Ani-Me #8: Unpacking the Dangers of PERFECT BLUE (1997) (Patreon)

Welcome to Ani-Me! The Series Where You Make Me Watch Anime! To be clear, you aren’t making me do anything because I have enjoyed every bit of this so far. And this week I was more in the mood for something that brought weirdness or edge to the proceedings. Thus, the recent poll has actually led us to another film from Satoshi Kon. But please take fair warning as the following discussion delves into some difficult territory.

CW: sexual assault, systemic abuse, stalking, and trauma.

Today’s Entry: PERFECT BLUE (1997)

It’s strange to be watching all these films 23 years later. Because they’ve already had these enormous impacts. They have been defined. They have influenced other work. And to come in and ignore that reality is folly. After all, one of the poorest forms of criticism is when people see films like Citizen Kane for the first time and just approach them like “lol this is supposed to be best movie ever!?!?! It’s just his stupid sled!” Truth is when you don’t understand the context of history with something you just end up showing your whole ass (and honestly I’m more aggrieved with the editors who are purposely serve these folks up to the outrage machine). To be clear, I’m also more than happy to de-elevate the canon (and it’s white male centrism) and find things that properly establish the progressive, diverse voices of history that have both always been there and ignored for so, so long. The thing is that understanding that history is critical to doing just that.

It’s also pretty scary. Because the world of cinema is so rich and nuanced that often, even if there’s one arena we know so well, there’s so many others we just never have delved into. I mean, I could paint you a diagram of the evolution of the French New Wave (because Euro-centric film school, etc), but I am radically I am out of my element with Japanese cinema and anime (hence this column series). But there is no shame in accepting ones own ignorance. Instead, there is only the joy of finally discovering what people loved for so long. I just comes with the onus of responsibility. Because one has to be really careful when digging into things about those beloved films that hit you… wrong.

Which is not to say that Perfect Blue, hits me wrong on the whole. I’m just of many minds about many things. And to make it easier to parse them, I’m going to align the discussion around four driving questions.

1. What is it that makes Anime so compelling?

At this point you know that I love these kinds of general questions that get at our essential motivations. Especially because it gives us a foundation.

Now, to those with passive familiarity with anime, they might have these blunt assumptions about why its fans like it. Things like: it’s always giant fighting robots! It’s just teenage fan-service and bewbs! Or it’s just about emotional detachment and indulgence! But these are just surface-level observations. And hell, even when criticism is deserved, it often ignores the ways that certain forms of appeal can be are more subtle and insidious. Like the idea that some fans are attracted to anime for its expression of more regressive cultural values, specifically around gender-norms / how women should behave / other stereotypes about Japanese culture that 1) aren’t even true but they propagate because 2) many wish were. But again, even all that plays into the idea of cynical, surface-level readings and there are far more knowledgable people than me to talk about it. Besides, the real joys I’m discovering are far more innocent.

It’s hard to deny that many people just yearn for a world that is radically different from their own. We understand this when we see fantasy depictions or the sci-fi sprawling, futuristic visions of the megapolis, but there are also realities closer on this earth. When I think about what I’ve loved in the anime I’ve seen so far, my mind rushes back to the pastoral beauty of farms near coastlines in Only Yesterday, Summer Wars and so much work from Miyazaki. I see all these idyllic stretches of land being colored by the four seasons of life. I also think about the care and attention paid to intimate moments of life, little details of behavior, and my word the loving emphasis on FOOD. And across all those details, there is the stylistic joys of the animation itself, whose aesthetic brings shape to its stories in such a profound way. There is just this undeniable emphasis on singular images, character moments, and artful compositions that stands a part from the more banal kineticism of so much American animation (and when anime does go kinetic, it’s often WOW). This is all generalization, for sure, but it really adds up to this unique pace that is values time itself in such a different way. And in turn, it opens the narratives up to the kind of intimate storytelling that really blossoms.

