A recent conversation with my boyfriend about STARGATE (1994) made me ponder this:

Me – “I remember seeing the original movie when it came out and being disappointed. I thought they had a really great idea but the movie wasn’t as good as it could have been.”

Him – “The original movie…you mean from 1994?”

Me – “Yes.”

Him – “You would have been 7 or 8.”

Me – “Yes, I have been intellectually pretentious ever since I was born.”

Here are a few more fun facts about me:

- After seeing JURASSIC PARK (1993) in the movie theater, my best friend Lee and I liked to pretend to be velociraptors.

- The first time I ever saw boobs in a movie was also in 1994, when my parents let me watch INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (1994) with them.

- My favorite movie when I was about 9 or 10 was THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966). I remember this quite clearly because I watched it nonstop during the summer my parents got divorced.

- My parents were notoriously bad at censoring my reading choices. When I was in fifth and sixth grade (11 or 12 years old), I read most of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. When I was in junior high, I discovered a few other Anne Rice books – Belinda (an erotic Lolita-esque story) and The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy (the fairy tale retold with a sado-masochistic bent).

- Shortly thereafter I remember reading a Tanith Lee short story about a woman with teeth in her vagina. I found this intriguing. I also attempted to read Don Quixote in sixth grade but found it too silly (irony!).

- When I was around 12 or 13 I started visiting my aunt Val Breiman in LA every summer, to which I can attribute most of my early education about film. Some of the first movies we watched together were DELIVERANCE (1972) and JAWS (1975).

- I clearly remember the first time I was ever alone with Adam Rifkin. We watched the Werner Herzog film EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL (1970). In this movie, the dwarfs kill a large pig, set fire to flowers, break dishes and windows, and crucify a monkey.

Now tell me some weird film-facts about you, readers!

Horror is typically regarded as the least feminist genre of film; a genre that routinely objectifies, sexualizes, tortures, rapes and murders women and girls. However, if viewed from a different angle, horror films often feature story lines that grant wronged women the power and agency (in death) to respond to the injustices done to them in life.

‘Dead wet girls’ is a term coined by David Kalat in his book J-Horror to describe the unique female ghosts who are so iconic in Japanese horror. While popular Japanese films like RING and JU-ON have made this figure recognizable to Western audience, the wronged woman has been a prominent figure in Japanese ghost stories and mythology for centuries. Of course, the interpretation of these stories is fairly ambivalent; often the presence of malignant ghosts and spirits is connected back to the failure of mothers and wives to perform their womanly duties. In many Japanese folktales, female spirits are connected back to the savage and unpredictable natural world.

 TRADITIONAL JAPANESE GHOST TALES

KWAIDAN (1964)

The best example of this connection to nature is the Yuki-onna (snow woman), famously depicted in Kobayashi Masaki’s KWAIDAN (1964). The Yuki-onna is a beautiful woman with long black hair, who typically appears before travelers lost in snow. The Yuki-onna typically kills the unfortunate travelers she meets, though she may also take unsuspecting men as lovers in a succubus-like fashion. She is essentially the manifestation of winter; beautiful and serene yet capable of ruthlessly killing those who are ill-prepared. She is also a reminder of a woman’s fury – like nature, no woman can ever be fully trusted. Kobayashi Masaki’s depiction of the Yuki-onna is captivatingly surreal. Starring Nakadai Tatsuya, the entire segment was filmed in an obviously artificial indoor set with swirling painted backgrounds (featuring an ominous eye).

However, while some deviations of the myth state that the Yuki-onna is the spirit of a person who died in the snow, she is more closely related to yōkai  (Japanese supernatural monsters).  In contrast, the dead wet girls are a specific type of Japanese yūrei known as onryō. Famously recited in JU-ON, onryō are based on the idea that enraged souls of the dead can return with enough power to exert influence on the living. This typically happens if the person dies suddenly and violently (murder or suicide) or in the grip of strong emotions (revenge, jealously, hatred, love). A few male onryō exist, but they are overwhelmingly female. This can either be linked back to the fact that wrathful vengeance can rise out of any women (no woman can be fully trusted) or the fact that Japanese women finally possess the power and agency in death that they were denied in life.

Okiku the Well Ghost by Hokusai

One of the oldest onryō stories is the folktale about Okiku (also called Banchō Sarayashiki). The samurai Aoyama Tessan becomes enamored with his beautiful and virtuous servant Okiku. After she repeatedly refuses his advances, he tricks her into believing that she lost of the family’s 10 priceless plates. Hysterical, she repeatedly counts the nine plates but cannot find a tenth anywhere (there were only ever nine plates). She tearfully apologizes to Aoyama, who responds that he will overlook the matter if she becomes his lover. She again refuses and the enraged Aoyama throws her down a well to her death. Her spirit then returns to torment Aoyama by counting nine then screaming over and over until her spirit is exorcised.

Undoubtedly, the most famous onryō story is YOTSUYA KAIDAN, which has been adapted into a variety of plays and films (I have previously reviewed Nakagawa Nobuo’s 1959 TOKAIDO YOTSUYA KAIDAN and Toyoda Shiro’s 1966 ILLUSION OF BLOOD). This story follows the greedy ronin Iyemon, who murders the father of his wife Oiwa and later plots to disfigure her beautiful face and divorce her to marry the daughter of a wealthy samurai family. Iyemon orders his servant Takuetsu to rape Oiwa (grounds for divorce), but Takuetsu cannot follow through with the plot. He shows Oiwa her disfigured face and, enraged, Oiwa grabs and sword a runs for the door. After a struggle, she accidentally stabs her own throat. Bleeding to death, she curses Iyemon’s name. Then, on the night of Iyemon’s wedding to his new bride, Oiwa’s ghost reappears and tricks Iyemon into murdering his wife and father-in-law. Ultimately, Iyemon is also driven insane by Oiwa’s haunting figure.

 Other traditional Japanese ghost tales include UGETSU MONOGATARI (dir. Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953) and KURONEKO (dir. Shindo Kaneto, 1968).

