THESIS SUMMARY
The Representation of Trauma through Japanese Women’s Bodies depicted in Pink Film
Counter Cinema ‘Antiporno’ (2016)
Written by:
Yusrina Pradipta Andityarini
15/390483/PMU/08732
STUDY PROGRAM OF CULTURE AND MEDIA STUDIES
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF UNIVERSITAS GADJAH MADA
YOGYAKARTA
2018
1. INTRODUCTION
A. Background
Ever since its defeat in World War II, Japan's political dynamic affects how the bodies of
women represented in films. To observe the changes in body representations, we have to
understand its historical context first. Started from America's occupation in Japan from
September 1945 until April 1952. Under American regime, Japan's social, economics, politics,
and cultural systems experiences a massive change; from military and imperialist to democratic.
It was not an easy task to alter an imperialist country that just lost a war into a democratic
one. The new regime decided to use a strategy in utilize film media as a propaganda to spread
democratic ideologies. One of the ideas was gender equality and women's right. After the
occupancy was over, women's bodies representations changed back. Especially in 1960ish
popular avant garde films. Women's bodies often showed as sensuous and men's seducers in a lot
of culture, such as films, shows, books, and beauty pageants.
Dower1 stated this postwar culture as 'culture of defeat’; and known as euro-guro (erotic-
grotesque) culture that started the pornography films and pinku eiga genre. Women were shown
in erotic films to spoil male audiences. Although they did not show genitalia area due to the
government's censor. Pinku eiga, then, became a common term for erotic and lurid sex films. In
1971, Nikkatsu, the oldest and biggest film production house in Japan, started to produce pinku
films. This studio introduced a new term, Roman Porno, as one brand of film. Unfortunately,
roman porno project has to end in 1988 due to its lost to Japan Adult Videos.
45 years after the glory of roman porno as a training ground for young Japanese directors,
in 1970; August 2016 became a historical moment for Nikkatsu film studio with their
announcement to make Roman Porno Reboot. This projects invited five young and talented
Japanese directors Hideo Nakata, Akihiko Shiota, Kazuya Shiraishi, Sion Sonno, and Isao
Yukisada.
1
John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999), hal 77
The five directorws were given limited budget to finish a film in a week time frame, just
as how Roman Porno was made in 1970-1980ish. Nikkatsu kept their unique concept that
obligate a director to show a sex scene every 10 minutes, nudity display, limited budget in a
certain amount of time, and within one hour duration max.
As a self-proclaimed feminist director, Sion Sonno with his Antiporno film brought a
breakthrough in Pink film. If so far Pink was made for male gaze construction, the research
observe an effort from Sion Sonno to present a reverse gaze which made Antiporno a counter
cinema. Other than that, Antiporno also raised gender-related issues, political critics, and tell
Japan's past trauma until today.
B. Research Question
Researcher formulated a question as: how was the trauma represented by Japanese women's
bodies in Antiporno (2016) Pink film as a counter cinema?
II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
A. Male Gaze and Counter Cinema
Researchers use the argument of Laura Mulvey in her essay "Visual and Narrative Cinema" to
create feminist cinema, so male desire that emphasizes voyeuristic and fetishistic behavior must
be confused so that "in order to understand the new language the desire for female subjects"
(Mulvey, 1992: 24). One of the things that is done is using a narrative form that invites people
and members of passivity to female audiences.
This strategy will disrupt the satisfaction, enjoyment and privilege displayed by the audience
as "invisible guests". The male gaze or the gaze of men raised in the Antiporno film is not only at
the metaphorical level. Sion Sonno literally displays male gaze on the screen which blocks the
fetishization by the audience, also rejecting the representation of the female body as a sexual
object.
Sion Sonno intervenes in film narratives using the style of avant garde cinema with a non-
linear storyline, between fantasy and reality, theatrical, and character instability. This is the
hallmark of the counter cinema. Antiporno's film as a research object is studied visually and
narratively to prove that this film is a cinema film by taking feminist views from Laura Mulvey
and Peter Wollen.
B. Memory Studies
This study uses the concepts of memory, war, and world politics according to Bell Duncan's
(2006) fact to explain the meaning of the past or history in parts or explain the current situation.
According to this concept, memory is a process in which an impression from the past is collected
(Bell, 2006: 2).
