a misogynist patriarchal perspective in their depiction of evil, violent, destructive
females, it is the American remake that is ultimately more conservative and reactionary in
its simplistic alignment of women, the feminine and maternity with evil and monstrosity. In
comparison, the Japanese original offers a more ambiguous treatment of a key female character,
the mysterious and deadly Sadako, allowing her to emerge as a potential figure of resistance
against conservative patriarchy, an element that is distinctly absent in the American remake.
KEYWORDS gender; horror; The Ring; Ringu; Japanese horror films; American horror films
This paper offers a close reading of the Japanese horror film, Ringu (1998), and its American
adaptation, The Ring (2002), focusing on the specific treatments of gender and horror
represented in each text. By comparing the distinctly Japanese perspective expressed in
Ringu to its American counterpart, this paper highlights the key ways in which each film
reflects culturally unique constructions and indices of gender, particularly as they intersect
with notions of horror and the supernatural. The greater goal of this detailed comparison
lies in tracing the larger historical, cultural, social and ideological perspectives that have
shaped the gender-oriented views and perspectives expressed in these two films.
Adopting a comparative approach to Ringu and The Ring is both timely and important
considering the increasing number of Asian/Japanese horror films being remade by
Hollywood in the new millennium, a trend that began in the late 1990s. Following The
Ring’s box-office success, Hollywood adapted other Japanese horror films, including Ju-on
(2000), and Honogurai mizu no soko kara (2001). And just as Ju-On and Ringu generated
sequels, so have their American versions. Other Asian horror films also attracted Hollywood
attention. American adaptations of Hong Kong horror film Jian Gwai (2002) and Thai
horror film Shutter (2004) were released in 2008. This phenomenon offers a noteworthy
opportunity to engage in comparative examinations that could provide rich insights into
how differing cultural and ideological perspectives find expression in a range of narrative
and representational revisions undertaken during the remaking process. Thus, this paper is
part of the comparative work that is only recently emerging in the wake of the growing
number of Hollywood remakes of popular Japanese/Asian horror films.
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Ringu
Just as there is an archetype of woman as the object of man’s eternal love, so there must
be an archetype of her as the object of his eternal fear, representing, perhaps, the shadow
of his own evil actions. (Enchi Fumiko 1983, p. 57)
After her son, Yoichi, views the tape, she tries to uncover its origins in the hope of
saving them both. Reiko and her ex-husband, Ryuji, discover that the videotape is
linked to a young woman, Sadako, who was brutally murdered by her father.
Though Ringu revolves around Reiko’s quest to save herself and her son, it is Sadako,
the mysterious and malevolent female force, who pervades and dominates the narrative.
Reiko’s investigation reveals that Sadako is a teenage girl who apparently possessed
supernatural powers. After Sadako’s murder, she haunts a videotape and kills anyone who
watches it. As information about Sadako is gradually revealed, viewers unfamiliar with
Japanese culture are likely to view her as the personification of evil, a deadly, inexorable,
female force intent on haunting and destroying innocent individuals out of a desire for
revenge. However, a closer examination suggests that this may be too simplistic a view,
particularly when we place Sadako within the enduring Japanese tradition of the female
ghost story and read her against both a historical and contemporary context of Japanese
culture and literature that remain strongly influenced by Confucian thought.
Ringu’s visual references to traditional female ghost myths also revolve around
Sadako. In the cursed video, Shizuko, Sadako’s mother, is seen combing her hair in a mirror.
This scene recalls one in Tokaido Yotsuya kaidan, in which Oiwa, who has just been
poisoned by her husband, brushes her hair before a mirror only to have her hair fall out in
bloody clumps (Denis Meikle 2005, p. 114). In kabuki performances, Oiwa’s ghost has a
disfigured face, swollen eyes, and lank hanging hair. Sadako’s ghost, with her long, black,
damp hair obscuring a face that seems terrifyingly deformed, is strikingly similar. Ringu can
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thus be viewed as part of the continuing tradition of the female ghost story, a genre that
was strongly shaped by highly patriarchal Confucian beliefs.2
Confucian teachings stress idealized notions of order, and personal and social
responsibility. As Yoko Sugihara notes, “the Confucian ethical system emphasizes a
harmonious society in which a hierarchical structure is maintained . . . which assumes . . .