Because more than anything else, the one aspect of anime that I continue to be most impressed with is the overall focus on interiority. That would be the way it so succinctly wants to bring you inside a character’s head. It’s less a matter of POV, more the expression of feelings and wants within every little situation. We’re hyper attune to how each moment is effecting them. This is so important because it means every time they enter these dramatic situations, especially when small-stakes, you can fully emote right along side them and react in tow. Which is the reason that in anime the “plot” as we call it, can often fall by the way side. You’re so just comfortable being in the character’s moment that you don’t need an ever-tightening noose of stakes around them. Funnily enough, this is also the reason why reason when so many anime films first start, I have NO IDEA where this is going. We are just learning who the person is. But in America, we are rarely treated to such confidence of luxury. Instead our films love to scream “this is what the movie is!” from minute one (unless using a clear bait in hook). But with nearly all the anime I’ve seen so far, we’re simply treated to the character’s emotional state and they trust that everything else you will be able to roll with, if only because they are articulating that state so well.

There other thing I love about this approach is the way it effects the pace itself. American film still tends to have a big emphasis on “scenes” (which of course largely comes out of the western playwriting tradition). Granted, this completely works. I’ve been lucky enough to work with incredible writers who are so, so good at the simple art of scene writing - where you orchestrate these mini-arcs and feats of drama that get us from point A to point B in a way that feels like a journey in just a few pages. But I’ve also long argued that you don’t always need a whole “scene.” Sometimes you need a few lines and a great transition to the end result. Besides, if everything is a “scene” then maybe it can make for this constant feeling of stop start rather than a completely natural evolution of information that goes at the pace it needs to. All the Presidents Men was one of those perfect movies that exemplifies that ability to transition (so has basically everything Soderbergh has ever done). It’s not that you’re turning everything into a montage, it’s that can create a propulsive sense in the story itself (that isn’t forced by the edit). And maybe it’s the advantage of animation (you don’t need to rent an entire location and do a day of shooting) but I keep loving how much the anime I’ve seen isn’t really focused on “scenes” at all. We move at the speed of the story, which is to say the characters hearts and minds. And I can’t tell you how great it feels, especially given that it’s my same creative instinct.

The truth is that I know I’m making a lot of generalizations here, but I’ve really found them to be strong undercurrent of what we’ve watched. And with regards to the subject at hand, I found that Perfect Blue exemplifies all these positive qualities of story approach. It moves at this remarkable, focused clip and so completely brings you into the interiority of its main character… Which is precisely the thing that makes it so unnerving. Gah, there’s just so many powerful, haunting details I could talk about… but admittedly, I don’t think that going over all of them is all that productive. I mean, you know what makes those details so haunting. Because we all undeniably know what this film feels like to watch. And more importantly, it really could be re-traumatizing to just delve into all of it with repetition. So that’s not what I want to do is more talk about the big thematic points of the film and delve right into the bigger question: “we know it’s effecting, but what is this film ultimately saying?”

Because I have some more questions…

2. Do people realize what the Madonna / Whore paradigm is really about?

I realized I haven’t written about this particular subject in awhile, but it’s sort of amazing how much this subject matter has infiltrated the popular dialogue. I mean, 10 years ago? It felt like no one outside of academia was really covering this stuff in popular film criticism. Now, it’s everywhere. And some of it almost feels old hat. But it’s still so worth it to constantly re-examine the madonna / whore complex because it is still so much at the center of society. Or let me say the center of straight, gender-normative society, as it’s a pretty dominant cis-het issue. But it thanks to the world’s bleeding effect, it unfortunately spills into so many other arenas.