The relationship between memory and trauma with the body by Igarashi Yoshikuni in his
book Memory: The Narrative of War in Postwar Japanese Culture. Igarashi used the body's
metaphor to explain the culture and social phenomena that occurred in post-war Japanese
society. He concluded that memory and trauma buried by Japanese people always haunt and
create schizophrenic conditions in which there is a contradiction between oneself and oneself.
III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study uses the method of Lacanian psychoanalysis. This method departs from the
theoretical assumption that human identity (subject) or society is formed from its desire which is
a product of unconsciousness. Adopting Freud's concept, Lacan stated that desire can manifest in
four ways, as described by Bracher (2005: 30) below:
1. Passive narcissistic desire: one can desire to be the object of love from others
because of admiration or idealization.
2. Active narcissistic desire: someone can desire to be someone else.
3. Child's desires are active: a person can desire to have others as a way to get
satisfaction.
4. Passive child desires: someone can desire to be someone else's desire or
The four types of desire always demand to always be fulfilled, but when they are fulfilled they
will move to another desire. Unfortunately when the desire is not fulfilled he will give birth to
trauma. In the film Antiporno, Kyoko is portrayed as a schizophrenic figure so that he has a
variety of desires that are constantly changing.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Antiporno as Counter Cinema
The audience generally gets pleasure when he can identify himself with the characters in the
film. The identification process then gives rise to emotional involvement between the audience
and the characters in the film which Mulvey calls narcisstic identification. Narcissistic
identification occurs when there is an audience who identifies himself with the male main
character in the scene. With this identification, the male audience seemed to get full control over
the female role in the film.
Counter cinema interrupts the occurrence of this identification through estrangement, that is,
by bringing out real characters and direct adress by the characters to the audience. In the film
Antiporno, this interruption was carried out when Kyoko seemed to be on the cinema stage and
the camera shot from behind the audience's back. This caused a sensation as if the audience was
caught peering at a movie theater which should present voyeristic pleasure. The elimination of
the distance between the audience and the audience is inevitably destroying the visual and
narrative enjoyment of the film Antiporno.
Kyoko directly interacted with the audience in the cinema
Comparable cinema shows a heterogeneous world, not homogeneous like Hollywood films in
general. The audience is led to feel that they are in a foreign world, in contrast to the reality that
has a clear and logical sequence of time and space. The Antiporno film does not provide clear
boundaries between reality and fantasy because the main character experiences schizophrenia.
For a moment the audience saw Kyoko in her apartment interacting with other characters, for a
moment the audience was brought into Kyoko's imagination and saw a world full of
hallucinations. Storylines that are not linear and in and out between flashback and current
situations make the audience struggled to get into the film's narrative.
Comparable cinema strives to keep the audience in mind that he is watching something
fictional and is expected to not be lulled by the film. This interruption was displayed by Sonno
through the presence of a film crew, complete with camera, lighting and audio equipment. The
sensation of seeing a movie in this film will keep the audience awake throughout the film.
B. The Hyperbole of Body Excess: Against the Anatomy of Pornographic Movies
Films with pornographic genres including Roman Porno generally involve orgasm as a climax
or the culmination of sexual satisfaction. There are two kinds of body excess in the pornographic
genre film according to Linda Williams; 1) picture of orgasm, where when the body experiences
intense sensations and emotions and 2) ecstasy body, described when the body experiences
stimuli that make it uncontrolled. Narratively, bodily ecstasy can be a moan when performing
sexual scenes (Williams, 1991).
The body ecstasy appeared in the Antiporno film in the form of moans, more or less the same
as other pornographic films. However, this Antiporno film does not use the usual orgasm scene.
If the orgasm scene is often raised through peak excitement followed by an expression of
satisfaction or pleasure from a female figure, this film actually describes orgasm through vomit.
Every time Kyoko did a sexual scene or watched a sexual scene, it almost always ended with
Kyoko vomiting.
C. Traumatic Narratives and Memory After the War in Japanese Women's Bodies
According to Yoshikuni Igarashi, the hope of forgetting the past is the main goal of Japan's
postwar society. This forgetting process causes the condition of amnesia for Japanese social
society to form a new collective memory; "Arguments in favor of forgetting claim benefits of
forgetfulness as some amount of historical amnesia is unavoidable to preserve collective
memory." Social amnesia occurs when a society, or citizen, experiences severe trauma to crimes
committed by previous authorities.
