After three weeks exploring the work of the Italian “godfather of gore,” Lucio Fulci, I thought it was time for something completely different – time to move away from twistingly plotted, sometimes exploitative gialli thrillers and dreamy, atmospheric gore films, time to dig into the cultural production of a totally different culture. I had long heard that Satoshi Kon’s and Sadayuki Murai’s 1997 anime, Perfect Blue, was a fascinating, impressive piece of work and thought this might be the right time to finally take in this animated, artful, and socially incisive film (also, who knows how long it will stay on Shudder – I should watch it while I can).
First off, wow. It does not disappoint. This is a rich, layered piece of psychological horror, an interesting glimpse into an utterly culturally specific context in which many parallels can be found with today’s (western) internet/fan culture, and an emotionally moving exploration of one woman navigating the choppy waters of gender roles, her own sense of self, and a tension between a kind of liberation and exploitation in terms of her own image/presentation/identity. There’s a lot to dig into, and on top of all that, it is just an engaging, exciting, tightly constructed, funny, sad, and disturbing film, captivating regardless of how you engage with its deeper themes.
Secondly and ironically, given my intentions, the way the story plays out, as well as the line it walks between a stalker-thriller and a gory and psychological work of horror, would fit in just fine with most giallo films, and furthermore, it is shockingly similar to last week’s Fulci film, A Cat in the Brain – I mean, in many ways (though certainly not all) it is almost the same story. Sometimes no matter how you try to shake things up and bring the variety, continuity asserts itself.
That said, this is a story that can be spoiled. I’ll try not to completely reveal the ending, but there will be references to other details throughout, so if you suspect you might want to watch it, go do so now. I think it’s worth your time…
Perfect Blue (1997)
Based on the book by Yoshikzu Takeuchi, Satoshi Kon’s and Sadayuki Murai’s film follows a young woman named Mima as she attempts to transition out of a career as a J-Pop “idol” and be taken seriously as an actress. This is a hard move to make, and just as some of her fans are unwilling to accept this new identity, she herself struggles with leaving her old image behind. Over the course of filming a TV crime thriller in which she takes on an increasingly prominent (victimized and victimizing) role, her sense of self begins to unravel, what is film and what is life comes unmoored, and people around her are targeted in a series of gruesome murders which Mima suspects she may be responsible for. The viewing experience reflects her disassociation, the editing and circular scripting contributing to a surreal, disjointed, mysterious state in which nothing feels certain or solid, other than the emotional tension of her identity, mental stability, and agency being so cast into doubt.
Central to the story is the concept of the Japanese “pop idol,” as while there are parallels, I don’t think there’s anything like it in the American/European context (and I had to read up on it as I’m not fluent in Japanese pop culture). When I think of an American pop star, I think of someone who is already, on some level, famous, “a star” – a person who has made it to some kind of big time. It seems that (especially in the 80s and early 90s, when there was an explosion of “idols” in Japan) this is not true for idols. According to Wikipedia, in Japan today, approximately 10,000 teenage girls work as idols, and there are over 3,000 active idol pop groups. For many, this is a job like many others, offering none of the perks of fame and fortune (for example, Mima lives in a cramped, little apartment, with a poster on the wall of her pop group CHAM! and a few fish).
The way this differs from many “normal jobs” is in the extreme restrictions placed on the girls’ self-presentation. Managed by their respective agencies, the idols are sent on jobs with no real input into what they’re doing, and they at all times, in every interaction, must exude a kind of girly-girl sweetness and innocence. If they actually find success and rise to the top, there can be benefits, and many enjoy the work, but it can be constricting, even suffocating.
At the beginning of the film, Mima consistently speaks and behaves, on or off stage, in public or in private, as the absolute archetype of an “excitable, squeaky, cutesy, young girl” to an extent that borders on irritating. It’s interesting to note how slowly she comes to carry herself differently, to use her voice in a more “naturalistic, mature” way. It takes time, well after she’s declared her “graduation” from CHAM! to leave behind this infantilized affect which she had embodied professionally for years.
Of course, a significant element of how she resets her public identity as a “serious” actress is to take on sexually explicit work (a familiar occurrence in the West where former Disney channel stars occasionally make appearances in Playboy). She does a nude spread for a magazine and, most controversially, films a scene for her TV show in which she’s gang raped in a strip club, her manager explaining that this is what you have to do to establish yourself – “even Jodie whatsername did it” (referencing Jodie Foster in The Accused). After agreeing to this, her role is enlarged and her career begins to advance.