men’s dominance over women and children” (2002). According to Elizabeth Kanematsu,
“there were certain benefits for women under this system. In theory at least, the extreme
dependence of women upon their menfolk meant that the [men] had the obligation to
ensure [women’s] well-being and protection” (1993, p. 58; emphasis mine). Within this strict
hierarchy, “if a ruler, a subject, a father . . . do [sic] not fulfill their duties, they abuse their
titles . . . this is the beginning of the collapse of ritual/propriety . . . and is one of the causes
[of] social disorder and political chaos” (Yao Xinzhong 2000, p. 35). In situations when those
in positions of power fail to fulfill their responsibilities and duties, Confucians prescribe that
it is both acceptable and necessary for the oppressed to rise up against them, as only then
can order and balance be reestablished. This perspective is clearly dramatized in these
popular historical Japanese narratives of vengeful female ghosts.
In these classic Japanese ghost stories, Confucian ideals of organized, gendered
hierarchies are clearly maintained. Oiwa, Okiku, and the women in Kuroneko embrace their
subordinate and domestic positions in life. It is only after they have been betrayed
and murdered by men whose social and familial responsibility (according to Confucian
teaching) is to protect and guide them that they return as terrifying, destructive beings.
From a Confucian perspective, the horrific actions of these vengeful female ghosts are
condoned as acceptable responses against those in positions of authority who have failed
to act appropriately. Since hers is a vengeance that is provoked and legitimate, the
submissive female is empowered to act against the patriarchal male. In such a situation, the
women undergo a transformation from victim to villain/victimizer. Tim Screech (n.d.) has
noted that the Japanese term for “ghost,” “Obake,” is a noun derived from the verb bakeru,
meaning to transform, “to undergo change.” As Screech explains, “Japanese ghosts . . . are
essentially transformations. They are one sort of thing that mutates into another.” This
notion of mutation and transformation is an important element in the Japanese vengeful
female ghost story. In almost every instance, the mutation from benign, subservient female,
into something “else”/Other is motivated by a violent act of betrayal and murder.
Confucius’ endorsement of subordinates overthrowing irresponsible figures of authority
appears to further disempower women by implying that any quest for vengeance or
change is relegated to acts from beyond the grave. In these historical cultural narratives,
Japanese females are never inherently disruptive or dangerous in life.
Certainly, these centuries-old traditional ghost narratives cannot be simplistically
mapped onto the contemporary zeitgeist. Modern Japan has undergone significant social
and cultural changes, including in the area of gender politics. In contemporary Japan,
traditional, idealized gender roles and behaviors are increasingly undermined by the
PATRIARCHY AND THE HORROR OF THE MONSTROUS FEMININE 155
emergence of a new generation of women who seem reluctant to embrace, and in some
cases actively reject, the conventional role of the submissive female within a patriarchal
culture.3 Beginning in the 1970s, changes in the Japanese economy, the increasing
numbers of women entering the workforce, and the growing numbers of women delaying
or avoiding marriage, all indicate the extent to which Japanese women are increasingly
rejecting traditional roles, behaviors and identities (Setsu Shigematsu 2005).4 These
developments have provoked a growing masculine anxiety that is finding increased cultural
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obligation to ensure [women’s] well-being and protection” (Kanematsu 1993, p. 58), then
the press conference highlights the betrayal of these obligations. The male press corps
attack and ridicule Shizuko immediately after she has proven her psychic gift, and her
husband, Ikuma, fails or chooses not to protect or defend her. If we believe Shizuko’s
accusation, then it is Sadako who comes to her mother’s defense. If Sadako is responsible
for the reporter’s death, her actions are neither random nor unprovoked as there is at least
the suggestion that she was defending and protecting her mother, a perspective that might
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figure of the vengeful ghost. Most notably, Sadako, unlike her more traditional predecessors,
cannot be easily neutralized. Where Oiwa, Okiku and the vengeful spirits of Kuroneko were
either finally appeased or defeated, Sadako’s anger endures and escapes containment.
bias. As noted earlier, Shizuko, Sadako’s mother, essentially conforms to the idealized
notion of the submissive and docile musume. Her brief appearances onscreen reflect a
traditional Japanese woman. Shizuko does not respond when taunted by the press.
