Japanese Horror Film: Interrogating and Reconceptualising Dominant Modes of Thought through Deleuze and Phenomenology:

Speaker: Rachel Barraclough

This seminar details research that sets out to reinvigorate scholarship on Japanese horror cinema which, currently analysed under hegemonic concepts of national and transnational cinema and psychoanalysis, has become stagnant and trapped within a cycle of perpetuating the same, repetitive ideologies about often radically different films.

The paper given demonstrates, through a case study of the Japanese film Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), that adopting and developing the ideas and methodologies of Deleuzian and phenomenological schools of thought is the most promising avenue for challenging hermeneutic scholarship and for the development of new, radical perspectives. Unlike hermeneutic bodies of work, Deleuzian and phenomenological scholarship on cinema addresses embodied, affective resonances that films produce with audiences when they are in “assemblage” or inter-connection with one another. As will be discussed within this seminar, such methodologies facilitate a de-linearization of our perspectives on film, allowing an exploration of different “lines of flight” from those traditionally prescribed.

Rachel Barraclough is a PhD student in the School of Film & Media at The University of Lincoln and formally an Undergraduate and MA student of the Media School in The University of Bradford.

The seminar takes place in MC0024. Doors open at 4pm with tea/coffee and cakes. Presentation starts at 4.30pm [between 40-60 minutes] with Q & A. Wine and nibbles afterwards – concluding around 6.30pm.  All welcome.