A Brief Survey of Contemporary Asian Horror Seminar

As media rich in cultural expressions, movies are undying source of messages conveyed in explicit and implicit means. Among many other movie genres, horror is one of the genres that portrays unique representations of cultures. For Anton Sutandio, the unique characteristics of Asian horror has been his main motivation to conduct further studies on the issues revolving around Asian horror movies. And we were lucky to have him share about one part of his studies with us and our students on May 12, 2015.

Anton began his talk by exploring the areas where movies can be made as a source of studies. He introduced our students to movie review, movie critic, movie analysis and even to movie making. He then brought his talk to a discussion where and how horror genre can be analyzed. He showed some analysis that he has done to some horror movies from Indonesia ( Jelangkung) , Japan ( Ringu), Korea (Bunshinsaba) and many more.

In his talk, Anton also suggested some topics that students can use to analyze a horror flick. He said that Aesthetics, Transnationalism, Political Allegory, Cultural Identity and Class/Gender might be interesting perspectives that students can use to explore movies, not restricted to horror movies. Some of the attendees expressed their interests and shared their possible research plan on the issues. Anton and the attendees seemed enthusiastic in exchanging ideas about his and research ideas expressed by students and lecturers.

For us, it was an experience of exchanging practices in the literature and culture research field and Anton’s presence has given us more than that. Thanks for the insightful talk, Pak Anton [irf]