Furthermore, she uses her psychic abilities to predict a natural disaster in an attempt to save
lives. Interestingly, however, the film undermines this portrayal of Shizuko as musume when
Ryuji tells Reiko that perhaps Sadako’s father “wasn’t human.” This one comment raises the
implication that Shizuko may be complicit in challenging and subverting the rights of the
father, and by extension the entire patriarchal system, by conceiving a child with a sea
demon. Although none of this is explored or confirmed in the film, the information
comes by way of inference based on an old man’s memories of Sadako and Shizuko, the
suggestion that Shizuko would flout the accepted patriarchal and familial structures in such
a manner, coupled with the idea that Shizuko brought forth a “monster” like Sadako, clearly
aligns both women with terrifying acts of deviance, and associates them with a destructive
supernatural power. This narrative maneuver further hints at the heightened masculine
anxieties structuring the film’s narrative.
It might be tempting to view Reiko, the film’s heroine, as a sign of the film’s attempt
to break with patriarchal tradition and redeem the modern Japanese female. Significantly,
the novel on which Ringu is based features a male protagonist, Kazuyuki Asakawa. In
Nakata’s film, Kazuyuki has been transformed into Reiko Asakawa, a divorced single mother.
Reiko, the film’s heroine, initially comes across as Shizuko’s opposite. Reiko is a modern,
independent Japanese woman; she has a job (as a journalist) and is divorced. These two
qualities distinguish Reiko from the traditionally idealized, domestic, Japanese woman and
align her with the “problematic” new generation of Japanese women whose rejection of
traditional, patriarchal ideals is responsible for provoking contemporary Japanese
masculine anxieties. As the film’s main protagonist, Reiko has the opportunity to “redeem”
the modern woman by defeating Sadako, yet this fails to materialize. Instead, the film’s
narrative trajectory ultimately undermines and disempowers Reiko, while reinstating
masculine authority. Though Reiko’s investigation is largely motivated by her quest to save
her son, she is not particularly effective. Reiko’s plan to appease Sadako’s destructive spirit
by recovering her body and burying it with the properly administered rituals is pointless
and ineffectual, and her attempts to neutralize Sadako’s evil powers fail. Reiko finally
escapes death purely by chance and the timely intervention of patriarchal male figures.
Significantly, it is Ryuji, Reiko’s ex-husband, who inadvertently takes on Reiko’s curse and
dies in her place.8
As Ringu’s narrative plays out, the film’s conservative political inclinations become
evident. It is the men, figures of patriarchal authority, who emerge as defenders and
protectors in Ringu, thus redeeming the Japanese patriarchal system undermined by
Sadako’s father, Ikuma. It is Ryuji who returns from the dead with a message to help Reiko
understand how their son can be saved. The representation of Ryuji, the innocent
male victim who returns to the living, not for revenge but to protect and save his son,
158 VALERIE WEE
is a noteworthy contrast to the vengeful female ghost. Male ghosts, or yurei, also appear
in Japanese folk tales. In these stories, they are typically warriors killed in battle and are
characterized as sad and melancholic due to their premature deaths. Unlike their female
counterparts, Japanese male ghosts are seldom motivated by revenge (Screech n.d.). Thus,
where Sadako conforms to the trope of the Japanese female ghost, Ryuji follows in the
tradition of male yurei.
Ringu’s conservative perspective is not limited to Ryuji’s commitment to his
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patriarchal responsibilities. At the end of the film, Reiko is seen appealing to her own
father to save her son’s life by taking over Yoichi’s curse and dying in his place.9 The film,
therefore, continues to privilege men and fathers as the principal figures of action. It would
appear that while Ringu begins by dramatizing the chaos and destruction that ensues when
one father fails to protect his wife and murders his daughter, it ends by reinstating a
measure of order and a return to the status quo with its depiction of two other fathers who
accept their socially-determined roles and duties. Ringu ends with a world that is still
dependent upon the patriarchal fathers to “save” the woman and child.10
Thus, Ringu seems to suggest that fathers must pay for the mistake of other fathers.
The only female figure that attempts to throw off the bonds of socially approved female
behavior is marked as a deviant monstrosity who is subsequently murdered by her father.
