How "Diary of a Madman" was the Precursor to Asian Horror Films

Asian films delve deep into the human psyche, play with the minds of the audience and leave them with much to think about. Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman," written almost a century ago, set the foundation for Asian psychological horror films created today. "Diary of a Madman" can be compared to three Asian horror films: Perfect Blue, A Tale of Two Sisters, and Shutter.

In Perfect Blue, the lead character named Mima Kirigoe undergoes severe psychological duress due to her movie star career. Much like the main character of "Diary of a Madman," she gets lost within her own mind and begins to lose touch with reality. Lu Xun's character begins to lose trust with everyone around him because he starts to believe that everyone is a cannibal as is expressed by the line "If they're capable of eating people, then who's to say they won't eat me?" Mima loses trust also because she starts to believe events are happening around her that actually aren't. She discovers that someone is posting pictures of her daily errands on the Internet. Later on, someone posts things she hadn't actually done, but she starts to believe she had. Because of the stress and being overworked, she begins to confuse her life on-screen with her actual life, a psychological problem known as dissociative personality disorder. In the end, both Mima and the Madman pull through their problems and go forward with successful lives.

In A Tale of Two Sisters, Su-Mi experiences a horrible trauma that causes her to believe her reality is not at all what she thinks it is. This creepy story begins with Su-Mi and her sister returning from a trip to find that her father has left her mother and is married to the live-in nurse. In the end, the audience discovers that Su-Mi had returned from a mental hospital after her mother and sister's accidental death. This movie is as deeply disturbing as "Diary of a Madman "because the audience is pulled into the minds of the characters. One cannot help but feel what the madman is thinking because the diary is laid out to see all of his thoughts and worries and the reader feels as if it is happening to him or her. In A Tale of Two Sisters, the story begins from Su-Mi's point of view and the audience is led to believe that her perspective is correct up until the last five minutes of the film. Unlike the madman, it is unknown whether Su-Mi gets better as she seems to only progressively get worse in her mental state. However, it is a movie that has the viewer watching it again to tie up loose ends and see how everything fits together once the truth is unfolded much like "Diary of a Madman". When "Diary of a Madman" is read again, one can see how deeply the character has gone into his paranoia.

In Shutter, an American remake of the Thai horror film also called Shutter, a married couple discovers that a woman's ghost keeps appearing in their photos. The husband, who was involved in the dead woman's accidental death, begins to be haunted by the ghost. The dead woman breaks up the marriage via her haunting. She literally clings to the man until his shoulder hurts him intensely. Later, he loses his mind and ends up in a mental hospital. In the last scene, the man is sitting in his hospital bed and a reflection of him in a window shows the woman hanging onto his back. This movie is different than "Diary of a Madman" because the main character, Ben is led to insanity because of the dead woman's ghost. However, the movie and the story can be compared because of the way they both play on human fears. In Diary of a Madman, the main character is afraid the people of his village are going to eat him and fully believes that they are cannibals and have been so for years. In Shutter, there are no predispositions to insanity; instead the fear is within the audience's mind, leaving the viewer questioning such things as "What if I am indirectly involved in someone's death? Will they haunt me?" or "If I have shoulder pain, does it mean that I have a spiritual attachment?" Asian horror films have a knack for taking a completely natural event and turning it into something that could be horrifying, much like Lu Xun did in his story when a doctor came to examine the madman: "Taking my pulse was nothing but a ruse; he wanted to feel my flesh and decide if I was fat enough to butcher yet." Having one's pulse taken is something that happens every time a doctor's visit is made, a completely natural occurrence that here, seems like a foreboding of death.

"Diary of a Madman" is every bit an Asian horror story, but the counterargument states that it is actually "China's first Western-style story" (Liukkonen). This claim is also made by Brooklyn College's website on Chinese Cultural Studies. Brooklyn's website informs the reader that "Diary of a Madman" is a criticism of the old orders of dynasties. Just because Lu Xun was a revolutionary and "hailed by the Communists as their hero" (Brittanica) doesn't mean that the story cannot be viewed as a slice-of-life literary horror when viewed as nothing more than a man slipping into the vices of his paranoid mind. The madman lives in a village that is "unknown to the world at large" (Lu Xun) and most likely there isn't much to do in this village but sit around and think. When a person has a great amount of time on his or her hands and just thinks, he or she can become lost in those thoughts and begin to believe thoughts that may not be true. Sitting and thinking is a natural occurrence of humans and one that usually leads to depression or other psychological disorders. Looking at the story from the psychological point of view, one can see how frightening the story actually is and how much it should be valued as a horror story, not as a revolution in politics.

Viewing the psychological aspects of Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman," it is easy to see how Asians were influenced by the frightening effects of psychological disorders in their horror stories and films. By comparing "Diary of a Madman" to three modern films Perfect Blue, A Tale of Two Sisters, and Shutter, one can see the similarities of the haunting stories that will have the mind turning and leave the viewer and reader chilled and disturbed. Lu Xun laid the foundation for Asian horror films with his classic work about a regular man who became lost within himself.

Works Cited

Xun, Lu. "Diary of a Madman." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Vol. F. New York:

W.W. Norton and Company, Sarah Lawall, Editor. 2002. 1920-929. Print.

Perfect Blue. Satoshi Kon. Junko Iwao. Rica Matsumoto. Shinpachi Tsuji. Geneon Entertainment

Inc., 28 Feb. 1998.

A Tale of Two Sisters. Ji-Woon Kim. Kap-Su Kim. Jung-ah Yum. Su-jeong Lim. Tartan Asia

Extreme, 13 June 2003.

Shutter. Masayuki Ochiai. Joshua Jackson. Rachael Taylor. Megumi Okina. 20^th Century Fox,

21 March 2008.

Liukkonen, Petri. Lu Xun. 15 Oct. 2010 http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/luxun.htm . 2008.

Brooklyn College. Chinese Cultural Studies: Chinese Literature. 15 Oct. 2010

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/chinlit.html . 1995

" Lu Xun . " Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 15 Oct. 2010

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/350231/Lu-Xun .