{"id":2437,"date":"2019-02-28T15:36:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T20:36:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2019-06-17T14:30:34","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T18:30:34","slug":"broken-mirrors-perfect-blue-20-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/28\/broken-mirrors-perfect-blue-20-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken Mirrors: Perfect Blue 20 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\nMima Kirigoe (voiced by Junko\nIwao) is a pop idol. She\u2019s the lead singer for the J-Pop band CHAM,\nand she\u2019s about to perform her last show, before leaving the music\nindustry to try her hand at acting. Working security just below the\nstage is a man who looks disturbingly out of place. He is a black\nhole amid the glow of the stage design’s birthday cake pastels,\nballerina costuming and upbeat, bouncy pop music about lost love and\nthe possibility of romance. He is ghostly pale, with raven\u2019s hair\ndraped over the right side of his face. His eyes are noticeably small\n(placing him in direct contrast with the large, expressive eyes that\nnormally accompanied anime characters at the time). He doesn\u2019t\nspeak or emote much at all until he sees Mima. He is enraptured in\nher every movement, gesture, and pivot. He points his arm out toward\nher. Director Satoshi Kon fixates on this man\u2019s point of view as he\nsees Mima with a mixture of lust, possessiveness and envy. The image\nblurs around the corners to force Mima into clearer definition, and\nfrom this man\u2019s forced perspective Mima dances in the palm of his\nhand like a ballerina music box. She belongs to him in that moment.\nHe will do everything in his power for that to be true forever. Mima\nhas no knowledge of his existence. She continues to sing…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nA woman learns early that her\nbody isn\u2019t her own. It\u2019s a disorienting effect to walk down the\nstreets and have the peace of mobility disrupted by the howl of the\neveryday man, who was also taught a lesson in his young age: that a\nwoman\u2019s body is his. It could be the unwanted touch, the snap of a\nbra from the class-clown at the onset of puberty or the later\nrealization that your own choice of whether or not to have a child is\nup for debate. You can point to your doctor and say something\u2019s\nseriously wrong, because menstrual pain is overwhelming and\ndebilitating and not be taken seriously. You can even stake your\nclaim that you are a woman, in flesh and blood and soul, and need\nhormone replacement therapy and be told to further prove your own\nvalidity to a professional who knows your body better than you. In\nday to day life, we can retreat from this reality in the space of\nbedrooms that we turn into our own, in the company of friends who\nshare similar concerns or in the locked doors of an apartment you\nbarricade yourself within when things get too heavy, but these spaces\nare shrinking with time. Our reliance on the internet, and the\nintegration of social media into our own reality is cleaving the body\nas a safe space. The internet crosses all moats, strides across all\nbarriers and knocks down all our doors. On the internet, anyone can\nhave access to you at any time, and we have welcomed that reality\nwith open arms, and women, by and large, have been the victims of\nthis dissolution of distance between reality and the online world. We\nshould own the right to exist freely in our own bodies, but we do\nnot, and now, anyone, any time, anywhere in the world, can make that\na reality. We are passengers in our own skin, the meat upon the\nmarket; the dolls boys play with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nMima is being watched. There is\nan initial image of the apartment complexes fading into the horizon\nof a pitch black sky, but in one window we can see light and a woman\nmoving about. The camera pulls in until we realize it is Mima\nrummaging through her mail. She\u2019s been given a letter which simply\ngives her the name of a web address. Because she doesn\u2019t have a\ncomputer she has no concept of the internet or what a url even means.\nIt\u2019s practically a foreign language to her, but our stalker doesn\u2019t\nknow that and persists regardless. The opening shot in this scene of\nthe camera pulling in could be from the stalker\u2019s point of view in\nsome consideration and the letter only makes the scene more\nhorrifying, because Kon is forcing us to sit in this predator\u2019s\nshoes and consider his mindset, but in addition to that we know Mima\nis defenseless. The letter is a dare, to excite the stalker and pull\nhis victim closer into his webbed trap. Mima, being ignorant of what\nthis letter actually means, brings it to her manager Rumi-Chan the\nfollowing day and she knows exactly what a url is, but also doesn\u2019t\nsee malice in this language. Rumi-Chan helps Mima buy a computer and\nlater sets it up in her bedroom. When she visits the website, which\nis like a LiveJournal about her every moment in day to day life, she\ndoesn\u2019t see the violence therein, but merely thinks someone really\nknows her well. She pulls the curtain closed, but that act doesn\u2019t\nbring safety. The internet makes such precautionary measures\nmeaningless. What Mima doesn\u2019t realize is that by engaging with\nthis website, and reading it, she has already been violated. She\ncannot be