Because it creates these ave these two opposing ideals of femininity, right? There’s the Madonna, the saintly, maternal, non-sexualized woman who guides and takes care of men. This version can spill into many arenas, whether the idea of being high class, or mannered, or polite, or kind and accepting to a fault, but it all relates around the idea of purity as being the most essential value. And then there is “The Whore,” which is both steeped in shame because it is “impure” and yet the absolute sexual representation that men so clearly desire. I mean, look at literally everything about the hyper-sexualization of society. This is what is desired. And it is impossible to deny. So what we are saying here is that straight men want madonna figures. And then the want whore figures. This obviously has its own problems. But the bigger problem is that men also have the complete inability to see that a human being as both figures. Because once something becomes “impure,” it is irreparable.

Now, to be clear, this is obvious bullshit. Everyone is just a damn person. People have a right to the entire gamut of full and realized selves with sexuality and parental instincts and everything in between. This is of course something men have ZERO problem seeing in themselves, but the inability to see it in women? Well, it is often argued that this mostly has to do with male repression and, sure, there are are obvious religious influences over these ideas, along with the crippling power of shame. But it goes far beyond that, too. Because the real point the madonna / whore complex is to make women feel wrong no matter what they do. Yes, that is the point. Because in the end, it is about control. It’s about when men want you to be the madonna, or when they want you to be their whore, because it’s what they want / when they want it - and making you feel bad when you don’t behave how they want. We’ve seen it happen so many times. Men will put a woman on a pedestal, then that woman dates someone else? How dare she be impure whore! Even though it’s exactly what they wanted for themselves. It’s a no win situation. A rigged game. And it’s not even because of some conspiracy like plot from the top down (even though men are in control of the system). The entire thing exists so naturally in a patriarchal society that it just erupts out of the controlling, angry id of men at large.

Aside from the fact that this thinking needs to be obliterated in all respects, I mention all of this because the first hour of Perfect Blue is pretty much exclusively about this complex. Because Mima Kirigoe is going through a transition. She is going from a young, semi-successful pop idol (AKA a madonna figure whose allure is based on bubble gum purity) and switching to being actress. But what that means is she has to take roles that fit in the “violent dramatic TV series” landscape. The things that fit in the CSI world or all the Silence of the Lambs knock-offs we saw in the 90’s. Thus, she has to shoot scenes full of violation where she’s attacked and raped, all to fit the salacious requirements of the content. And for her own career meta-narrative? It’s to show she’s no longer just a pop idol, but a real adult actress.

The thing about this entire career transition is that it’s something we’ve seen so many times that we barely blink at it (or at least are finally grappling with). Hell, for a long time it was practically written into the young Disney star handbook. And given that it’s 2020, can we point out that this is completely fucked up? The idea that so many young women turn 18 and then are suddenly put in a room with 30-60 year old members of the crew and it’s like, hey, now be THIS kind of adult and take off your clothes. Please understand this isn’t about pearl-clutching fears of impurity. Nor is it about disrespect to a young person’s agency. Fuck no. This about messed-up systems that are designed to take away a person’s agency / control / expression / and take advantage of others. And more importantly, recognizing the effects it can have on actual people involved. I mean, look at the recent revaluation around the Britney Spears media coverage. It’s all part of the same struggle of navigation through this pure / impure social complex.

Similarly, what Mima is really wrestling with is less her own hang-ups and more the effects of the madonna / whore complex - specifically people’s ability to only see her one way or another. Throughout the entire film we see so many manipulations of the system and the men who run it. Simultaneously, this acting decision leads to her being stalked by a fan who doesn’t like the impurity of her new career (because he can’t stand the loss of her madonna status). When he seemingly begins writing the story on his blog, it makes her feel so awful and judged, especially as the main reason she’s doing so much of this is to help “the people who believed in her.” Mima so deeply internalizes this struggle, to the point that she begins visualizing the pop star version of herself who stayed pure. This other self begins chastising her, saying things like “you’re a filthy woman now.” Again, this is the pain of internalizing a system that is designed to make you feel wrong no matter what you choose. And it’s maddening.