It is only in death that she can wreak her revenge with impunity.
The Ring
Gore Verbinski’s Hollywood remake, The Ring, retains the core narrative of the original
Japanese film. Rachel, a reporter, investigates the existence of a mysterious, deadly
videotape. After Rachel and her son, Aiden, both watch the video, she asks Aiden’s father,
Noah, to help her uncover the video’s origins. They discover the videotape’s link to a young
girl, Samara, who was killed and thrown down a well. The videotape is Samara’s revenge for
her untimely death. While retaining these narrative similarities, a series of changes reveal
distinct differences in the Western/American philosophical and cultural systems that offer a
different, if ultimately still patriarchally-inflected perspective on gender politics. Where the
original Japanese version explores contemporary male anxieties while acknowledging
traditional gender ideologies via references to classic Japanese ghost narratives, Verbinski’s
The Ring expresses rather different patriarchal fears about women and the feminine. The
American remake codes the female as a malign force that is closely associated with the
unnatural, the mysterious and the irrational, while equating the male with the benign,
the rational and the logical.
patriarchal ideals and feminist views are still regularly and overtly criticized and even
rejected, the American debate on gender politics has largely been driven “underground” by
the shift towards political correctness and the apparent attainment of greater gender
equality. As such, a psychoanalytic approach may offer useful tools with which to mine and
explore the repressed gender troubles and horrors that persist beneath the surface of
gender equality and political correctness and that continue to “erupt” in contemporary
cultural artifacts. Where a popular and enduring convention in Japanese culture portrays
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submissive women who become monstrous after men betray them, Western culture has a
long tradition of aligning femininity/the female with motherhood, monstrosity and/or
death. In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva (1982) argues that horror is linked directly with the
feminine and motherhood itself. Grendel’s mother in Beowulf, Snow White’s evil step
mother, and Mother Bates in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960) are just some of the familiar
Western/American cultural representations of monstrous female (m)Others and/or dead (or
dying) women who appear in Western culture. This tradition of conjoining monstrosity,
death, motherhood and the feminine endures in The Ring, where the three primary female
characters, Anna, Samara, and Rachel, are aligned with supernatural forces that are clearly
marked as evil, terrifying and closely associated with maternal failures and death.
Anna Morgan, whom we see only in flashbacks and unexplained supernatural
“visions,” is a woman whose desire for motherhood ends disastrously. Unable to conceive,
Anna and her husband, Richard, adopt a young girl, Samara. After bringing the child home,
Anna begins to accuse Samara of invading her thoughts, giving her visions and destroying
her sanity. Finally succumbing to her daughter’s evil powers, Anna wraps a black garbage
bag around her adopted daughter’s head and throws her down an abandoned well.
This murder is distinctly different from the incident in Ringu, where Sadako is murdered by
her father. There are several interesting implications behind this narrative revision. Where
Ringu uses the events culminating in Sadako’s murder to explore the consequences
when patriarchal males betray their prescribed social responsibilities and duties, The Ring
constructs both Anna and Samara as irrational, unnatural and destructive (female) forces.
The depictions of Anna and Samara disturbingly blur the line between victim and
tormentor. Though Anna is a victim of Samara’s unnatural (supernatural?) visions, she is also
Samara’s tormentor, banishing and imprisoning the child in the stable before murdering
her. Similarly, though Samara terrorizes Anna with visions and madness, she is also Anna’s
victim. Clearly, both females commit incomprehensibly destructive and terrible acts. In
contrast, Richard, Anna’s husband, is the male trapped between two terrifying females.