The scene in question carries a kind of ambivalence. On one level, everything is totally professional and above board. No one treats her in any way roughly or disrespectfully or does anything not previously agreed to, and while one of her managers tries to get her out of it, can’t bear to watch, and leaves the studio in tears, Mima consciously, willfully chooses to do the scene. Going from a close-up in which we see Mima screaming and struggling, only to have the director call “cut!” before we pan out to see the crew standing around, the actor formerly assaulting her apologizing for what his job is and Mima apparently fine, before “action!” is called and she starts screaming and crying again creates a disturbing, intriguing cognitive dissonance. Is this a horrible, scarring experience for her or is it ‘just a job’ and she’s a professional, an adult woman who has made a calculated professional choice?
Either way, it seems that making this choice starts something unravelling in her own psyche. On the train home from her manager’s office, she sees reflected in the window her former idol self, what will come to be known as “the real Mima,” who is appalled at what she’s agreed to do and refuses. Over the course of the days and weeks to follow, this apparition comes to seem more and more real, and is maybe responsible for the bloody murders of one of her managers, the photographer of the nude shoot, and the writer of the TV show who’d proposed the rape scene.
This coincides with her discovery of “Mima’s Room” a blog ostensibly written by her, filled with intimate details that no one else would know about, such as which foot she puts into the bath first, or what she bought at the shop on the way home today. At first she’s tickled by the novelty. The internet is a new thing and she had to buy a computer and have a friend teach her how to use Netscape to even be able to see this site. But it quickly becomes threatening and unsettling. Is someone following her? She suddenly seems alone and vulnerable, her curtain flapping in the open window. Even worse, is there a “more real Mima” out there blogging and she is somehow the imitator, she who is doing things professionally that “the real Mima would never do.”
And we do know there is at least one stalker, Me-Mania, a super-fan and regular reader of the website who is in regular e-mail contact with “the real Mima” and will do anything to “protect her.” Does that mean he’s behind the killings? Maybe. Maybe not. The film maintains a tension of uncertainty such that it feels possible that he’s the killer, the idealized doppelganger is the killer, or that maybe Mima herself has been behind it all as she descends into madness.
And descend she does. Mima just comes apart at the seams. In one moment she is clearly filming a scene for the TV show, speaking with another character about her terrifying dreams, and the next moment she is stabbing the photographer in the eye, before waking up in her bed, before being back in the same scene of filming, discussing the same nightmares, before waking in her bed, unsure of what day it is, of what has happened or not. She can’t hold on to what is real or fiction and neither can we.
Somehow it feels strange to speak of live action filmmaking terms like camera work or editing in terms of an animated piece (though it probably shouldn’t), but how this film is cut plays such a large part in its success. It is a very rhythmic piece as we slide, hop, or march from one reality to the next, from the present moment to a memory, to a fantasy, to the brutal present again, and back into a life of the mind. Bursts of sound and silence accentuate these beats, these changes. All of this serves an effective tension, tight as a drum, as ready to snap as Mima.
By the end, all is revealed, more or less. I won’t go into details here, but she comes to understand who has been behind all this violence, and why, and after a final confrontation, Mima emerges, again fully herself. Without revealing the agent of these killings, everything has been tied up in the given image that Mima has chosen or rejected. Some people – fans, friends, even parts of Mima – have not been able to accept change, and their desperation to protect the innocence and sanctity of “the real Mima” led them to brutal acts.
Significant here, is the presentation of fan culture. These days, it’s not uncommon (I’ve written at least one post on it) to hear of “toxic fandom,” that supposed fans of given works can be so demanding and unforgiving of the work and creators they claim to love, that it results in a dark, cruel pettiness, an ugly, often racist, misogynistic attack on any artistic choice that deviates from their idealized perception of what the work is “supposed to be.” Whether Star Wars, Marvel movies, or even, sadly, horror flicks, the internet is full of trolls complaining about how one thing or another has “ruined their childhoods.” Situated as it is today in social media, this feels like a contemporary dynamic. Thus, it’s interesting to see it presented so clearly in this film produced in the mid-nineties, just as the internet was starting to take off.
