This week’s reading: “Oh No, there goes Tokyo” is a fascinating take on apocalypse and its place in pop culture. In this short extract, Tsutsui unravels the intrigue that apocalypses and Armageddons can have on people; he deciphers why and how these interests come to be, using Japan as a historical case study as the basis for his argument. Tsutsui explains this cultural phenomenon by observing the political, economic and social trends of Japan in different moments in history and elaborate on how all of these contribute to create a pseudonostalgic yearning for an apocalypse to bring society back to another time. A more primitive time where there was greater social cohesion and life was, albeit harsher, simpler. Personally, this reading was eye opening as I have seldom been exposed to this cultural trend. I now understand how this, and likely other societal tendencies are rooted in a very tangible reality made of economics and politics, rather than being solely the fruit of one’s imagination.
Lorenzo Pacchiarotti
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It is awesome that you have got a deeper understanding of disaster-genre film through the lenses of society, culture, and economy. The last sentence “Oh no, there goes Tokyo…but it will be back, and it may even be better than before” might open an alternative perspective of viewing the “aesthetics of destruction.” Regarding the destruction and reconstruction of Japan (especially, Tokoy), I would suggest framing your analysis based on the sentence that “Tokyo or Hong Kong—tend to be a mixture of all three kinds outlined in Isozaki and Asadas typology: they are real, surreal, and hyperreal all (P.77).” Hong Kong and Japan were facing “disappearance” even though they are under the distinguishable circumstance. So, how did films present these two sorts of “disappearances” differently and similarly (like the ghost film in Hong Kong Vs. the monster film in Japan)?