Seemingly well intentioned in his attempts to help his wife and adopted daughter, Richard
sends Anna and Samara to a psychiatric facility. Though greatly affected by the events that
destroy his family, Richard Morgan seems inexplicably “immune” to Samara’s powers: he
does not appear to suffer from visions, nor does he initially succumb to insanity. Although
bitter, angry and both guilt- and grief-stricken when Rachel and Noah track him down,
Richard is the family’s sole living survivor, as Anna, the direct victim of evil, and Samara, the
source of evil itself, are both dead.11
Samara is the female child who possesses decidedly unnatural and destructive
abilities in both life and death. The Ring depicts Samara as simply and unambiguously the
embodiment of destructive, supernatural evil. Unlike Sadako, who is a mysterious cipher
while alive, and whose guilt is at least ambiguous and possibly mitigated by her attempt to
protect and defend her mother, Samara’s evil tendencies are explicit from the start. Her
mere presence initiates a wave of destruction. After Samara arrives at the family farm,
160 VALERIE WEE
the horses go mad and need to be put down, and Anna’s mental well-being deteriorates,
culminating in Samara’s murder and Anna’s subsequent suicide. In a psychiatric session,
Samara’s guilt is confirmed when she acknowledges her supernatural power and takes
responsibility for Anna’s visions. When Anna kills Samara, the event is portrayed as the act
of an insane woman. The ambiguity, and the critique of gender and power relations that
lead to Sadako’s death in the original film, are thus significantly missing in the remake.
Despite being a young girl, Samara conforms to a misogynist representation of
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femininity aligned with the supernatural, the mysterious and the irrational. She is another
instance of Creed’s “monstrous feminine” (1993) that threatens the order and safety
established by patriarchal law. Richard, her adoptive father, fails to restrain or neutralize her
power. While Samara lived with the Morgans, Richard’s solution to Anna’s complaints about
Samara is to exile and isolate the child in a barn, a decision that fails to protect Anna and
merely further provokes Samara’s anger. Richard also tries sending Samara to a psychiatric
hospital, a patriarchal institution founded on reason, logic and science.
The alignment of reason, logic and science with the male is common practice in
Western patriarchal cultures. Britta Schinzel traces how notions of gender were redefined in
the wake of Western developments in modern science and technology:
The male was equipped with the capability of rationality and logic while in contrast
woman received a new female nature in which emotional and moral values dominated . . .
In the words of the founders of the Royal Society: “The rational mind is male.” (cited in
John Lewis 2005).
The Ring overtly and actively equates the female with irrationality, insanity and evil, pitting
her against the male who is aligned with logic and reason. In The Ring, these patriarchal
values of reason, logic and scientific explanations are advocated, even as they are ultimately
undermined.12 The male characters in the film are marked as rational individuals who place
their faith in science. Richard sends Samara to a psychiatric facility and trusts in their ability
to cure her. Noah, Aiden’s father, also examines and relies on the psychiatric records to
explain Samara’s abilities. Significantly, Samara’s unnatural powers cannot be contained,
neutralized, or even adequately understood by rational, scientific approaches.
Despite this apparent acknowledgement that logic, reason and science have their
limitations in the face of the supernatural, the film’s narrative itself privileges an internally
“rational,” at times scientifically linked, perspective to explain various plot points. The Ring’s
commitment to unity and clarity is expressed in its tendency to explain a range of narrative
issues left ambiguous and mysterious in the original Japanese version.13 The seven-day
lapse between watching the video and dying is clarified when Noah wonders how long
Samara could have survived in the well. Rachel declares: “Seven days, you can survive for
seven days.” Samara’s use of the television and videotape as a conduit for her vengeance is
explained when Noah and Rachel discover that Samara had a television set that served as
her access to the outside world after she was imprisoned in the barn by her fearful adopted
parents. When they investigate Samara’s stay at a psychiatric facility, they uncover medical
records that show that Samara has the ability to transfer her thoughts and visions onto
film/videotape, thus explaining the odd images available on the cursed video. These
concerted efforts to explain the narrative mysteries highlight the narrative’s adoption of,
and adherence to, the rational, patriarchal mind.
Interestingly, this privileging of reason, logic and science reinforces and intensifies
the horror of Samara’s Otherness, particularly after her death. Samara’s evil spirit exists in
PATRIARCHY AND THE HORROR OF THE MONSTROUS FEMININE 161
opposition to patriarchy and the values and qualities it endorses. She is the embodiment of
a threatening, disruptive power that, if left to endure, leads to chaos and devastation.