herself if there is another, separate entity, framing her\nin a different light, and claiming to be her. There is the Mima that\nis real, and the one that is perceived, and the internet blurs the\nsoul of the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nThe camera rests on the closed\ncurtain. Forcing us to look<\/em> for far longer than is\ncomfortable. Many movies about voyeurism, even popular ones like Rear\nWindow<\/em> and Blue Velvet, <\/em>use the act of the voyeur as\naudience surrogate to incite thrills above the art of becoming\nuncomfortable in the act of looking where one is not supposed to\nlook. To Blue Velvet\u2019s <\/em>credit David Lynch understands how to\nutilize time in an effort to enhance future discomfort. This is most\nprominent during the first interactions between Isabella Rossellini\nand Dennis Hopper\u2019s characters which turns violent, uncomfortable\nand abstract very quickly, but this is not without the thrill of Kyle\nMcLachlan looking around the apartment first. The fundamental\ndifference between Rear Window, <\/em>which is all thrills, Blue\nVelvet <\/em>and Perfect Blue <\/em>is that in the latter examples\nthere is the danger of the voyeur being caught, which makes the\naudience less complicit in the act itself. There is morality there,\nbut in Perfect Blue <\/em>there is no chance of being seen. We\u2019re\ntoo far away, but looking nonetheless, and Mima has no clue\nwhatsoever that our eyes are upon her. This is the psychology of\nmovies in a nutshell, and by placing the central question of\nvoyeurism in a shell of female vulnerability the images become\ncomplicated, knotty and uncomfortable, because we are looking from a\nposition of power, as a predator, and she is there to be seen. The\nbrilliant thing about Satoshi Kon, however, is that in time he blurs\nthe image until we have no control over what we\u2019re seeing. We\nbecome lost at sea in the narrative of his characters and become\nunsure what is real and what is fantasy, and who we are looking at to\nbegin with, and that is never more the case than with Perfect\nBlue. <\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nMima begins her new job the next\nday and one thing is clear: The old Mima is dead. Meet the new Mima.\nWhile Mima was in CHAM she was the perfect pastel ideal of femininity\nin the sugar coated lyricism of Japanese Pop Music, but now she\u2019s\nmoved into pulpy trash television. The show she is working on is a\nriff on The Silence of the Lambs, <\/em>and judging by its barely\nthere plotting built upon transgressions, blood and violence, it\nwould have fit in right at home in the budding market of Japan\u2019s\nV-Cinema contemporaries from the likes of Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi\nKurosawa. Mima only has one line in her debut appearance, but\nimmediately she\u2019s surrounded by the grisly carnage of filmmaking,\nas the producers quickly decide to make her character a rape victim,\nwith multiple personality disorder. This is where the producers say,\n\u201cIt\u2019s fine. Jodie Foster did it, right?\u201d, but Mima\u2019s\nconcerned about her image, and so are her agents. She decides to do\nit, because she wants to be a \u201creal\u201d actor, but this begs the\nquestion, \u201cwhy is this the most valued cinematic image for a\nwoman?\u201d. I fully understand that the limits of genre force\ncharacters into boxes, most of them being heavily gendered, but that\nstill doesn\u2019t negate the fact that for a woman to survive in this\nfictional world of movies, and in the real one, they often have to go\nto psychological extensive extremes that men do not have to. In order\nto be taken seriously as an artist, if you are a woman, you must give\nyour entire body. That is the commonly held idea of our societal\nvalue in movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nWhile Mima is coming to grips\nwith her decision to go through with the part, the man with the\nraven\u2019s hair can be seen in the distance, tearing a hole in the\nscenery, much like he did at the concert. He doesn\u2019t fit anywhere,\nbut he\u2019s there, watching Mima, completely unnoticed. As an image,\nthis is a powerful metaphor for the daily life of being a woman. You\ncan be free, to a point, but the lingering shadow of potential\nviolence and trauma stemming from gendered persecution doesn\u2019t\ndissipate. Men will always be here, and we will never know who may be\nthe villain of our story. We pray we never find him, but we know we\nhave to look. The internet, by extension, makes this even more\ndifficult to parse. Everyone has access. Anyone can reach out and\nmake life strange, worse, torturous if they choose to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nMima begins to realize the\nwebsite dedicated to her isn\u2019t a joke after the person claiming to\nbe her insists the Mima who is participating in bikini photo-shoots\nand tv shows that involve rape isn\u2019t the real Mima. This unsettles\nher to the point where she realizes she is now in danger, and the\nperson who has been blogging as her online is not a benign entity but\nsomething altogether more insidious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan\nwere one of the only countries to have a finger on the pulse of an\nincoming world that would be completely online. It was during the mid\nto late 90s when anime properties like Serial Lab Experiments: Lain\n(1998), Ghost in the Shell (1995), and Perfect Blue (1997) began to\npaint a portrait of a world where there was no distance between the\nversion of you that was flesh and the doppleganger of your own\ncreation that existed online. At the same time the United States were\nmaking films that are now, in hindsight, not at all revelatory on the\ntopic of internet anxieties. These were films about internet rebels:\nhackers, thieves and spies, but that wasn\u2019t everyday people. In\nJapan, it was high school girls, entry-level musicians, and police\nofficers who became entangled in the problems of the internet.