Abstract
In a common narrative trajectory, the protagonists of children’s films transition from a state of anxiety at the beginning to an often fragile possibility of well-being at the close. Using script theory, Lee and Stephens propose an anxiety script which manifesting as anger, fear, despair, sadness, confusion, and feelings of helplessness and hurt is employed as a catalyst for character behavior because it is an overarching and familiar experience from which young audiences can infer a more specific emotion or state. At a film’s close, well-being is apt to be framed by a eudemonic script grounded in first-order values such as positive relations, desire, contentment, growth, confidence, self-realization, and relatedness. The trajectory is explored in four films, two each from Japan and South Korea.
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Notes
- 1.
Yokai are a wide-ranging category of folktale, non-human, supernatural beings that comprise spirits, ghosts, monsters, demons, animated objects, and many others.
- 2.
KITSAT-1 was the first satellite to be launched by the Republic of Korea (on August 10, 1992). KITSAT-1 stands for the Korea Institute of Technology Satellite-1. The main objective of the KITSAT-1 program was to acquire satellite technology through the training and education of satellite engineers. The technical details included in the film—a launch weight of 48.6 kg and measurements of 35.2 × 35.6 × 67 cm—are authentic.
- 3.
A further paratextual invocation of the heritage theme was a declaration of Oblivion Island and the long-deserted island of Hashima (also known as Gunkanjima, “Battleship Island”) as “sister islands.” Director Shinsuke Sato and Haruka Ayase visited Gunkanjima and took part in a ceremony, attended by the Nagasaki City Mayor, to declare the two islands “sisters.” In her speech, Ayase comments that Oblivion Island is “an island made up of things that humans abandoned… I think that many people’s memories remain on Gunkanjima too. In this story, we wanted to express that the memories that things hold within them may be what’s really important” (“Battleship Island: An Actual Oblivion Island”—an extra on the Blu-ray release). The blending of beauty and fear in the landscapes of Oblivion Island seems also to be in part inspired by a similar effect in Edogawa Ranpo’s novel for young adults, Strange Tale of Panorama Island.
- 4.
The motif is borrowed from an element in some fox spirit schemas in which eating the liver of a human will enable a fox spirit to become human (see Sung-Ae Lee, 2011).
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Lee, SA., Stephens, J. (2019). From Anxiety to Well-Being: Openings and Endings of Children’s Films from Japan and South Korea. In: Hermansson, C., Zepernick, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17620-4_9
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