The film opens with a CHAM! concert (in which Mima announces her retirement), intercut with scenes of her coming home to her tiny apartment and discussing career prospects with her managers. It’s striking how the audience for this pop “girl band” consists solely of young men. Before the concert starts, we pan through the crowd, overhearing critical discussions of different idols, gossip about Mima’s pending retirement, and conflict between fans who have come just to stir up trouble and troll everyone else. It is the comment section come to life. I can only assume that there were women and girls at the time who listened to pop idol groups, but we don’t see them. Only present are “otaku,” mega fans obsessing over one aspect of pop culture, and it seems that at least in these public gatherings, these otaku are all males.
Given the uniform gender of the audience, it casts a certain shade over the performance of the idols themselves. Sure, there is a presentation of childish innocence (later in the film, the scene of Mima doing her nude photoshoot is intercut with the remaining girls from her group singing about how they want to wear comfortable clothes and read comic books and never have to change), but in their short skirts, watched only by young men, that presentation is clearly sexualized, the fetishization of the cherished chastity no less exploitative than the explicitly sexual presentation Mima later takes on. Notably, they also sing a song encouraging the listener to “Be much more aggressive and you’ll get a chance – the angel of love is smiling at you!”
Late in the film, Mima is thrust into a confrontation with Me-Mania, who has been sent to destroy her by “the real Mima.” He speaks of how he would do anything to protect his “beloved Mima”, but in trying to stab Mima, he is also ripping her clothes off and climbing onto her. None of his lines explicitly state this, but it just feels that if his goal is her destruction, this sexual assault is an obvious part of that, suggesting how this kind of sexually possessive and violent mindset runs like a current through this male-oriented fan culture, not to mention “Culture”-writ-large. Of course, this is a film made by Japanese filmmakers about what they observed in their own society and I’m not qualified to judge the trends of a place I’ve never been, but I think that anyone who’s ever encountered a Youtube video complaining that Captain Marvel or the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot signify the downfall of society at the hands of “SJWs” will find this sentiment grossly familiar. To cast a critical eye on myself, earlier in this very text, when I wrote of how Mima’s squeaky girlie persona “bordered on irritating” I was probably unfairly disparaging a certain presentation of femininity as well (and/or I was guilty of a cultural chauvinism in my denigration of “kawaii,” a cultural value which is not my own). For either or both, I apologize.
In the end, it is all about image – Mima can either exploit her image in one way or another, but there doesn’t seem to be an option wherein exploitation is absent. I think when she reacts to filming the rape scene, crying in the bath later that night, it seems more that she is reacting to putting a certain image out into the world than she’s reacting to an unpleasant filming experience. When certain figures respond with violence, it’s because in their eyes, she doesn’t have the right to tarnish the image they had so obsessed over, and they are willing to destroy her, and, as a part of that, to violate her, to save her image from violation. By the end of the film, though, she does regain some degree of autonomy. She may be exploited, but how she exploits herself is at least her own choice to make.
Does that make it a happy ending? I don’t know – she seems happy. She’s a working, famous, respected actor, theoretically more free now to portray her own image differently from one role to the next. Her final line, to herself, in the mirror, is “Yes, I’m the real thing.” Has she landed on her feet, or is this a case of a more insidious commodification of her sense of self? However you read the moment, I think the film that precedes it is undeniably rich in its exploration of the fraught position of a young woman in Japan in 1997, and more broadly, women, and even more broadly, humans in the web of profit, commerce, and industry, in which we all reside in our current era of social media, self-promotion, and personal branding.
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So that’s Perfect Blue. One could argue whether or not it is exactly a horror film. Some might prefer to call it a thriller, but I think the distinction here is not helpful, and for me, between the tense thriller elements, the momentary bursts of bloody violence, and most significantly, the horrifying loss of personal identity and autonomy, it clearly qualifies as a standout, unique, effective horror film.
Also, to return to an earlier point, it is wild for me just how similar it is in structure and plotting to A Cat in the Brain. In both cases, we have a main character experiencing existential ambivalence regarding their relationship to their art and how they present themselves to the world, going crazy as they slip back and forth between what is “reality” and what is a “scene being filmed,” taken advantage of by a trusted figure who preys on their mental instability to kill a bunch of people and makes them think they may be doing it. And both have a ‘happy ending,’ with them going on with the once doubted career in question, newly confident in their choices. Otherwise, they’re as different as can be, but the coincidental similarity is fun.