MODERN GHOST STORIES

Obviously, the onryō has been prevalent figures in Japanese horror stories for centuries. However, previous representations of these women have limited their vengeance to those directly responsible or connected to the injustice placed upon them. In contrast, modern versions of onryō are much more virulent and pit themselves against the entire patriarchal society responsible for the environment that allowed their mistreatment. Additionally, the women in traditional Japanese ghost stories are consistently depicted as pure victims; they have always fulfilled their societal duties as women and are the victims of injustice precisely because they are TOO virtuous and TOO beautiful. On the other hand, modern Japanese ghost stories depict women (both the onryō and the victims of the curses) as figures who, while wronged, have deviated for their societal roles in some fashion. Thus, while these female figures do return to exact revenge for the injustice they suffered, their deviation makes them partially responsible for their fates. This makes a purely pro-feminist interpretation problematic.

Sadako from THE RING

Nakata Hideo’s film THE RING (RINGU, 1998) was initially responsible for the boom in Japanese horror and ‘dead wet girls’ in the West. In THE RING, there exists a haunted videotape that will kill you seven days after you watch it. Asakawa – a young reporter and single mother – finds herself cursed by the tape and must try and solve the mystery of its origins before her time runs out. Along the way she teams up with her ex-husband, who seems to possess some psychic ability himself, and accidentally exposes her young son to the curse as well. This is a departure from the plotline of the Suzuki Koji’s novel, in which Asakawa is actually a man who is fighting to protect his wife and daughter from the curse.

 Suzuki Koji, the author, states that this was a conscious choice made to highlight what he calls the ‘gendering’ of Japanese society. He feels that within modern Japanese society, the responsibility of raising the children is placed solely on the shoulders of women and that fathers play a very distant and uninvolved role. According to Suzuki, “My position is that there is no preexisting paternal instinct. Under the traditional patriarchal system, fathers never assumed any true responsibly for their families – they were basically just symbolic figures. So what I am trying to stress is the notion that fatherhood is a concept – this idea of paternal instinct – is something novel. Throughout Japanese literature, the men are forever telling their wives to take care of everything while they stumble out into the outside world, blindly accepting what they see as the natural family order. Japanese society is an overwhelmingly maternal society where men are indulged.”

 This runs very close to the concept of ryosai kenbo (good wife, wise mother) which was developed during the Meiji period. This ideal placed the responsibility of raising the children solely in the hands of mothers and was promoted as a way of ‘empowering’ women with the opportunity to positively influence the development ofJapan. However, by ‘empowering’ women with the important task of raising virtuous and productive Japanese citizens, the government was able to rob women of responsibilities and privileges that they had traditionally possessed within society and confine them solely within the Japanese household. During the Meiji period, this was an effective way to ban women from participating in or influencing politics and this trend has continued into modern society. In Japanese literature, if an author wants to allude to a problem within Japanese society he can easily do so by depicting mothers who have failed to fulfill their role as a ‘good wife and wise mother.’ Whether explicitly or implicitly, the problems within Japanese society depicted in the novel can be traced back to this failure. For example, Murakami Ryuu’s 1980 novel Coin Locker Babies portrays the decay and corruption of modernTokyo. Unsurprisingly, the two main characters were abandoned by their mothers in coin lockers as babies – the epitome of failed motherhood. By making the main character of his novel so concerned with protecting his family, Suzuki says that he wanted to portray a Japanese man positively fulfilling his role as a parent.

Nakata Hideo, the director (who ironically got his start making Roman Porno, or Romantic Pornography) states that he decided to change the character of Asakawa into a woman, “Because I like women!” Whatever the reason, this alternation actually highlights the themes of the story better than the original novel. The Asakawa in the novel infantilizes his wife, treating her like a piece of fragile glass that can break at any moment. This is not a very positive image of how men should be treating women in Japan. In contrast, the film portrays Asakawa as a strong independent woman who is working hard to raise her child on her own, despite the negative connotations that has within Japanese society.

 However, while Asakawa is represented as a strong and independent female, her deviation from the ryosai kenbo ideal is obviously the reason that her son is exposed to the curse (due to both her career and negligence as a mother, her son is able to get his hands on the videotape and watch it.) In both versions of the story, the primary theme is women who in some way have defied their traditional gender roles and the repercussions of that defiance. This is a common theme throughout the entire J-horror drama and is a very powerful piece of social commentary. Furthermore, the viral nature of many of the ghosts and curses within Japanese horror implies that even though your own family might not suffer from these problems, disharmony has an ability to spread into everything it encounters. Thus, a problem within some Japanese families is a problem for Japanese society as a whole.

 In both the film and the novel, Sadako (the ghost) is the product of a deviation from the traditional family structure and the roles of women. In the novel, Sadako was born with Testicular Feminization Syndrome, meaning she has both male and female genitalia. Unable to bear children, she lives a life of hurt and disappointment. She is then raped by a man with smallpox and drowned in a well. According to Suzuki’s version, the curse of the THE RING is the product of the rapists’ smallpox and Sadako’s psychic ability, made all the more powerful by the intense pain she suffered before her death. This is how the curse obtained its viral effect and the ability to travel from person to person, spreading Sadako’s suffering and rage with it. In the film, Sadako is the product of a scandalous affair between her mother and the scientist who was studying her psychic ability. However, Nakata implies that Sadako might not even have a human father at all and has much sinister origins. In any case, Sadako’s psychic abilities are exponentially greater than her mother and this disturbing ability alienates everyone around her. Ultimately, her father knocks her into a well and covers it up, leaving her to die alone and making her into one particularly pissed-off ghost. The theme of dysfunctional families is reinforced in the film by making the Asakawa character female and turning Ryuji into the detached ex-husband. In fact, the only victims we see attacked by the ghostly Sadako are those that deviate from traditional Japanese society. Furthermore, by making Ryuji into Asakawa’s ex-husband, Nakata Hideo has only improved upon Suzuki Koji’s theme of fathers failing to fulfill their parental responsibilities.

