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Terayama's "China Doll" (in Japanese)
- Author(s):
- Steven Ridgely (see profile)
- Date:
- 2017
- Group(s):
- CLCS 20th- and 21st-Century, French Literature & Cultural Studies, Linguistics, LLC 20th- and 21st-Century French, LLC Japanese since 1900
- Subject(s):
- Twentieth century, Critical theory, Film criticism, France, Area studies, Japan
- Item Type:
- Book chapter
- Tag(s):
- 20th century, French studies, Japanese studies
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6Z51X
- Abstract:
- This is an analysis of Terayama Shūji's 1981 film "Shanhai ijin shōkan," a French co-production which was marketed in the Anglosphere as "China Doll" and in France as "Les Fruits de la passion," invoking both Ōshima Nagisa's 1978 "L'Empire de la passion" (the sequel to his notorious "Empire of the Senses" / "L'Empire des sens," 1976) as well as Roland Barthes's classic semiotic analysis of Japan, “Empire of Signs" / "L'Empire des signes" (1970). Atop these triplings of doublings and re-sequels to sequels, Terayama's narrative is also a continuation and displacement of Pauline Reage's 1954 "Story of O" with the leading characters transported to Shanghai under Japanese colonial rule. Terayama's core insight into this French discourse, which he weaves into the film's narrative, appears to be a reading of "O" as the number "zero," a figure of both emptiness and potentiality which invokes Barthes's notion, articulated in "Le Myth, aujourd'hui" (1957), of the "empty signifier" / "signifiant vide."
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Book chapter
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 6 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
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