Now, for a lot of the running time, Perfect Blue seems incredibly sensitive to the manipulations of all these things. Which, again, is part of the reason it’s really, really hard to watch. It’s acutely aware of the awful process of shooting rape scenes, with it’s stop / start mechanics, repetition, and making people sum up traumatic emotions. It’s so overwhelming it can literally shut you down (cue her manager smoking cigarettes watching with 1000 yard stare). This is the pain that comes with “making it real” and the horrible ironies of being greeting to the thunderous cheers as you actively disassociate. Because the thing about “making it real” is that all of this *IS* real. You are making doing real things. You are summing up tears and crying. You are really being touched. In fact, the real problem only comes when you pretend that it isn’t real and that these things aren’t effecting you.

That push / pull of denial is so hard to process because it’s yet another part of the overall madonna / whore complex. It’s so gutting when Mima when Mima is triggered by the death her fish and she falls to her bed and screams, “OF COURSE I DIDN’T WANT TO DO IT!” And I feel like it’s this is something men rarely understand? There’s just all these patriarchal pressures of being woman (the very SAME pressure they often put on). Ones where you can feel the weight of consequence and it’s so much easier to just give into them. Because it’s part of the rigged game. And when the regret comes, men can just further scream, “why did you do it if you didn’t want to!?!?!” Again, the answer is obvious: the pressure. They even know it’s the pressure. But ensuing castigation is part of the system of control, to imbue with shame no matter what is chosen.

Quick aside: what I’m describing here is something I can intellectually understand, sure, but that’s not the same as understanding from having a similar emotional experience. And I could never pretend to know. But in the last five or so years I’ve suddenly had this window into a certain kind of experience that hit me profoundly. Because while I had had some light experiences prior, it wasn’t until I came out as an adult and was really throwing myself into the sexual world of men that I suddenly had this emotional experience of pressure vs. unsured-ness. It’s not that having sex with women doesn’t have pressures and important matters of sensitivity. Of course not. It’s just that the pressures are different. And with men, there so much I loved and enjoyed right from the start, but suddenly there’s new matters of control where you in another person’s hands and it can go wrong so quickly. To put it bluntly, receiving is so much harder to navigate sometimes, particularly when someone is amped up. It’s simple things like saying “stop” when I wanted something to stop, or it wasn’t feeling good. Men treat these things like they should be obvious - but it doesn’t work like that. And to be clear, I genuinely like doing all these things - it’s just so much easier for it not to be working sometimes. Or to be working and then go wrong. So it was this giant crash course in how hard it was to have agency in those moments / how easy it was to steel myself through things / or simply agree to things you don’t want to do (at least just yet) because of the magnitude of intensity and pressure. You just don’t want to disappoint. And straight men rarely experience this (at least in this particular way). So it became this process of coming out the other side with understanding and my own agency / confidence / being at peace with my ability to navigate the process… but it was so fucking hard to get there. Again, all I know is this particular experience so I could be completely misguided in the comparison - it just felt like it gave this window into understanding the difficulty of navigating physical pressures - particularly in a way that women have so often said is true. And thus it is about nothing but the deepest sense of empathy and awareness for that.

And for first hour, I believe Perfect Blue has that utter sensitivity for Mima’s experience. Particularly the danger and tension created by the mysterious fan / stalker figure who is going around and creating that fear. The stalker does not approve of her loss of Madonna status. Soon, we believe the stalker is killing people who hurt and manipulated her. Specifically, the act of stabbing out their eyes, which is like this huge symbolic gesture where the figure is literally taking out the male gaze (I legit almost spelled that, the male gayz due to a podcast I like). But outside of this thematic gesture, this stalker character is also so much of a cypher. And when you get into the portrayal of the motivations of this character, there is an angle of this that really starts to not feel right…

3. Did you know Richard III wasn’t actually “deformed”?

You’ve probably seen classical depictions of the infamous king that show otherwise. Because isn’t he’s the famous hunchback, cruel and twisted, and but these features are thus showing his cruel and twisted-ness on the inside? Why, it’s even perhaps implying he’s been ill struck by god and thus taking it out on the world around him!