Kayako from JU-ON

JU-ON (dir. Shimizu Takashi, 2000) presents the same microcosm of Japanese society found in THE RING. Here, the onryō is the product of a domestic crime so terrible that it leaves a deadly stain on the house in which it occurred. Much like Sadako, Kayako is a woman who denies her traditional role within society. However, Kayako’s deviation is much more negative than Sadako, who is clearly a victim of the unfortunate circumstances of her life. Kayako betrays her family and fails to fulfill her duties as a mother due to an unhealthy obsession with her son’s homeroom teacher. This betrayal leads to her brutal murder at the hands of her enraged husband, Takeo. The man also drowns his own son and the pet cat before hanging himself. Their brutal murders lead to a curse that spreads the pain and rage of their death onto everybody.

 In comparison to the awful husband Iyemon in the Japanese classic YOTSUYA KAIDAN who killed his unoffending wife for no reason other than he was tired of her, Kayako is definitely guilty of some marital infidelity. However, her transgressions hardly merits the awful punishment exacted upon her by her husband. The curse in JU-ON not only represents the awful consequences of deviations from the family structure for both the individual and the society as a whole but also demonstrates the tragic consequences that Japanese society will face if it cannot adapt to the changes that are occurring within the modern family structure.

 When asked about the prevalence of vengeful female onryō, director Shimizu Takashi has been quoted saying, “I think that men physically are very strong and women are weak, but inside, like a mother’s instinct, women are really strong inside. Psychologically and mentally, women are a lot stronger than men, so when it’s a serial-killer-type violent movie it may make the audience more scared [to have a male villain], but with a woman as a ghost it’s scarier, because she looks like us physically but inside she has lots of strength, and that’s what makes it really scary subconsciously.” Whatever the reason,ShimizuTakashi has created some of the most terrifying apparitions in all of horror cinema, be it Japanese or American.

 Other modern Japanese onryō stories: CARVED (aka KUCHISAKE-ONNA, dir. Shiraishi Koji, 2007) and DARK WATER (dir. Nakata Hideo, 2002)

INTERPRETATIONS

The representation of women in modern Japanese onryō is, of course, problematic on a few levels:

 1) The dominant message is not ‘Don’t mistreat women or children because it is wrong’ but rather ‘Beware of mistreating women and children because they will return to kill you.’

2) Though there is the suggestion that society should be changed, these women (though sympathetic) are ultimately terrifying villains. While they have been wronged by society and people, they are also represented as somehow deviant from the ‘normal’ or ‘proper’ Japanese woman.

While different onryō stories often connect the vengeful female ghosts back to the wrongs society and people inflicted on them, the women are still overwhelmingly vilified. The true villain, however, is really the society that continues to perpetuate and allow these injustices to occur. It is unfortunate that vengeful female ghosts are only granted the power and agency to avenge the injustices done to them after death. More importantly, connecting the ‘proper’ behavior of women to the overall wellbeing of society – and all of these modern stories connect the misbehavior of women to dire consequences – is very unfeminist indeed. The next step forward should be to grant women the agency to protect themselves and right wrongs without sacrificing their lives or being transformed into terrifying, unrelenting monsters. And the ability to deviate from gender roles without facing murder, rape, or torture.

What are your thoughts on this, readers?

Based upon the novel by Otsuichi, GOTH is about two morbid high school students who share a fascination with murder. Kamiyama (Hongo Kanata) is an outwardly friendly and popular boy who hides his potentially sociopathic nature with a carefree, happy attitude. Loner Morino (Takanashi Rin), on the other hand, does little to hide her strange nature; she never smiles, doesn’t interact with her classmates, and wears a long-sleeved, black school uniform even during the middle of summer. While these two seem to share little in common and do not interact with each other in front of their peers, their shared interest in death and murder has turned them into an unusual duo. Initially happy to exchange books on morbid subjects, a series of recent murders spark their interest and they begin investigating the killer. This serial killer has a fondness for cheerful young women and, after severing their left hand as a trophy, displays their dead bodies in public locations to be discovered. After Morino discovers the killer’s notebook in a local café, the two use it to see the corpses for themselves before discovery and attempt to discern his identity. Obviously, the closer they get to discovering him, the more danger they are in.

While the premise can easily sound like a standard horror flick, GOTH is much more than it appears to be. The film is rarely gruesome and is not a horror film in the sense that it attempts to scare or sicken the audience. Like the serial killer and the protagonists, GOTH is interested in death and the act of murder as an aesthetic philosophy and the result is an extremely intriguing film. Directed by Takahashi Gen (working with cinematographer Ishikura Ryuji) has created a beautiful, thoughtful movie that unfolds in the typical Japanese ‘slice-of-life’ fashion; the slow moving plot is uninterested in rushed revelations and most of the film takes place in empty classrooms, an eccentric café, and quiet bedrooms. Working with cinematographer Ishikura Ryuji, Takahashi also gives GOTH a surreal look with an emphasis on light and shade. The overexposed white gives the characters a ghostly appearance, particularly the strikingly beautiful Takanashi Rin. Like the character’s fascination, the atmosphere of the film is filled with death. While people tend to repress thoughts of mortality and murder, the serial killer’s fascination with displaying dead bodies in public locations demonstrates just so quickly and subtly death can creep into our lives. In one of the first scenes, a breezy summer day in a park is slowly tainted when two old women discover that the lovely woman seated in the center of the camera frame has been dead all along; her corpse unnoticed by the people seated so close to her. A beautiful walk through the lushly green foliage of a Japanese countryside is interrupted by the body of a dead woman seated on a red armchair. Despite her unnatural placement, the girl appears to have simply fallen asleep while reading. The soundtrack reinforces this sinister air with an impressively ambient quality that highlights the innocence of the protagonists and the threat looming around them; the innocence of the murder victims and the fate they encountered.

Personally, I found the threat of the serial killer to be one of the less intriguing aspects of the film. A much more pressing concern is the relationship between Kamiyama and Morino. While Morino’s obsession with death can be connected back to the accidental hanging of her sister, Kamiyama appears much more sinister. Both characters are uninterested in right, wrong, and morality, but Kamiyama displays several characteristics of a sociopath – a lack of empathy towards others, a lack of emotion, the ability to easily deceive people, etc. As it becomes clear that Morino fantasizes about being murdered, Kamiyama clearly fantasizes about murdering people. This creates a tense ambiguity between the two characters and forces the audience to wonder if Kamiyama would kill Morino if the opportunity ever presented itself.