\nHollywood wouldn\u2019t make a worthwhile film about the internet until\nThe Matrix (1999), which was heavily influenced by anime. We have to\nlook to Japan to understand our looming future. What these initial\nfilms signal is strikingly similar to our own current state of\nexistence on the internet. In the context of Perfect Blue, it isn\u2019t\ndifferent from the real life stories of online harassment actresses\nlike Kelly\nMarie Tran<\/a> or Daisy\nRidley<\/a> experienced after the image of Star Wars shifted into\nsomething that immature manchildren rejected. The sad state of\nthings, however, is that a lot of women who are online have gone\nthrough similar experiences of abuse without the benefit of being\nable to log off due to the intersecting roles of capitalist\nstructures within an online world. For those, there is no respite\nfrom the dangers of the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\ncentral question women have to navigate on the internet is, \u201cHow do\nyou have agency over your own body when there is no escape from\noutside forces?\u201d Before the internet there was the seclusion of a\npersonal home or bedroom, but these barriers do not exist when every\nhouse has a wifi account. Google maps has pictures of your street if\nsomeone wants to find it, and with social media there are pictures of\neveryone everywhere. Social media at its absolute best is the\npossibility for positive connection, but one would have to be naive\nto think that there wasn\u2019t something vicious lying under the\nsurface that could find its way into your life if necessary. Perfect\nBlue is brilliant, because it has a fundamental understanding of\nthese problems. For Mima the inability to escape her stalker, either\nonline or in day to day life, causes her to misinterpret her own\nbody. She begins to lose herself in the role of the character she\u2019s\nplaying on the show, and she doesn\u2019t recognize herself anymore\nafter the decisions she\u2019s made, in large part, because she\u2019s been\nreading her stalker\u2019s blog. This blog is essentially a gaslighting\ntool that has caused Mima to question her own validity and truth. The\nloss of any and all agency is the greatest crime her stalker has\ncommitted, and he has done this all in the guise of being a hurt fan.\nSound familiar?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nall comes back to that opening shot of the ballerina dancing in the\npalm of his hand. That\u2019s the key image to understanding how the\nstalker, now going by Me-Mania, interprets his relationship with\nMima. Mima belongs to him. Things escalate, as they tend to in cases\nlike this, and Me-Mania finally confronts Mima after a long day of\nacting has caused her to be completely lost in her own thoughts, and\nhe attempts to rape her. Me-Mania is framed and shot like a hovering\nreaper before this moment, a harrowing villain drawn to look as ugly\nas humanly possible. He\u2019s an intimidating presence, but the\nstrangest thing happens when he speaks: he\u2019s pathetic, whiny,\npetulant, complaining that he didn\u2019t get what he wanted. Thus the\ncore problem of toxic masculinity: ownership of women, the dolls boys\nplay with. The producers took advantage of Mima, because she was a\nyoung actor, her fans revolted when she made the decision to become\nan actor, and her agents question every move she makes. Mima\ncontinually fights for her own agency, and the ability to merely be\nherself, but when working in an industry that essentially asks\nviewers to take a part of you this is almost impossible. Doubly so\nwith the advent of the internet where everyone is now the star of\ntheir own following, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.\nWe are all now Mima.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Perfect Blue <\/em>is an apocalyptic slasher, the ultimate crystallization of everything we came to fear about the internet before it became synonymous with living. In the 90s, anime had a rougher sheen, images had more texture and the genre arguably saw its zenith as an art-form\\\\ with the likes of Mamoru Oshii, Hideaki Anno, Isao Takahata, Hayao Miyzaki and Satoshi Kon pushing the genre forward in creative modes that have since been largely ignored in favour of clean, almost exclusively digital images computerized into a perfect package of sunny, un-challenging narratives. Perfect Blue <\/em>sits in the middle of these two eras as a perfect, magnum opus of everything that would come to pass about a life entangled with the internet, while challenging viewers with everything that situation would bring. It isn\u2019t a pretty picture, but it\u2019s the real one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mima Kirigoe (voiced by Junko Iwao) is a pop idol. She\u2019s the lead singer for the J-Pop band CHAM, and…<\/p>\n

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