Yeah, it’s all bullshit.

By all accounts the man just had a pretty standard case of scoliosis, which was barely noticeable with clothing. In fact, it turns out the entire depiction was part of Tudor propaganda, done mostly to validate Henry VII’s seizure of the throne. By the time it got to Shakespeare, he further cemented the notions into legend, all before Thomas More doubled down on the myth until and wrote he was, "little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed ... hard-favoured of visage.” The obvious question is why? Why do this? Can’t Richard III’s offenses be just the same offenses that so many terrible kings took part in? Well, it’s done because historically we’ve always regarded ugliness and disability as cause for evil in and of themselves.

It really is just that simple. We demonize looks constantly. Look at the entire history of villains. Hell, look how it shapes the political dialogue on twitter. Few subjects create more bias in the mass social space that “quality of appearance.” To make matters worse, it rides hand in hand with the massive forms of ableism that have plagued us forever and get lumped together. It’s so fucking normalized most people don’t even think about it. You have these massive cultural touchstones like Lord of the Rings where all the good guys have saintly white visages, going to do battle with ugly monsters and vague foreign-looking barbarians. It’s fucked. And so completely ingrained into virtually every story we tell. And I regret that it’s one of the things that took me so, so long to really see for what it was. But when you see it, you can’t stop seeing it. Which is why it’s so important to keep combating, whether it’s large scale dialogue or even pointing it out in the little corners that most people breeze right by. For example, I was so struck by this column from Chris Plante who wrote a few years ago about the terrible ways we portray cleft palates in media. We demonize things like this without so much of a second thought. And yet, the subtext always reins: “They are unlike us, which fuels them to be bad”

For an hour of running time the bad stalker guy of Perfect Blue takes precedence as the boogie man of the story (and even in the end, he is “a” bad guy, just not the main killer). He is an obsessed fan of Mima. And he is portrayed as having an unspecified physical deformity or disfigurement. To be clear, I apologize if I’m not using the right language on this, I actually keep looking things like this up, but resources online can get dated quick. So please tell me, especially given that the portrayal is part of the problem in even knowing how to talk about it. Because some people hate the word deformity, while some hate disfigurement, but it’s always better to use the specific ailment in question. But because we can’t tell the specificity of the depiction here, we have to default to the vagueness of grander statement, which is all the more troubling. But the most troubling thing is obviously the intent of the choice itself. Because it clearly implies that his deformity fuels his malice. That he clearly “cant get love anywhere else,” and lives through the fantasy online and paints a direct line from that affliction to becoming a murderous stalker.

And it is bullshit.

We could not be talking more about two different things. Folks, there are so many people who have trouble creating meaningful relationships. There are so many people who feel lonely and unloved. There are people with awkward, internalized emotional issues. There are so many people with body issues. There are so many people who live with disabilities. There are so many people who fantasize about public figures or let their fandoms go to major levels. There are so many people who deal with all these things. And yet, miraculously none of these people go on to murder others! Wow! How do they NOT do it?!?!?!?! Because what actually motivates that murderous line crossing is not internalized pain, nor obsessed fandom, nor disability, nor anything like that… it’s just fucking entitlement.

I don’t even want to use his name, the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings was this wake-up call to what we’d later identify as the prospective terror of “incel culture.” Unfortunately, the media keeps eating up the idea that it’s about rejection and the fact society doesn’t want them and can’t get laid. The “rejection” had nothing to do with that. It was the fact that he was a hateful, angry, asshole who was full of resentment because of his inability to control and have ownership over women. He basically fucking said as much. And yet this understanding was met with glad-handing, and even empathy for his plight, and all the P*t*rs*ns of the world going around saying “we need to give them the control they wants!” Even on the flip-side there was all this toxic thinking like “oh there must have been something wrong with him.” I mean, it’s not that this even should matter, but the dude was this perfectly normal, fine looking dude. And I likewise saw people being like “he must of had a small dick!” and it’s like, motherfucker this is just making the conditions of toxicity so, so much worse. It’s not about any of that.

