[Reading Response 2] Katarzyna Ancuta’s Communal After-Living: Asian Ghosts and the City

Ancuta presents in the passage the idea that ghosts in media are portrayed differently depending on the architectural backdrop. I am intrigued by this idea since it shows how different forms of housing setting can not only affect our daily lives, but more importantly, influence how we process the supernatural and extreme emotions like terror. I find it interesting that by altering the setting, the agency and motives of ghosts seemingly transform, the focus at times shifts to the architecture, its layout and features, rather than the story of the ghost itself. By analysing ghost movies that are set in

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Reading Response: Katarzyna Ancuta

Films serve as an effective and compelling medium to reflect the underlying contemporary societal issues and ghost-themed movies are no exception to this. In light of the introduction of neoliberal urbanism happening in Japan and South Korea, traditional communities are dissolving and fading. The portrayal of ghosts in movies in such cities are used to depict the ongoing migration from rural to urban areas which also evokes the theme of loneliness and social isolation. The deteriorated high-rise apartments shown in ghost-themed movies serve to isolate the socially marginalised inhabitants and the non-living from the outside world as if nothing exists

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