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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.

This article describes the relationship between family photography, oral history, and feeling. The authors explore questions about affect and family photography in relationship to black, queer relationality and to Asian, diasporic subjectivities. They argue that the affective modality of family photography for marginalized subjects is that of ‘mixed feelings’, which they analyze through a focus on ‘aspiration’ as central to the visual and affective discourses of family photography, oral history, and diaspora. Working with recent work by Christina Sharpe and Tina Campt, the authors describe aspiration within family photography as indexing both the normative temporalities of capitalist futurity and, at the same time, a utopian technology of black futurity that enables the making of necessary futures outside of white supremacy and heteronormativity. The research is part of a larger photography and oral history project, The Family Camera Network, which the article describes.

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