Look at the capitol insurrection. The more we try to think there are humane reasons for entitlement, the more you just embolden it. And for so many people, this shit with stalkers is terrifyingly real. I have friends who were stalked. I’ve dated people who were stalked. And the belief that it’s predicated on the stalker’s internal pain or rejection (instead of their horrifying desire for control) only mitigates the pain it causes others. And it all goes right square back to the same large scale complexes that infect everything, like the madonna / whore, which is also about the deep-seated issues of control. So, yes, on one hand I have to admit the depiction of the stalker character in Perfect Blue is accurate in that it understandings the dangers of the “purity” complex. But on the other hand, the motives of that character ends up backing up notion of so many toxic things that go right along with it. And normally, we would be having a whole conversation about how the depiction of this character ties into the film’s ending… But instead, Perfect Blue pivots.

And there’s a shit load to unpack about THAT choice.

4. What is the point of endings?

Again, I am asking a broad as hell question in order for us to really think about the core purpose. I know I’ve talked about the importance of theme so, so, so many times before, but I do this because it seems like the industry doesn’t talk about it enough. Almost all the conversation around storytelling seems to focus on these mystical full-proof structures or maybe some character arcs if we’re lucky - but theme is what really resonates with audiences. It’s what allows the emotional effect of a movie to go beyond the mere drama of the moment. Because it’s what sticks with us long after the movie is over. It’s why some films speak to us and feel personal, thus getting to live on endlessly.

I cannot overstate how much this is true. Themes really, really do affect people and build a sense of how we see the world (especially with the people who think it don’t think they matter at all).So much should be obvious, though. Propaganda fucking works. And think of all bad lessons that have come out of cinema. They myth of the good guys with a gun. Or the idea that opposites attract. Or that meanness is a love language. We portray these things because they are dramatically interesting, but they add up. Even when it’s fantastical story, you’re always showing an audience a version of “how the world works” or “this is how people behave” and contextualizing those views within the drama. And because films always say things whether we mean them to or not, you might as well harness what you’re saying.

For the love of god I’m not saying depiction = endorsement or any of that crud. I’m saying there’s tactical engagement. Your thematic work can be bold and full of heart, or more complex and nuanced - but either way, nowhere is more important to harness your thematic messaging than with your ending. Because it is the conclusion of dramatic process, the final decision of your characters, and the sum of the lesson learned (or not learned if that’s your point, too). There’s a reason every Shakespeare play ended with monologue that clearly states the intent of what to take away from the story. Sure, in modernity, we’ve opted for more dramatically organic processes, but the intent is still the same. So with endings, you really just want to ask yourself two simple questions…

Do you find this lesson to be true?

And is that really what you want to saying with your story?

No matter how much I advocate for this, the truth is that most people stumble with endings across the board. Usually this is a symptom of a several issues. The first speaks to the above in that they never really figure out what they were saying in the first place. But often it’s a failure of writing itself. They think coming up with the movie is just a crackling premise and letting it ride from there. But you need the ending to complete the thought. It’s your basic set-up / punchline. And without it? You just limp to the finish line. I mean, how many movies do we see where the ending is “okay, the bad guy is dead and the conflict is over” and it’s like all the air just gets let out. No, endings are about more than alleviation. They need to be hammers.

Some people instinctively understand this, but often in trying to achieve that “wow factor,” they make decisions that actually violate the intent of their set-up. And usually it’s because they get caught in the trap of trying to “outsmart the audience.” This is particularly true of mysteries where the author often has the over-whelming desire to surprise the audience. Yet few of them use the time-tested mechanics of misdirection and careful building of set-up to achieve it (which is why the list of movies with great twists is only like 25 entries long). Instead, they often come from left field or hide the most critical details. This often reflects the author’s desire to be the magician. Where they value making the impossible twist that no one saw coming more than asking whether that twist even makes sense for the story.