In this case, Japan tried to bury the trauma of the past which included war crimes committed
by the Japanese government itself and trauma as victims of atomic bombs with social amnesia.
This condition, according to Igarashi2, creates a condition of schizophrenic society. This
condition is represented in Kyoko's body who is always shaking, frightened, and hysterical when
she sees a flashback video showing her being raped and saying "This is not my fault!"
Shinzo Abe's decision to change the direction of Japanese policy into a proactive pacifist
nation aroused Japanese society from social amnesia. Unfortunately, the government edited
memory by not apologizing to women who were victims of war. Finally the reconciliation
process failed and Japan still had to experience trauma.
D. The Paradox of Freedom in the Antiporno Film
The paradox of freedom is most evident in Antiporno's final scene when Kyoko chanted a
monologue while banging her head on the birthday cake many times. Kyoko positioned the
country, men, freedom, and pornographic films as something that was equally disappointing.
Including disappointment why he as an actress must play a role in pornographic films.
"1. This nation's is shit
2. The freedom they created is shit
3. The world they dream of is shit
And me, acting in a shitty porn, is ...
The shitty reason this calls herself a whore is superior to a day's worth of all the shit in
Japan! Far superior! To exquisite shit! To extravagant shit! She has more reasons than all that
shit! More! "
2
Igarashi Yoshikuni. 2001. Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970. Coleman,
James S. Foundations of Social Theory.
The apparent freedom criticized by Kyoko sneered two things at once; the freedom offered by
the porn romance industry by Nikkatsu and the freedom offered by the state through the law of
security bills. Nikkatsu agreed when Sion Sonno wanted to use pornographic romance as a
criticism of the pornography industry under the pretext of freedom of expression which had
become a hallmark of pornographic romance in the 1960-1970s. Freedom was welcomed by Sion
Sonno who made the film as a counter cinema. The use of rival cinema that tries to dismiss male
gaze forms also offers the potential for new freedom for the female body which has been
objectified as a male gaze in earlier pornographic films.
But in practice, because pornographic romance still uses old rules of having to bring up
nudity and sex scenes every 10 minutes, then the desire to be free is repressed again. As a result,
forms of trauma still appear on the female body in the film.
V. CONCLUSIONS, SUGGESTIONS, AND REFERENCES
A. Conclusion
The emergence of a demonstration scene against the Security Bills that changed Japan's
political direction to become a proactive pacifist state that was again involved in the war in the
Antiporno film became a bridge to compare the trauma Kyoko suffered with Japan's trauma to
his past. Discussions regarding Japanese participation in the war seemed to arouse Japanese
society from social amnesia. If all this time Japan chose to forget its history, now Shinzo Abe
invites his people to embrace the defeat of the war. Recognizing defeat and atrocities committed
by Japan is the initial stage of reconciliation. But in fact the Japanese people who are too long for
amnesia and trapped in schizophrenia choose to oppose the policy. Japanese people who are still
traumatized but have no power because they are under the control of the Japanese government,
the researcher likens Kyoko's condition to being scared when her traumas are 'forced' to appear
in repeated flashbacks in the film Antiporno.
In this film, Sion Sonno not only flicked the pornographic industry that seemed to give a false
pseudo-freedom of expression, but he also criticized how the Japanese government framed
security bills as a new freedom and independence for the Japanese military. In the end, the
freedom did not aim to heal the trauma of Japanese society but only shook people's memory
from social amnesia. This half-giving freedom, such as Zion Sonno's attempt to convey feminist
criticism but remain in the shadow of the porn industry in the end only perpetuates suffering and
trauma. Roman porno reboot with a new vision of raising the issue of women does not provide
any solution regarding the exploitation of women's bodies in the porn industry. The scene at the
end of the film that shows Kyoko gasping for a way out is evidence that trauma is still present in
a woman's body, even in a pink film that uses a counter cinema approach.
B. SUGGESTIONS
The rise of roman porno as one of the most popular brands of pink film is certainly an
opportunity for further researchers to conduct research. Moreover, during this time pink films
which were the object of research were limited to films from 1960-1970s. In addition, with the
change of direction of Japanese foreign policy to be a proactive pacifist, of course the issue of
body, trauma, and post-war memory is a fresh issue to discuss. Especially now that more and
more South Korean films are trying to raise the issue of comfort woman from the perspective of
Korean women as victims.
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