Samara thus represents an evil that challenges the stability and order established by the
patriarchal system. In The Ring, all that is evil, perverse and destructive is externalized and
projected onto the female. Yet despite giving these negative qualities a tangible female
body, that body cannot be hunted down, punished or destroyed, since she endures beyond
death itself. Elisabeth Bronfen notes that death is the conventional means used to subdue
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the monstrous feminine that threatens or undermines (patriarchal) order: “[It is] over her
dead body [that] cultural norms are reconfirmed or secured . . . because a sacrifice of the
dangerous woman re-establishes an order that was momentarily suspended due to her
presence” (1992, p. 181). However, The Ring’s central horror revolves around the realization
that this evil female force cannot be neutralized or contained even “over her dead body,”
for Samara’s ghost returns and defies all attempts to defeat her. Samara’s horror is founded
on her abjection, which she displays in life, and then is confirmed in death.
Julia Kristeva defines the abject as that which does not “respect borders, positions,
rules”; it “disturbs identity, system, order,” and threatens life (1982, p. 4). Kristeva’s notion of
the abject recalls Mary Douglas’ work (1969); in particular, Douglas’ interpretation of “The
Abominations of Leviticus” which prohibits Man (sic) from consuming various categories of
food deemed impure. As Douglas notes, impurity, in these instances, is identified with that
which violates culturally established categorical schemas, schemas defined by “borders,
positions, rules.” Samara’s abjection is first hinted at in the video, which features numerous
images of worms, maggots and millipedes, images that are inherently repellant and
disgusting. Alongside these creatures’ impurity, these images evoke a familiar response to
the abject in the viewer, the need to repudiate, to turn from, and relegate to
the space where I am not. [For t]he abject threatens life, it must be radically excluded from
the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other
side of an imaginary border which separates the self from that which threatens the self.
(Creed 1993, p. 65)
As long as Samara can be confined to the other side of the television screen, her victims
remain alive. But the problem with Samara’s abjection is that she cannot be “excluded,” she
ignores the “borders, positions, rules” that “[separate] the self from that which threatens the
self”: while alive, her ability to trespass on her mother’s mind and “share” her sight/visions
with her mother is one indication of her refusal to respect borders and rules. In doing so,
Samara effectively shatters Anna’s mind and dismantles Anna’s maternal identity. Even
death cannot contain Samara’s abjection. The fact that the dead Samara appears as a
television image that can leave its technological confines, “enter” the “real” world and kill, is
yet another indication of her transgressive abjection.14 In Samara, The Ring depicts a female
who is not and cannot be controlled, even in death. Instead, death accords her even greater
destructive powers. The film, thus, offers a familiar depiction of a female who is overtly
linked to the “inexpressible, inscrutable, unmanageable, horrible” (Bronfen 1992, p. 255).
Unlike Anna Morgan, who kills her child, Rachel is the protective mother who strives to save
her child. However, the film does not confine itself to this depiction.
As the film progresses, Rachel emerges as yet another ambiguous and potentially
dangerous female figure. Far from being benign, Rachel is quickly aligned with Otherness
when she sets out to investigate the unnatural events linked to the videotape. Not only
does Rachel acquire the videotape, she introduces its evil into her home, exposing Aiden
and Noah to Samara’s malign powers (Lewis 2005). Finally, even though Rachel, unlike
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Anna, is dedicated to protecting her child, she acquires monstrous connotations at the
end of the film when she is seen making a copy of the video tape, apparently having
decided to save her son by passing Samara’s deadly curse to someone else. Unlike the
Japanese original, in which Reiko acknowledges and reinstates the power of the patriarch
by approaching her father to help her save her son’s life, the American remake ends
ambiguously—we never discover what Rachel does with the tape, and thus we have no
idea who is to be sacrificed in Aiden’s place. The horrific implications of this ending
are distinct from the seemingly more uplifting conclusion of the Japanese original, in
which children’s voices are heard chanting the “solution” to surviving Sadako’s curse:
passing it on.15 The American remake ultimately implies that motherhood, whether in
destroying or protecting a child, can be potentially amoral, destructive, and deadly. The
Ring is thus predicated on the Western tendency to align femininity and the female with
evil and represent them as active threats to patriarchal order, stability, morality and
reason.