The film can drag on a bit and the conclusion of GOTH emphasizes a cathartic revelation about the protagonists rather than a narrative resolution about the serial killer. Obviously the plot device that allows Morino to just coincidentally discover the serial killer’s notebook feels forced and several characters seem superfluous. However, the performances delivered by Hongo Kanata and Takanashi Rin are truly top notch. GOTH isn’t a film for the standard consumer of J-horror, but it is a thoughtful and intriguing meditation on death and mortality. Viewers may also see some similarities, in tone and aesthetics, between the manga MPD Psycho (though not with the film). In short, GOTH is a film that is much more than it appears to be and one of the more impressive Japanese films I’ve seen this year.

You can currently stream this film via JapanFlix.com

Last night I was in a heated debate about whether or not AKB48 is a representation of deformed sexuality (sparked by the recent interview with Akimoto). You can see it here: cnnasiapacific.com/press/en/content/757/

What are your thoughts on this?

Also, I want to make this blog more interactive, because I am genuinely surprised at how many people seem to actually read this! The next post will be a poll.

Matta ne, you rascals.

Yamada Yoji does not make action-packed Hollywood blockbusters. Stemming from the branch of Japanese filmmakers taught by Ozu and Mizoguchi, Yamada’s films usually take a more introspective, down-to-earth direction. While Kabei: Our Mother marks his 80th film, it was only in the early 2000s that Yamada gained the recognition of Western audiences. The films of his samurai trilogy (The Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, and Love and Honor) are all more interested in the internal conflicts of the characters and potent characterizations of the decaying Edo era than in epic, choreographed swordfights. The effect is either lost on the audience or whole-heartedly embraced. In terms of samurai films, Ninja Scroll is a bowl of gyuudon and The Twilight Samurai is kaiseki ryori. Both are delicious, but both are eaten with distinctly different intentions. Additionally, Yamada has built most of his career around depicting two specific eras of Japanese history; the late-Edo (ending in 1867) and Showa (1925-1989). Both of these periods marked times of tremendous change in Japan; the forcible ‘opening’ of Japan to Western trade and end of bakufu (Shogunate) rule (shortly followed by the dissolution of the samurai class) and Japan’s ill-fated foray into imperialism.

Like Yamada’s samurai trilogy, Kabei is not a run-of-the-mill World War II film. The story follows Nogami Kayo (AKA Kabei, played by Yoshinaga Sayuri), a mother who must care for her two daughters after her husband, a professor, is arrested and jailed for expressing opinions contrary to the Imperial war effort. Forced to cope with the difficulties of being a single mother and her own reservations about the rising nationalism in Japan, Kabei raises her daughters with the help of her lovely sister-in-law, a rowdy uncle, and the clumsy and good-hearted Yamasaki. Uninterested in action, Yamada devotes the film’s energy to the portrayal of the characters’ experiences. Uninterested in romanticizing the past, Yamada also places his typical emphasis on historical accuracy and goes to considerable effort to accurately capture the look and atmosphere of Showa era Japan.

Like most Japanese WWII movies, the film prefers to focus on human tragedy and avoids addressing the cause of the war with China or America and distances itself from addressing the actions of the military. Soldiers are completely absent from the majority of the film, only a few scenes contain any images of men in military uniforms. However, Kabei sets itself apart by revolving around the Shiso Keisatsu (‘thought police’) and the actions the civilian police force took to silence dissenting opinions in Japan from 1911 to the end of the war. Throughout the film, Yamada portrays the war effort with a decidedly lukewarm attitude – policemen act callous and rude towards citizens, pro-war organizations harass women in the street for being too conscious about their appearance, and the ever-present Imperial flags and national anthems are juxtaposed with the hardships of Kabei and her family. In one scene, Kabei attends a neighborhood town meeting, which is routinely begun by bowing in the direction of the Imperial palace. One old lady, earnest in her respect to the Emperor, questions whether they should be bowing in the direction of the palace when the Emperor is currently at another residence. The group attempts to locate the proper direction to bow in, which no one is absolutely sure of, ponders their dilemma for a few moments and then reverts back to the default position of bowing in the direction of the Imperial palace. Though subtle, this scene depicts just how absurd Japanese nationalism was becoming during the early 1940s. In another, Kabei plays the tune of the national anthem on a piano while her students sing along. Yamada then cuts to the prison cell holding her husband, jammed to capacity with dirty, starving prisoners.

While sympathetic to the difficulties faced by families in the Japanese home front during the war, the film is not sympathetic to the war effort or to the militaristic ultra-nationalism that consumed the country for nearly two decades. Towards the end of the movie, Yamazaki-san, an intellectual completely ill-suited to war or conflict, receives his draft notice and must leave Kabei and her daughters. As voiceover narration leads us to the film’s conclusion, we learn that everyone Kabei loves dies before the war is over; her husband freezes to death in prison, Aunt Hiroko dies of radiation poisoning a month after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (the film’s only reference to the atomic bomb), the uncle kills himself, and the wonderful Yamazaki-san drowns when the ship transporting him from Manchuria to the Pacific front is hit by a torpedo and sinks. By the film’s conclusion, Kabei: Our Mother’s message is explicitly clear: the war was a terrible waste that stripped every Japanese citizen of the people they held most dear. Even the film’s final scene holds no comfort; lying on her deathbed, one of Kabei’s daughters tries to reassure her that soon she will be with Tobei (her husband) in the next life. Kabei responds, “I don’t want him in the next life, I want to be with him in this life.” This one line is the film’s most damning condemnation of the war; one of the most common ways Japanese citizens and soldiers comforted themselves and each other during the war was with the reassurance that their souls would find peace in the next life, after giving their lives in service of the Emperor. Clearly, this platitude meant nothing to Kabei.

Kabei: Our Mother is definitely designed to tug at the audiences’ emotions; thankfully Yamada’s understated filmmaking (favoring Ozu’s style of ground-level shots that highlight the domestic setting of the family) helps Kabei from becoming overly melodramatic. The performances of the actors are all spot on; Shofukutai Tsurube gives a great performance as a boisterous, ill-mannered uncle and a nearly unrecognizable Asano Tadanobu breaks away from his standard repertoire with the adorable Yamazaki-san.

