This passage mainly demonstrates the phenomenon that annihilation fantasy shifting from New York to Tokyo. In this reading response, I will discuss why the annihilation fantasy is so popular, and fictional apocalypses began to visit Japan frequently.
The destruction fantasy can fulfill people’s spiritual world. I entirely agree with the statement of Sontag in the passage. In summary, people usually fear two extremely opposite things: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. However, annihilation fantasy movies, as a common way of fantasy in people’s daily lives, distract people from the tedious life and attract them to think more about unknown events. Unlike horror movies, apocalypse fantasy always has a happy ending, so that audience can not feel so frightened.
The shifting of annihilation fantasy is mainly due to historical aspects. Historically, Japan has fallen victim to natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In this case, people are prone to connect natural disasters with Japan. This kind of idea will make them reimage Japan’s history. Furthermore, Tokyo is the most popular city in Japan, so reimaging the destruction of Tokyo may make the audience more fascinated
Zou Chunyu
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It appears that you are responding to Tsutsui’s piece instead. How do you define whether a disaster film has an ending that is ‘happy’? If you are quoting Sontag’s exact phrase, use quotation marks.