Academic literature on the topic 'Mika Ninagawa'

This thesis examines the embodiment of the sexed body and the struggle of fitting into the narrow frames of what a woman is supposed to behave and look like in Japanese cinema. Using the medium of film, I, therefore, seek to produce knowledge regarding the internalized gaze of the oppressor, and self-objectification, caused by the capitalist heteropatriarchy. Thus, I am drawing from cyborg feminism, and the second wave of sexual difference theory’s concept of becoming, expanded upon by the Italian-Australian philosopher Rosi Braidotti. I further use the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of masculine domination and the American philosopher Gayle Rubin’s charmed circle, in creating a theoretical framework, and using the methods of cultural and feminist film analysis to contextualize the films and locate the subjectification of the women. The movies that I will be analyzing are the Japanese director and poet Sion Sono’s Antiporno (アンチポルノ, 2016) and the Japanese director and photographer Mika Ninagawa’s Helter Skelter (ヘルタースケルター, 2012), which both center around two women and their struggle in becoming-cyborg, in relation to power, trauma, sexuality, technology, and beauty ideals in ‘modernized’ Japan. In that sense, I will study the phenomenon of operating outside the lines of social norms of femininity and desire.

碩士
臺北市立大學
視覺藝術學系視覺藝術教學碩士學位班
102
Japanese artist Mika Ninagawa (born 1972) is known as “the Magician of Colors” for her photographs exhibiting vibrant and brightly colors. Her works present a strong sense of decoration and unique perspectives to shaping modern female attraction, which appear in a variety of media such as magazines, celebrity photographs, movies and fashion styling. Through her camera celebrities and models are shown with stunning glamour. Mika Ninagawa has earned the international title of “Japan’s Ruler of Fashion Photography”. In Chapter 1 of this study, I introduce Ninagawa’s childhood and family background to reveal how her creation impulse is developed in accordance to the environment, atmosphere of the time and the changes of her feelings and thoughts. The style and features of Ninagawa’s works from different periods are also described. Chapter 2 conducts a stylistic analysis of her art. By summing up the common elements in her work, I discuss how her work might be implicitly influenced by Japanese traditional art and Western art. Chapter 3 categorizes Ninagawa’s interpretation of the images and qualities of beautiful women, and observes the appearances of modern beautiful women captured by her camera in the context of Japanese and Western cultural developments. Mika Ninagawa’s works not only feature the subjective spatial conception of planar space in Japanese art, but also demonstrates the influence from Western modern art, such as pop art and surrealism. In addition, her works also show an interest in black humor which blends Western dark aesthetics and Japanese contemporary ball-jointed doll portraits, reflecting Japan’s current popular culture and contemporary concept of beautiful woman in modern ukiyo-e.

This chapter features a new take on vampires, werewolves and other contrived souls, especially in relation to tortured coming-of-age stories that address social pressure and childhood traumas. After a short encounter with Woolf in the company of a vampire, this chapter commences with a return to Stephanie Rothman’s psychedelic exploitation film The Velvet Vampire (1971) and Katherine Bigelow’s vampire western Near Dark (1987). The vampire as connected to the confusing experiences of coming of age is picked up Moth Diaries (Mary Harron 2011) and in a less explicit but no less horrific way in Sarah Plays a Werewolf (Katharina Wyss 2017). The promise of the myth of eternal life and beauty, and the legacy of Elisabeth Bathory is revised in The Countess (July Delpie 2009) and acquires a particular twist in contemporary Japan in Helter Skelter (Mika Ninagawa 2012). Claire Denis’s Trouble Every Day (2001) takes the genre to its ontological extremes. This chapter will also turn to Butler’s re-imagination of the vampire in her novel Fledgling (2005) and the imagination of alternative relations between the human and nonhuman and looks at the new ethics of the vampire in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014).