While certain notable exceptions exist, films that directly address the subjects of nationalism and government oppression are particularly rare in Japan. Kabei: Our Mother is a sad drama that offers a different perspective of the period, and for that it is very valuable. My one complaint, however, is that the movie doesn’t go far enough. Most of the action is set pre-1941 and before Japan entered into the Pacific War against America and the Allied powers. As most history buffs know, it is at this time that Japanese civilians began to face the deepest hardships of the war. Aside from sucker punching you with bad news via the closing narration of the movie, Kabei paints a considerably more pleasant picture of the Japanese home front than Grave of the Fireflies, for example. Kabei’s home remains mostly intact at the end of the war and the utter destruction of Tokyo is only briefly shown. The film does not show the increased rationing of Japanese civilians or that most were starving by the end of the war. As an interesting historical anecdote, after the Japanese surrender, US military forces began providing food to Japanese citizens via airlifts. In one airlift, soldiers dropped tins of coffee into the Japanese countryside. Rather than making coffee, people tried to eat the grounds. Criticism aside, Kabei: Our Mother is a great movie that more serious filmgoers should thoroughly enjoy.

This is one of the best movies you will see all year and everyone should watch it. Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil is the funniest, smartest, and most lighthearted satire of horror movie tropes to be released since Shaun of the Dead. Playing with some of the most tiresome and common clichés of slasher movies, this film manages to cast the entire horror genre in an original and refreshingly light.

 Opening on what appears to be a southern Appalachian forest and mimicking a shot made infamous in Deliverance (and echoed in The Descent), the film introduces us to a band of unwitting and mostly dull-witted ‘college kids,’ who we all know will meet a gruesome end by the film’s conclusion. Headed off on a Memorial Day camping trip (why would anyone ever go camping in the South? Seriously, only bad things happen there), they have a brief encounter with Tucker (Alan Tudyk, Firefly) and Dale (Tyler Labine), two well-intentioned rednecks off to fix up their dream vacation home. Unsurprisingly, they completely misinterpret Dale’s attempt to make small talk with the lovely Allison (Katrina Bowden of 30 Rock)…perhaps partially because he brings along a scythe to casually lean-on as he bumbles through an introduction.

 Depressed by his inability to communicate with women, Dale and Tucker head off, towing assorted home-improvement devices like a wood chipper, nail gun, and chainsaw. After a hilarious run-in with a local cop and some accidental homosexual undertones (sorry, going to point out Deliverance again), they reach Tucker’s new vacation home, a run-down cabin in the woods facing a nearby lake, and discover a few ‘structural deficiencies.’ Meanwhile, the college kids get drunk by a camp fire and a very American Psycho-esque Chad (Jesse Moss) tells them the tale of the Memorial Day Massacre, a bloody incident that happened in the same spot and only left one survivor. Sufficiently creeped-out by the story, the crew decides to go skinny dipping – logically – in the same area Tucker and Dale are out night fishing. Attempting to leave before they are mistaken as peeping toms, the two startle Allison, who falls into the water and hits her head. Despite their lack of hygiene and grammar, the two hillbillies wouldn’t harm a fly and Tucker dives in to rescue her. Dale shouts out ‘We got yer friend’ and the misunderstanding devolves into a full-blown bloodbath. The college kids set out to rescue Ally and kill the ‘psychos,’ while Tucker and Dale are left confused and terrified by the bizarre and completely inept attempts on their lives (‘This must be one of those suicide cults.’)

 Eli  Craig and Morgan Jurgenson have penned an incredibly fun movie full of fantastic horror references – Tucker accidentally mimicking the behavior of Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) as he runs away from hornets while wielding a chainsaw, Deliverance and its now ubiquitous portrayal of hillbillies, Halloween, any movie with a cabin, and even silent movie villains with a fondness for abandoned lumber mills/rotating circular saws. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine make a great pair and have excellent chemistry with one another onscreen. Katrina Bowden is sufficiently likeable and exceedingly attractive.

 In short, Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil is a wonderful film that deserves as much recognition and love as Shaun of the Dead. You need to go watch this movie immediately.

I’m a big fan of Asian Extreme cinema (Patrick Galloway’s Asia Shock is a great introduction). Like most nerds, I’ll watch all movies that fall into this category…even if I only end up liking 50% of them. Unfortunately this was the case with Kaji Kengo’s Samurai Princess (2009). Sporting the talents of Nishimura Yoshihiro (the man responsible for the effects in Tokyo Gore Police), this movie had a lot of promise to be another flick full of nonsense, gore, and gory nonsense. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver on every level.

 
Starring AV (adult video) actress Kishi Aino as the Samurai Princess, the movie is a standard revenge story set in an ‘alternate’ Japan. Out for a fun romp by a river in a creepy forest with her friends (you know, because that’s what young girls do?), a band of colorfully-dressed rapists decide to make sport of the young girls and proceed to rape and kill everyone but her. Shortly thereafter, her mostly intact body is discovered by a mad scientist, his annoying maid side-kicks, and a Buddhist priestess. Compelled by her plight, the scientist transforms her body into a ‘Mecha’ (some sort of advanced cybernetic doll) and the priestess infuses her with the souls of her eleven dead friends. Of course, the scientist also enhanced the body of the gang leader responsible for the murders and expects to watch her fail for his own entertainment. But, with the aid of a mysterious young man with a fur-clad guitar and the help of her dead sisters, the Samurai Princess ultimately succeeds in her suicide mission. On the way, she encounters plenty of breast grenades (reusable?), guitar swords, chainsaw legs, and buckets of blood you’d expect from a typical ero guro (エログロ,) films. Pretty standard stuff.
 
