Creed, Castrating Women, The Ring and Ringu

Its been a few years since I watched the American counterpart to Ringu, The Ring, but distinctly remember some massive plot discrepancies between it and Ringu, specifically that the mother pushes the daughter into the well in the US version. After revisiting the plot, via Wikipedia, my gut instincts were verified. This seemed like a really HUGE deal to me, and felt particularly relevant to both of the Creed articles. I do not think a discussion of which version best subverts the logic of the horror genre is helpful, but filmmakers' decisions have massive consequences for audience spectatorship and even more for theorizing constructions of gender and lineages of gender representation in Horror films. Horror is a genre often employed as a pedagogical tool, one that enforces notions of common sense, in the Keeling-ian sense. I'm interested in looking at how this process unfolds in Ringu with regard to some of Creed's theories.

Horror and abjection of the monstrous female are rendered in two monstrous female subjects of the film, Shizuko and her daughter Sadako. Creed's categorizes ritual in part as “a means by which societies both renew their initial contact with the abject element and then exclude that element. Through ritual, the demarcation lines between the human and non-human are drawn up anew and presumably made all the stronger for that process” (8). Creed briefly outlines how this process is central to the project of the Horror narratives. The recurring theme of conquering the abject and a return to common sense and order. The concept of 'maternal authority' becomes central to this narrative, especially in Ringu. Both Shizuko and Sadako can function as symbols of maternal authority, mapping the body, in fact a super-human authority over the body itself and the ability to manipulate the paternal laws of greater society. These characterizations fall into established categories, such as the pubescent girl aligned with the devil, and position the two female characters as feminine-monstrous. They, as the abject, are therefore the fathers responsibility to discipline, eject, and bring back under paternal law, which he does by killing his daughter and isolating her mother. The act of mothering, however, is not complicated in this narrative. Shizuko and Sadako follow a very familiar trajectory regarding mother/child relationships. Considering the parallels between the two families of the film, Asakawa, her son, and her ex-husband, and Shizuko, her daughter Sadako, and her husband, Ringu demonstrates tendencies of the 'family horror' genre.

However, in the American version this narrative is complicated by a mother who attempts to exercise paternal law over the daughter. This narrative is perhaps better viewed through Creed's discussion and argument validating the 'castrating female'. Creed asserts that female and male characters can castrate and be castrated, that the process is about power and the 'other'. She dissects the subject of 'castrating females' by genre, a process that might easily position Naomi Watts of the American The Ring, as the castrating mother in family horror film. However, the spectator is urged to identify with the victim, in this case the daughter is easily characterized as the victim of the monstrous female. This characterization perhaps re-categorizes the film as a revenge narrative, and positions it in opposition to the tradition of 'family horror' of Ringu.

This process and the implications of these specific decisions by the filmmakers definitely deserves more interrogation.