A proposal about my PHD applying

Proposal  Form


Name: Hairan Liu


Over the past two decades, Japanese horror film-making has gained a lot of popularity, more and more audience from all over the world start to pay attention and enjoy it. It`s easy to find out how this becomes possible because Japanese horror is a distinctly different style which comparing with Hollywood and other Western countries. Frequently, it has been said that Western traditions stress ‘visual horror’ that often uses ‘special effects to create kinds of bloody violence’, horror from the East is distinguished by its use of ‘horror atmosphere and lets audiences frighten themselves.’ (Dongchen Er, 2004)

But this opposition is not only tends to reproduce a directly distinction, but also shows some common opposition within Western horror filmmaking. For example, many reviewers such as Tudor, Prawer and Waller have discussed a supposedly ‘restrained’ tradition of horror, that is often exemplified by figures such as Val Lewton, and is supposed to precisely emphasize suggestion over visualization. Wheatley also discusses a similar opposition in debates over Gothic television.

Basically the research will examine these key differences between Eastern and Western horror and find out whether it is effective to understand the relationships between them. Further it will explore how they both interact with each other and what they can learn from each other in the future. For more details, it will focus on the aesthetics of revealing and concealing within horror, and explore whether horror actually depends on both strategies (as Stephen King has claimed) and that it not that an opposition exists between them but a dialectic.

In the end, the research will firstly do numbers of close analysis from some key examples between Eastern (Suggestive) and Western (Visual) traditions of horror. and then to explore some article works about this opposition. Further there will be a form of practice done which relate to the research such as some short films which focus on these aesthetics and particularly how they related to the used of lighting in horror films: darkness is often used to conceal and light to reveal, and the play between the two is often explicitly used to create a sense of atmosphere, suspense and dread.

In the progress, I  want to get past these differences between Eastern and Western horror and talk about both styles together in the future.




Reference:

Dongchen Er, Distinction between terror movies from the East and the West. Published by China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House, 1994-2012, (Accessed 25 June 2013)