There’s a Japanese film industry, and then there’s ‘Japanese Cinema’ – a construct we imagine and create through the stories we tell about it. In the past, ‘Japanese Cinema’ has been imagined in the West as a story of auteurs (Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa), esoteric national styles (Ozu’s tatami-inspired low- level frame), and bizarre genres (Pink ei…[Read more]

The terms ‘fandom’, ‘fan’, and even ‘fan studies’ appear to be, at first glance, self- evident. But considered in the context of both fan cultures and scholarship outside the English language-centered West, we begin to see the assumptions that underlie them. Whether we are talking about Japanese fans of manga and anime (somewhat codified it…[Read more]

In the first episode of Hannibal (2013-15), FBI profiler Will Graham is called to examine a body impaled on antlers in the middle of a field – presumably the work of the so-called Minnesota Shrike. Graham quickly determines that, while this crime superficially resembles that of other Shrike victims, its difference is such that this ‘field kab…[Read more]

This is no longer just kids on an adventure. Yates’s transtextual citations here imbue J.K. Rowling’s coming-of-age tale with a truly apocalyptic foreboding — one that exceeds the ostensible youth orientation of the Harry Potter films.