However, the overall effect is lackluster. First off, the setting is really never adequately explained. Initially, Samurai Princess appears to be set in an alternate feudal Japan overrun by mutants with bad fashion sense. But many of the costumes and props imply that the movie is set in more modern times. Not that the exact date is really important, but it seems a bit inconsistent. Also – why is every damn scene set in a forest? Why is everyone in a forest? Is it a special forest that is stuck in a wormhole that separates them from the time stream? Look, I know that the real reason is because this was the location they could afford given the budget. Plenty of extreme horror flicks are set in ridiculous forest locations, but they also explain WHY they are there. In Versus, it’s because the characters are either A) escaping from prison or B) yakuza burying dead bodies. In Zombie Jietai, it’s because the characters are either A) filming a weird idol video or B) conducting field training. The reason doesn’t need to be good, but it needs to exist. 
 

Finally some BOOBS

Additionally, the low budget really hurt this film a lot. There are plenty of ways to work around budget limitations, basically none of these films are made with a lot of money and many of them are quite good. But in the case of Samurai Princess, it looks like the costumes were made by a designer who can’t sew (mostly they just have swatches of cloth draped over store-bought pieces). The film is also shot on video, usually handheld, and it’s fairly obvious no one was expecting this movie to be shown in theaters. Even the presence of the exceptionally talented and creative Nishimura Yoshihiro isn’t enough to make the gore and special effects decently enjoyable. If you’ve picked up this movie because, like me, you love to see endless rivers of blood created by bizarre crazy half-man/half-machine creatures, you will be disappointed. Finally, the performance by Kishi Aino really isn’t strong enough to carry the film. If they had cast a more capable actress, the lower budget and story limitations might be less irritating. Unfortunately, Kishi infuses the Samurai Princess with little personality or emotion of any kind. Even the nudity and sex is lacking. For a film that was promoted as ’adult,’ I really expected MORE!
 
Samurai Princess hasn’t made me hate this genre of filmmaking. While it does boast many of the men responsible for making Japanese gore so internationally popular (particularly Nishimura), it’s definitely not something I’m going to watch again or show other people.

The film is about an extremeist Christian group called the Five Point Trinity sect led by preacher Abin Cooper (played very well by Michael Parks). The members of Five Points usually occupy themselves with protesting gay funerals and other homophobic activities. Unsurprisingly, they also have a more sinister agenda that involves luring young men into trailer parks with the promise of gangbangs with older women, then kidnapping them and laying their sin-filled lives at the foot of the cross. This is how Red State begins, with a group of three boys (Michael Angarano, Nicholas Braun and Kyle Gallner) happily responding to an internet ad for NSA sex. After being ruffied by a fanatical true believe (a very unrestrained Melissa Leo), they wake to find themselves imprisoned and witness to the murder of another homosexual sinner. The movie becomes increasingly disjointed and chaotic from here – as two of the boys lead a ill-fated escape attempt, a local cop is murdered, and ATF Agent Joe Keenan (John Goodman) is sent in to arrest the sect for possession of illegal firearms. This is also the point, however, that Red State begins to look less and less like a horror flick and becomes more difficult to classify. Despite the lack of character development and the lack of a clear protagonist or story line, Kevin Smith manages to pace the film in such a way that keeps the viewers watching until the equally bizarre ending.

As I said before, Red State really has a lot of interesting elements and Smith makes many brave decisions – killing off what appear to be the main characters, refusing to paint any character as purely ‘good’ – but, the movie is flawed. First off, it isn’t a horror film…period. Viewers who are drawn in by the DVD cover – the pretty Kerry Bishé in shorts holding an automatic rifle – will be quickly confused by the bait-and-switch. Most importantly, the movie seems mean-spirited (and not in the conventional horror movie fashion).

 It is no secret that Kevin Smith has a rather harsh view of fundamental Christians. I also share a dislike for any group that so aggressively promotes hatred for those who are different and proselytizes so intensely. However, Kevin Smith attacks the members of the Five Points sect mercilessly and portrays them as a group of crazed, hopelessly under-educated psychopaths who are so eager to pass through the gates of Heaven that they’ll open fire on anyone and willingly sacrifice the lives of their children. Yes, there are groups out there like this (though one has to hope not this black-and-white in their extremism), but Smith’s portrayal of the Five Points sect seems just as intolerant and bigoted as the Christians he is trying to ‘satirize.’ Similarly, his depiction of the ATF agents is equally harsh in its simplistic condemation. Each of the men are portrayed as slaves to the chain-of-command – even when they are well aware of the ethical and moral crimes they are committing. Kevin Smith has painted all of his characters in short, board strokes and refuses to even acknowledge any gray area in their decisions and actions. Perhaps that’s the point of the film – that everyone is evil with no redeeming qualities – but that seems somehow unlikely. Mostly, it just comes across as very mean.

Red State is interesting and Kevin Smith is clearly talented. But the movie doesn’t prove to me that Smith should ever make a transition into the horror genre or that he can create horror films with the same understated mastery he demonstrates in his earlier, non-horror works (Mallrats, Clerks, Dogma). The film is a head-scratcher (mostly because it’s so confusing why he is making this movie and what the point ultimately is) but I doubt anyone will be inspired to rewatch it or buy their very own copy on DVD.

Perfect Blue

Already before Perfect Blue I wrote a script for another director [Katsuhiro Otomo], an episode of the omnibus film Memories called Magnetic Rose. It was also a story of confusion between memory and the real world. Because I didn’t direct it myself I was a bit concerned about how it was turning out. On many occasions I thought I would have done things differently. I got my chance to realize those thoughts with Perfect Blue. So I already had an interest in that kind of plot, to consciously compose the story in such a manner… To be honest, I care very little about the idea of the stalker in Perfect Blue. The storytelling aspects interest me much more. Looking at things objectively or subjectively gives two very different images. For an outsider, the dreams and the film within a film are easy to separate from the real world. But for the person who is experiencing them, everything is real. I wanted to describe that kind of situation, so I applied it in Perfect Blue. [Kon Satoshi, Midnight Eye Interview]

While all of Kon Satoshi’s work explores similar themes, the thematic line that runs through Magnetic Rose, Perfect Blue, and Millennium Actress (his first three works) is the strongest and easiest to identify. All three films are stories about the confusion between reality and fantasy, the subjective nature of perception and memory, and the identity of the female performer. While Kon explored many of these themes within the script for Magnetic Rose (which I discussed in the previous post), he was finally able to take the helm as director in the 1998 Perfect Blue. The result is an astounding cinematic tour de force. In her essay “‘Excuse Me, Who Are You?’: Performance, the Gaze and the Female in the Works of Kon Satoshi” from Cinema Anime, Susan Napier elaborates, “I use the term tour de force because the film’s brilliant use of animation and unreality creates a unique viewing experience, forcing the viewer to question not only the protagonist’s perceptions but his or her own as he/she follows the protagonist into a surreal world of madness and illusion” (33). For this essay, I would like to examine the themes Kon addresses within Perfect Blue as well as the formal and narrative techniques that he employs to express them. Finally, I will conclude with a discussion of the film’s ending and interpretations.

