Horrifying adaptations: Ringu, The Ring, and the cultural contexts of copying

Focusing on the figure of the copy in Hideko Sadaka's Ringu and its Gore Verebinksi's The Ring, this article traces one of the sources of horror in these films to the fluidity of this figure. Manifest variously as a form of technological reproduction that, in turn, serves as a way of screening fears associated with biological reproduction as well as the parental responsibilities that this process occasions and as a means by which cultural memory might be preserved, the figure of the copy serves as a vexed symbolic vehicle for exploring the relationship between cultural texts and the disparate national contexts that shape them. Ultimately, the figure of the copy functions as an apt means of self-reflexively commenting on the possibilities and limitations that might characterize the process of adaptation itself.