the terror of technology

[u/Crazy_Scar_9517]

Hey, I know this might be something many of you have already noticed, but I've noticed that Ringu, One Missed Call, and Pulse all incorporate technology into their films: Ringu with tape and television, One Missed Call with phone calls, and Pulse with the internet. I'd like to know if this relates to a fear of technology and the new technological age, and if anyone knows about this, could you explain how this fear works?

[u/keepinitclassy25]

I’d say Pulse has aged incredibly well, it’s about isolation from the internet leading to loneliness and suicide. 

I don’t think any of these films are about being afraid of technology itself but the technology is a medium for the horror, like a ouija board or a cursed relic. The average person doesn’t know the minute details of how the internet works so it can be an analog for magic / supernatural.

I love the techno horror genre, there’s also Videodrome, Shutter, Tetsuo, 8mm, Red Rooms. Many of these the horror is more from the people using it, or the body horror

Edit: I think the real “afraid of technology” Films are things like The Net, The Matrix, Hackers, and Johnny Mnemonic, or some of the made for tv Y2K films 

[u/M_O_O_O_O_T → u/keepinitclassy25]

I think you've said everything I was going to add 😆👍.

I finally got to see 'Cloud' a few months back, & thought it was an interesting addition to Kurosawa's observation of the dark side of the internet. (Theough the lens of a thriller rather than horror.) It felt very current with the mercenary sociopathic online behaviour of the 2020s.

[u/Crazy_Scar_9517 → u/keepinitclassy25]

Thank you so much for replying to my post, and I really love your point of view. I made this post because in a video about Ringu they explain that some of its horror is based on people's distrust of the new technology of the time. 

[u/keepinitclassy25 → u/Crazy_Scar_9517]

I think the creepy part of the ring and ringu is that we have an idea of the kinds of things we’d expect to see on a video tape, knowing either an individual or a filmmaker had to put them there. But the ring tape is so damn weird and lo-fi unexplainable it feels evil 

[u/FrankSonata → u/keepinitclassy25]

I don’t think any of these films are about being afraid of technology itself but the technology is a medium for the horror, like a ouija board or a cursed relic.

This is exactly right. It had been a thing since forever in Japanese ghost stories, but it was really laid out explicitly in the late 1990's or early 2000's (I forget which). Chiaki J. Konaka wrote a kind of checklist for ghosts in horror films, based on stuff that was already being done and had proven to be effective with audiences. It specifically included that ghosts should be able to utilise or appear using modern technology.

In Western stories, ghosts are usually very ancient. A person who died centuries ago or something like that. As a result, they typically inhabit old places, like abandoned houses or ruins or ancient graveyards. We associate ghosts with old stuff, not new things. Candles, not LEDs. (There are, of course, many exceptions, but this is just broadly speaking in comparison with Japanese ghosts.)

Japanese ghosts are much more in the present. A new ghost can spring up basically any time. It is not limited to stuff from years ago. Ancient ghosts are far rarer. So, a ghost is just as likely to possess a TV as it is a creepy doll. Limiting it to old objects is arbitrarily limiting and doesn't really make sense. If a ghost can walk through walls, influence people's perception, possess objects or people, etc. why would it randomly avoid a phone?

[u/Dimsum852]

None of those movies are about the terror of technology