Synopsis

(Contains spoilers)

Kirogoe Mima is one-third of the pop music group CHAM. Under the encouragement of her management, Mima decides to quit the idol world and pursue a more profitable career as an actress, much to the chagrin of her fans and her agent Rumi. After leaving CHAM and getting cast in a small role on the TV psychodrama Double Bind, Mima begins to receive hang-up phone calls, threatening letters, and discovers a fan website called ‘Mima’s Room.’ Dedicated to her life as a pop idol, ‘Mima’s Room’ contains a disturbing diary (supposedly written by Mima herself) that contains startlingly accurate accounts of her daily activities.

Determined to distance Mima from her clean image as a pop star and earn her a bigger role in Double Bind, Mima’s management convinces her to film a graphic rape scene and pose for nude photographs. Her image as an innocent pop idol completely destroyed, Mima begins to have confrontations with a mysterious copy of herself; a doppelganger that appears in reflections, television and computer screens, and bounds aroundTokyo defying physics and sporting Mima’s CHAM uniform.  It is at this point in the movie that reality, Mima’s hallucinations/dreams, and the plot of the TV show begin to merge.

The doppelganger begins to appear more frequently, calling Mima an ‘imposter,’ a ‘filthy woman,’ and accusing her of tarnishing her image. It is also revealed that the man behind the ‘Mima’s Room’ website – who calls himself Mi-mania – is stalking her and has been convinced by Mima’s doppelganger that she is a fake who needs to be killed to protect the ‘real’ Mima.

To make matters worse, the TV show’s writer and producer are brutally murdered in a fashion similar to the murders in the show. As Mima’s grasp on reality becomes increasingly fractured, she loses track of time and starts to wonder if she is the one committing the murders – exactly like her character in Double Bind. She begins to rely on the online diary to keep track of what she’s been doing and questions whether this internet version of her is ‘more like the real me than I am.’ 

As the film reaches its denouement, we see a scene that suggests that the plot of Double Bind is actually reality – to protect her psyche from the trauma of being raped, Yoko has assumed the identity of the young actress ‘Kirogoe Mima,’ who does not exist in real life and is a symptom of Yoko’s personality disorder. However, the scene is rewound and we see that it was just the final scene of the TV series. With filming complete, Mima feels a vague sense of relief and heads to the dressing room to change. However, she is attacked by Mi-mania, who attempts to rape and kill her (the ‘imposter’) to protect the ‘real’ Mima. During the struggle, Mima hits him over the head with a hammer and runs for safety. She finds her agent Rumi in the hallway and when they return to the set, the body of Mi-maniac has disappeared. Did Mima imagine it?

Rumi takes Mima back to her apartment, but Mima soon realizes that it is not actually her apartment. Rumi enters the room, now wearing Mima’s CHAM costume, and she assumes the form of Mima’s doppelganger. It is revealed that it was Rumi/the doppelganger who had been working together with Mi-mania to torment Mima and is likely responsible for the murders of the writer, producer…AND Mima’s manager and Mi-mania himself (for failing to do his job right). After a struggle and chase, Rumi is severely wounded and almost killed by an oncoming truck…until an injured Mima saves her at the last moment. At the film’s conclusion, we see Rumi locked away in a psychiatric ward – still convinced she is the pop idol Kirogoe Mima. Mima is calm and collected, and while leaving the hospital two female nurses wonder if she is really the successful actress Mima or just a look-a-like. Back in her car, Mima looks into her reflection in the rear view mirror and says, “No, I’m real.”

Reality vs. Fantasy

One of the key themes in Perfect Blue is the boundary between reality and illusion. As Tasha Robinson says in “Perfect Blue: Hitchcock for the 1990s,”  the film has a “twisted, self-referential storyline that inter-cuts reality with fantasy so fluidly that viewers inevitably take on Mima’s shattered point of view, unable to distinguish the truth until the stunning conclusion” (13). The film is, at its core, a brilliant depiction of Mima’s internal psychological condition. Because the audience only experiences events through Mima’s point of view, we are completely unable to distinguish fact from fantasy. Often, Kon depicts what seem to be real actions only to later reveal that they were actually hallucinations, dreams, or paranoid projections. Thus, the subjective nature of perception is scrutinized. Because perception is inherently subjective, we can never be certain that the reality we perceive is ‘real’ or ‘true’ in the objective sense.

Notice the use of screens and reflections

Mima’s discovery of the online diary is the first crack in her identity. She did not write the diary, but it is nonetheless a ‘true’ account of her life. As the boundary between reality and dream blurs, Mima is increasingly uncertain about the ‘truth.’ The rape scene was not real – no penetration occurred – but the outcome is the same as if it had been a real rape; she is traumatized and her reputation is tarnished. Later, the audience witnesses Mima (disguised in a delivery uniform) brutally murdering Double Bind’s producer – but then in a jump cut Mima wakes up back in her room. Did she dream the event or was it real? When Mima finds bloody clothes in her closet she must also ask herself, “If I dreamed it, does that mean I actually did it?”

Kon successfully intertwines reality and fantasy through the skillful use of several cinematic techniques. Most obviously, Kon employs jump cuts throughout the entire film; “We’d cut fast from one thing to another as if it were a fight scene, even if there wasn’t any action involved – [it] helped emphasize Mima’s sense of confusion” (Satoshi Kon, Tom Mes, Midnight Eye interview). As the plot spirals deeper into paranoia and confusion, the scenes get shorter and shorter while the cuts become more sudden and jarring. This not only illustrates Mima’s internal confusion, but literally confuses the viewer as well. Upon the first viewing of this film, it is often hard to make sense of the scenes and piece together the fragmented elements of the plot. This is probably why there are quite a few people who dislike Perfect Blue – they find it illogical, contradictory and write it off as a poorly-made movie with graphic violence and rape.

