Haunted Screens: Horacio Quiroga in Dialogue with Japanese Horror Cinema
Abstract
In this article, I will argue that ghosts are used, in two very different contexts and cases, as ways to represent and discuss anxieties about the advances of science and the uses of technology, at the same time that they express a cautious fascination with these unstoppable advances. This concern with the ability of ghosts to move and adapt to technological change is not only about what happens in the films but is also related to what happens outside the films, that is, the viral expansion of ghosts stories and filmic narratives as ways to talk about social and political issues. I will work primarily with two short stories by Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga, “The Specter” and “The Puritan”, that I will place in dialog with two Japanese movies, The Ring by Hideo Nakata and Pulse by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, tracing their possible connections and interpolations.