Conclusion
Both Ringu and The Ring reflect a patriarchal perspective in their depictions of evil,
violent, destructive females whose existence transgress natural and social laws and
boundaries. This basic narrative similarity suggests that both films are the products of
essentially patriarchal cultures, a point that is not particularly revealing in itself. If we look
beyond these similarities, however, we discern a range of noteworthy distinctions in the
patriarchal attitudes expressed in the two films. The divergences in the films’ narratives
and their depictions of these female characters reveal the fundamental cultural and
philosophical differences that structure Japanese/Eastern and Hollywood/Western views of
femininity, women, and their roles in society.
As shown above, Japanese culture is greatly influenced by Confucian values that
advocate a highly hierarchical and rigid patriarchal system founded on clearly defined
gender roles and behaviors. That these values have been increasingly undermined in
Modern Japan underpins many of the anxieties and ambivalences expressed in Ringu. The
film explores the consequences of ignoring or betraying the traditional gender system and
its attendant responsibilities and values. In Ringu, villainy is not equated with a specific
gender. Instead, the villains are those who neglect or reject their socially prescribed gender
roles. Consequently, the male reporters and Ikuma are monstrous in their betrayal of
patriarchal responsibilities when they destroy where they should protect, while Sadako is
monstrous because she reacts and kills when, as a female, she should accept and submit.
Ringu thus borrows from the traditional ghost narrative, while revising it to reflect
contemporary concerns. Sadako represents the uncontrollable, defiant, “modern” woman
who refuses to submit to the idealized notions of femininity. Reiko, though lacking
the monstrous connotations associated with Sadako, serves as the modern woman who is
PATRIARCHY AND THE HORROR OF THE MONSTROUS FEMININE 163
“put in her place” by a narrative that continues to envision heroes and saviors in entirely
male/patriarchal terms.
In contrast, the American version unambiguously associates femininity with evil.
Unlike Sadako, Samara is an unequivocally monstrous, mysterious, undefeatable, malign
force linked to insanity and destruction. The film’s other female characters are also
portrayed as threats to patriarchy, and to the patriarchally-aligned values of order and
reason: Anna is the insane mother who murders her adopted daughter, while Rachel is the
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protective mother who is willing to sacrifice other innocent lives to save her son. In The
Ring, the only destructive, diabolical and terrifying forces are female, while the male figures,
Aiden, Noah and Richard Morgan, are innocent individuals haunted and/or killed by a
malevolent female force. The film thus represents a reality in which evil exists and takes a
female form that must be feared and repudiated.
Ringu and The Ring are both products of patriarchal societies and cultures. However,
as I have shown, there are noteworthy distinctions that characterize each culture’s
patriarchal perspective, as well as the ways in which these patriarchal beliefs are indexed,
endorsed and practiced. Despite the surface similarities that exist between the two texts,
revisions were made, some of which subtly reflected culturally distinct and diverse views of
gender and horror. Certainly, the cultural distinctions extend beyond these considerations,
pointing to the need for more comparative studies that would further illuminate the
phenomenon. The surge in Hollywood remakes of Japanese/Asian horror films since the
late 1990s offers an opportunity to compare the original Asian films and their Hollywood
remakes. Such an approach would provide significant insight into both the similarities and
differences that characterize each culture’s contemporary values, beliefs and ideologies.
NOTES
1. According to Peter Tombs (2000), there are over twenty-five film versions of Tokaido
Yotsuya kaidan.
2. While Confucianism originated in China, there is ample evidence of its spread to Japan. See
Yao Xinzhong (2000).
3. I thank my first reviewer for highlighting the link between Ringu’s negative depiction of
Sadako and the deepening (masculine) anxieties in Japanese society motivated by the
emergence of a new generation of women who reject traditional constructions of
femininity.
4. These developments notwithstanding, traditional patriarchal structures and values remain
strongly entrenched in contemporary Japan and ongoing gender inequalities in Japan
persist. See Martin Fackler (2007).
5. This narrative element is yet another link/reference to Bancho Sarayashiki.
6. I thank my first reviewer for bringing this to my attention.
7. Shizuko’s name is significant: “Shizu” can translate as “silent,” “calm,” “inactive” or “be
suppressed,” while “ko” means “child.” The name acknowledges Japanese patriarchy’s
preferred view of women as passive, quiet and child-like.
8. Reiko’s curse is passed on to Ryuji when the latter makes and watches a copy of the
original videotape.