Despite the obvious flaws of this thinking, there is so much innate belief that surprise is always what makes for good storytelling. I’ve written about this so much with popular artists like J.J. Abrams (who I have to keep mentioning I like on some levels), but it’s so much more wide-spread than that. Especially in B level dramatic television and unpicked up independent features. So many authors confuse being vague for being complex (if you’re looking for a good dramatic crash course on this, season five of Bojack Horseman takes this on so sublimely). It’s almost as if the desire to surprise creates this inherent desire to cheat the audience. Because it requires a character you wouldn’t believe would do X, to then do X. But in the end, it can’t JUST be surprising. It has to make sense in the kind of way where we slap our foreheads and go “oh of course!” And most importantly of all…

The surprise has to strike us as true.

What’s difficult is that it seems like Perfect Blue is acutely aware of the problems with these dramatic conventions. We literally overhear the writers of the show B.S. their way through talking with the crew before a producer tells them to finally “make up your mind who the criminal is.” You feel like Kon is aptly criticizing this engagement and in total control. Moreover, the film seems so damn sensitive to Mami’s experience and the trials and tribulations of what women face in the industry. And so when we get to the final reveal of who the real killer is… uh… I have questions.

Because, yes, this brings us to the Rumi of it all. For it seems she’s having one of those split personality break things (which is exactly the kind of trope the show within the show makes fun of). But it’s really just straight up doing it, too, huh? It feels a bit like an undercutting irony. But to be fair, on paper you can realize the “logical” things that set up the choice. You can see what her earlier scene of her in tears really means. You also get what the talk of her being “missing” are really about. And even on the thematic level, there is a part of this that checks out because she is the model madonna figure to Mami and thus would be disappointed in her very non-madonna choices. We’ve even seen popular depictions of this kind of thing before, what with the tradition of films like Carrie or Mommie Dearest. But those expressions feel laser targeted from start to finish (though not without their problems). Meanwhile with Perfect Blue’s depiction, I was certainly surprised, but I worry that surprise is actually part of the reason the depiction feels much more sudden, evasive, and half-baked.

It even feels out of place with the sensitivity of the film’s insight into the filmmaking world. For instance, the “older female manager figure” is this interesting thing. Ideally, she’s there for guidance and protection, but we know that’s not always true of these arenas (as there are often Ghislaine monster types of this world who both buy into / subject you to the horrors of power structure). And given how good Perfect Blue is at depicting this world, we’re sort of barely grazing past these notions in order to achieve the ultimate bait and switch. Because Rumi has what seems a very humanizing portrait and rooted in empathy with this daughter figure. It’s played earnestly. And to have all those ideas and feelings suddenly get washed away to reveal: “she’s insane and living out her fantasies of being young vicariously through taking care of you” is… well, there’s a way to do that. We understand what obsessive, controlling parents can be like. But it’s really built into this particular story. Her portrayal is so much more sensitive and humane, because it really wants to nail the surprise - and does so. But in the end is this really what it wants to say about older women and mentor figures that empathize and believe you? That they’re secretly just vampire-ing you? That they’re worst bad people! Like it or not, the ending is really turning head-long into that idea.

So I can’t help but think, “how much does Kon really mean this?” Because so much of the ending hysterics are emotionally affecting (like the haunting way that Rumi’s dream self skip around) - but it also feel so out of line with the brutal clarity of what comes before. And I can’t help but worry that it’s as if he fell victim to the desire to be surprising over coherent. To boot, the ending is constantly playing with the idea of “what is real” in a way that doesn’t actually add to the tension anymore (where the first hour did it so damn well). Instead, it’s just making it more confusing. Put simply: I was never saying “of course!” in the final twenty minutes, I was always saying “what the hell?”

