The city in Sci-fi movies is somewhat an imagination of future city infrastructure, and it interacts with issues about ecology, economy and politic. Different city structures are meant to deal with various issues to raise humans’ life quality. Flying New York is to fight against rising sea level, Very Large Structure settling different functions at different levels is to host a large population, and the Distributed city is built with anticipation of the long-term climate change. Sometimes, the city structure is telling things about social management and conflicts underground. It can be seen in “Earth” indicated by Abbott(2016) in his

Continue reading[Reading Response: Carl Abbot]

Monsters are very popular in Japanese film culture, in which the first Gojira (Godzilla) film was released in1954, during the postwar period. The monsters in different films are often as destructive as natural disasters: they are as gigantic as skyscrapers, some can breathe fire, some have enormous strength, they could easily destroy the cities they walk through, creating chaos, the monsters themselves are the catastrophe. In reality, Japan is one of the countries who suffer from earthquakes the most, which the monsters could be resembling of; however, there is one more thing that acts the same, which is war, more

Continue reading[Reading Response: William Tsuitsui]

Monsters, catastrophe, and destruction of cities are often seen in Japanese films especially during the post-war period after the 1940s. It seems that there is an aesthetic of destruction in Japanese popular culture. This makes us wonder why the Japanese are reimaging the horror scene of atomic bombs and radiation as a way to address the deep-seated anxieties and unsettle legacies after they have gone through so many natural and man-made disasters. According to the author of the reading, the darkness shown in Japanese film is able to distract the audience from the horror they’ve gone through. What’s more, the

Continue readingReading Response: William Tsuitsui