9. In Ringu 2 (Hideo Nakata, 1999), we discover that Reiko’s father sacrificed himself for
Yoichi. Interestingly, he failed to save himself by passing the curse on to another person.
164 VALERIE WEE
Though the reasons and events leading to this oversight are unclear, the sequel hints at
the potential difficulties of eluding and neutralizing Sadako’s vengeance.
10. In Ringu 2, Reiko again fails to save Yoichi when he begins to develop powers similar to
Sadako’s. Furthermore, her untimely death in a traffic accident leaves her son alone and
unprotected.
11. Richard finally commits suicide, but this occurs long after Anna and Samara’s deaths, after
Rachel approaches Richard during her investigation. It is thus possible to assume that it is
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Rachel’s investigation, and Richard’s sense of guilt at failing his wife, that prompts Richard
to end his life.
12. Koji Suzuki’s novel, from which Ringu is adapted, offers a “scientific” explanation for
Sadako’s curse, aligning it to a smallpox-like virus that is passed on from “infected” person
to person. Interestingly, Hideo Nakata, Ringu’s director, removed this explanation,
preferring to foreground the supernatural elements instead. I thank my second reviewer
for pointing this out.
13. This not to suggest that Japanese culture is therefore less patriarchal in its acceptance of
the unknown and ambiguous. Rather, Japanese culture simply does not embrace the
Western tradition that privileges reason and human consciousness in the way that Western
culture does.
14. Kristeva’s (1982) notion of the abject is certainly relevant to Sadako as well. Like Samara,
Sadako is abject in her refusal to respect borders. Sadako’s emergence out of the television
set is terrifying because she cannot be contained by the boundaries of the screen. This
disruptive sequence is particularly disturbing in its self-reflexivity, since we, the viewers,
are also only separated from Sadako by a television (or movie) screen.
15. I thank my second reviewer for highlighting the “contrasting tones” of the two films’
endings. It is worth noting, however, that Ringu’s “optimistic” conclusion is undermined in
Ringu 2. After Reiko’s father saves Yoichi by watching the videotape, he fails to pass on the
curse and is killed by Sadako.
REFERENCES
AOYAMA, TOMOKO (2005) ‘Transgendering shõjo shõsetsu’, in Gender, Transgenders and Sexualities
in Japan, eds Mark McLelland & Romit Dasgupta, Routledge, London, pp. 49– 64.
BRONFEN, ELISABETH (1992) Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic, Manchester
University Press, Manchester.
CLOVER, CAROL (1992) Men, Women and ChainSaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ.
CREED, BARBARA (1993) The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Routledge,
New York.
DOUGLAS, MARY (1969) Purity and Danger, Routledge, New York.
FACKLER, MARTIN (2007) ‘Career women in Japan find a blocked path’, The New York Times, 6 Aug.,
[Online] Available at: http://www/nytimes.com/2007/08/06/world/asia/06equal.html
(8 July 2007).
FUMIKO, ENCHI (1983) Masks, trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter, Random House, New York.
HONOGURAI MIZU NO SOKO KARA (film) (2001) Hideo Nakata (dir.), Toho Company Limited, Japan.
JIAN GWAI (film) (2002) Oxide and Danny Pang (dirs), Panorama Entertainment, Hong Kong.
JU-ON (film) (2000) Takashi Shimizu (dir.), Toei, Japan.
KANEMATSU, ELIZABETH (1993) Women in Society: Japan, Times Books International, Singapore.
PATRIARCHY AND THE HORROR OF THE MONSTROUS FEMININE 165
KELLNER, DOUGLAS (1995) Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and the Politics Between the
Modern and the Postmodern, Routledge, London.
KRISTEVA, JULIA (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Columbia University Press,
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LEWIS, JOHN (2005) ‘“Mother oh god mother . . . ”: Analyzing the “horror” of single mothers in
contemporary Hollywood horror’, Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies, no. 2, [Online]
Available at: http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/issue.php?issue¼2 (13 June 2007).
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Valerie Wee lectures on film and media studies in the Department of English Language and
Literature at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. In addition to her work
on American and Asian horror films, her research interests include teen culture and
the American culture industries, science fiction films, and issues of gender and
representation in the media. E-mail: [email protected]