I was also constantly trying to give the benefit of the doubt to all this, but the film ultimately doubles down on the problematic idea when Mami, now a huge star tell us us “thanks to her, I am who I am today” and it comes with this sudden glib tone. Let’s make no mistake: this does that very harmful thematic thing where it implies trauma is but a stepping stone to self-empowerment. And it also doubles down on the demonization of Rumi figures and establishing her lone wolf success. And the glibness would be one thing if it landed this idea in a way that was steeped in irony, but there are no Clockwork Orange like proclamations of something a la “I was cured!” Instead, it’s just so wishy washy and vague in its intent, which just means that the film can play coy about whether it’s saying that or NOT saying that.

Needless to say everything about those choices left a kind of distaste in my mouth. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that this was now the second Kon movie in a row I’ve seen where, after all the humane sensitivities of the story they eventually come to an out-of-nowhere ending with a “bitches be crazy!” type twist (specifically with wannabe murderous mother type figures) and right now I’m like ‘Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, what’s going here everybody?” Granted even as I’m glib myself about this insight, I don’t feel like whatever Kon means here that it was done out of malice. I think it’s a just product of many competing instincts. And it results in the kind of film that has the ability to recognize the problem of those Silence of the Lambs knock-off tropes - and yet ends up feeling like an embodiment of them, too.

Which is true for a lot of aspects of the film. I mean, this is a movie that has such outrageous empathy for it’s lead and yet you’re mostly watching that same woman be emotionally and physically tortured for 80 minutes. It’s not that it’s deeply hypocritical like some some efforts. It’s that like so much art, it embodies the thing it’s also criticizing. Like as it gets to that brutal sequence with the stalker attack near the end, i kept half-looking at the screening and thinking “god, someone had to spend months animating all this.” Seriously, I’ve known people who have to work on those kinds of sequences before and it genuinely wreaks havoc on them. I can’t NOT think about that. Especially when it’s this exact kind of lack of sensitivity Kon criticizes in an earlier scene.

To be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be telling these kinds of stories. I’m just acknowledging the core paradox. For all my criticism, this film is a well-crafted and deeply powerful experience in a way that is undeniable. So many great writers have explained why so succinctly, albeit often the kind of warnings that “this is a film that will leave you with profound psychological scars, and the feeling that you want to take a long, long shower.” It’s true. It so deftly examines the torture of her experience, but it also just passes the torture torch in a way. That’s problem with being so unnerving. And I’m left to worry that, thanks to the one-two combo of the troubling stalker / Rumi depictions, it’s also unnerving in a way I don’t know if I feel is true.

… At least anymore.

Because I’m realizing how many 90s movies (and earlier ones, of course) just didn’t realize they were dramatizing trauma. Or maybe they did, but didn’t have the more specific therapeutic language for things that we do now. And so many films less understood the problems of embodying the thing they were criticizing, or normalizing it. But that just brings it to another paradox - because in a world where the empathy for so many traumatic experiences was often missing, the mere existence of these depictions can feel like a damn balm. Because it is a way of being seen. I remember when I wrote about Neon Genesis Evangelion there were so many people who came to me and said “back in the 90’s this show explained how I felt when I didn’t understand the word depression.” And there is such utter worth to this. Because even the most problematic of depictions can also make us not feel like we’re alone in a given experience.

And what Perfect Blue taps into? It taps in like a damn dagger. This is undeniable. But also undeniable is the murky way we can think about its choices now. And its history and effect in 1997 may have been far different than I realize. I’m can only come at it from 2021, which has the benefit of the arc of time. A place where we can see all the ways we’ve changed and yet not changed at all. But this is the gift of hindsight. And this same week, I watched the entirety of Ted Lasso and I’ve had those beautiful words ringing in my ears: “Be curious, not judgmental.” And so with this film, please understand I have not come from 2021 with judgement, but curiosity. Which might be the best way to take on history anyway.

For what else could give us understanding of how we got here.

<3HULK