In what way does battle royale work as an analogy for contemporary Japanese society?

In what way does battle royale work as an analogy for contemporary Japanese society?

Battle royale was directed by kinji fukasaku in 2002 and is a now a well known cult movie. The movie is base in a future Japan on the verge of social breakdown and a growing youth problem. In a move to stop the 80,000 out of control youth the government passes a law called the millennium reform act also known as the battle royale act. This aloud the government to pick a class completely at random force them to take part in the battle royale it which they would fight and kill each other until one remains.

 This movie is very violent and graphic in its content, but also can be seen for it deals with the social stereotypes in Japan movie and seem to challenge there ideas of these stereotypes and gender roles.



 They take the standard Japanese and movie stereotypes and toss them on there head everyone in this movie portrays them differently from the norm. for explain you have a nut job of a schoolgirl named Mitsuko using both her mind and her body to help her win the game killing every living thing that crosses her path, and main male Shuya showing a lot of emotion instead of just being the strong silent noble manly man from the norm of Japanese cinema, and then there Kiriyama how really just a very samurai characters with the way he move about to evade getting killed and his motivation to avenged his girlfriend, also the fact that whenever he appear a sound of a drum give to nod to the samurai refer and also to set a tone for the upcoming violence to come. As The game plays out and everyone start taking the other out one on one. Betrayal becomes a big theme like when push comes to pull would you kill your friends in order to service. Mitsuko used betrayed to get a few easy kills at the beginning of the movie preying on a follow female student need for belonging and later using her body to kill two young male preying on there sexual needs as Japan youth are more repress from over sexual idea unlike there American counterparts, and even though this ,moment is gloss over in the movie compare to the book where in goes into greater details, there enough for the view to get an idea of what happen and for them to see that mistook is no dotting innocent high school that stereotypes would normally portray someone like Her. The plot of children killing children was the directed trying to show his dislike of Japan violence history of when children where drafted into the army in world war two. And to show the changes happen social in japan as youth are growing up to be more the changing the stereotyping that comes with them. Girls are no longer the sweet dotting girls that got shy and a withdraw there now can be harsh crux and act out and gang up the boy are no longer the future breadwinning of there family anymore. In a changing environment it kills or be kill to change and develop in order to survive.

The biggest thing that came from battle royale is large number of imitations you can’t swing a cat at a section of Japanese movies without hitting one contenting a schoolgirl with a shotgun so really battle royale can call itself the first but not the last. Never since Godzilla has one movie spawns so many others. It’s become quite tame in comparison to what follow. But battle royale didn’t get to where it is from just being a violence movie. It was shocking with it content but it did have a message tie in with a solid plot and it was those point that stop it from becoming just another teenage slasher movie. As for most of the movies that follow just when by the rule gore sells! So the more gore the better! Making most of the movie just mindless violence for the sake of entrainment purposes. But there no denied that battle royale opened the floodgates for the Japan films that targeted the teenager’s demography but it quickly flooded the place with films full of violence backed up with melodrama. Just water down versions of what come first. But they do still use the changes of contemporary of Japan society like the emotional males and the woman’s who can show just as much brutality in her action as a male would instead of just being a dotting sweet schoolgirl. Even though that hasn’t stopped that stereotype from being milked to death.

All in all battle royale did make headways in the changes that where happening to the youth of Japan at the time. This change although shocking a a dramtic are now common steototypeing in films. 

Bibliography

A hundred years of Japanese film by Donald Richie

Battle royale challenging global stereotypes within the constructs of a contemporary Japanese slasher film by Samara L. Allsop

Cinema year by year 1894-2003. David Thomson