On the last assignment, I talked about how the monster or ghost from the Grudge scared me the most when I was little. How does the grudge tie to Cohen - Monster culture? The simple premise of the grudge is that you should never step into a house that has a curse on it. If you enter the house, the ghost will haunt you and end up killing you in the end. The argument that Cohen points out is that monsters patrol areas that we enter and that we do not enter. In Cohen’s article, he wrote about how sailors would tell stories of sea monsters out at sea to patrol the area of sea trade. I thought it was interesting tying his thesis of border patrol with the patrolling of who should enter the cursed house and who shouldn’t. Is there a significant factor that plays into why we should never enter the house? According to the movie the ghost was killed in a heat of powerful rage and thus seeks to kill anyone who enters their home. Within Japanese culture as I pointed out in my paper, Japanese people practice Shintoism. Shintoism is the belief that spirits are in everything. Spirits are almost seen as deity within Japanese society. The grudge ghost is seen as almost a deity, and one should not enter the deity's home or it will be angered. The respect of spirits is a huge part of Japanese culture and the story of the grudge along with Cohen thesis of monster and borders points to how society creates the story of the grudge to keep peace and harmony within society. We should not anger spirits and spirits will not harm us.
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