However, Kon knew exactly what he was doing when he made together Perfect Blue.  In his interview with Tom Mes for Midnight Eye, Kon says that viewers are “too used to being treated kindly” and that he has deliberately broken the pattern of “sleepy continuity.” Specifically, he wanted to make it difficult for the viewers to distinguish between dreams and reality. He explains, “Even if the shot or the scene changes, they must be linked within the flow of the story and I thought it would be interesting if the viewers did not immediately grasp they were watching a flashback or a dream” (Kon, Midnight Eye) Thus, Kon uses no techniques (such as fades, cuts, etc) to warn the audience that they are entering dream territory. Furthermore, the repetition of key events and locations during the second half of the film creates a nightmarish loop. This evokes what Freud has described as ‘incoluntary repetition,’ which arouses an uncanny feeling and recalls ‘the sense of helplessness experienced in dream states’ (The Uncanny 342). Thus, the audience’s quest to determine what is dream and what is reality is constantly undermined. Kon also stays away from clichéd movie conventions frequently used to help the audience identify flashbacks, dream sequences and memories. There are no sepia-tones, no grainy film reels reminiscent of home movies, and no Hitchcock-esque whirlpools.

Kon also employs layered narration within Perfect Blue’s script to blur the reality/fantasy boundary. The best and most recent example of layered narration is Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film Inception, where the events, locations, and timeline of the plot are literally layered on top of each other within the characters’ subconscious. In Perfect Blue, Kon interweaves 3 distinct layers of narration; reality, Mima’s dreams and hallucinations, and the plotline of the TV show Double Bind. As it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish which is which, Mima’s view of reality (and the audience’s) is pushed to the breaking point. This layered narration is at its most complex during the final scene of Double Bind, when we discover that Mima’s character Yoko suffers from multiple personality disorder and the pop idol ‘Kirigoe Mima’ is nothing but a delusion. This causes the viewer to question which narrative is actually real – the original plot or the plot of Double Bind. This narrative twist explains the events of the film so well that it is tempting to accept it as reality – even after Kon rewinds the scene and replays it with different names (Mima’s character actually thinks she is a model).

There is a similar overlap in the levels of narration in a scene where Rumi visits Mima in her apartment. Mima expresses concern that her other personality could start acting on its own. As she says this, she slides rightwards across the screen, the busy detail of the apartment being replaced by a flat back ground. A hand enter frame-right to touch her shoulder comfortingly, as someone says, “It’s all right. There is no way illusions can come to life.” Mima responds “Rumi?” before we cut wide to see her no longer in her apartment with her agent, but on set with the psychologist character and the television crew. The sliding motion across the screen has replaced a cut between one spatial and temporal location and another. Startling in its unexpected transition, the sliding seems to reflect the frightening slippage between reality, the show, and the dream that is taking place within Mima’s mind.

Identity

In Perfect Blue, the theme of identity is perhaps the most obvious; after all, the key line of the film is, “Excuse me, who are you?” The entire film revolves around this simple question – Who are you? Finding the answer to this question is Mima’s dramatic need - and the story can only be concluded after it has been fulfilled.

Throughout the majority of the film, Mima is extremely timid and rarely voices strong opinions. Even when she does, it is questionable if she is expressing her true feelings or conforming to the desires of others. Because Mima has such an underdeveloped sense of who she is, she relies on the people around her to define her identity. From the very first frame of the film, Mima is identified as a pop star not through her actions but from the perspective of her male fans. Later, it is her management, her family, her fans, and her deranged stalker who manipulate and control her image to suit their own desires. It is Mima’s own insecurity and confusion with her image that leaves her vulnerable to the attacks (both psychological and physical) on her identity by Rumi and Mi-mania and is responsible for her psychological breakdown (Napier).

Mima herself lacks agency and, in the many scenes where her career is discussed, she seems to lack a voice completely. The fact that Mima has left behind the role of a pop idol and quit singing can be seen as a symbolic ‘loss’ of voice. This loss of voice is a loss of agency and strongly connects Mima to the character of Eva Friedel from Magnetic Rose. (Napier). Eva murdered Carlo as an act of vengeance – both for his personal betrayal and the betrayal of her fans after Eva, literally, lost her voice. Similarly, the murder of the men responsible for the corruption of Mima’s image (the TV writer, director, and her agent) was an act of vengeance for Mima’s loss of agency and her subsequent exploitation (regardless of who actually committed the murders; Rumi, Mi-mania, or Mima herself).

Binaries such as reality/fantasy, body/mind, body/soul are extremely common within Japanese animation, particularly the horror, fantasy, and science fiction genres (Ruddell 21). In Perfect Blue, Mima’s shifts between reality and dream are characterized by the appearances of her doppelganger, a physical manifestation of Mima’s crisis of identity. It seems that Mima’s double is a direct result of her trauma around becoming an actress (something that she more or less was pushed into by her management). In “Nightmare and the Horror Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings,” Noel Carroll states that doubles often stand for another aspect of the self, “generally one that is either hidden, ignored, repressed or denied by the original character” (169). Mima clearly articulates this denial of her former self when she says, “Maybe she is more like me than myself, the self that I hid deep in my heart.” Mima is clearly not entirely pleased with departure from CHAM and longs to rejoin the pop group. Mima’s doppelganger, perpetually dressed in the CHAM outfit, is a representation of the part of herself that she is trying to leave behind by quitting the group. Acting is, after all, displacing one’s own identity.

Although Mima’s double is displaced by Rumi’s real presence in the end, the doppelganger that appears in private to Mima is an imagined shadow self that defies logical explanation. This doppelganger was clearly the product of Mima’s fragile mental state, a state that is subsequently shattered by Rumi’s interference. Interestingly, Mima’s doppelganger is transferred onto Rumi at the film’s climax. Rosemary Jackson points out in Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion that ‘figures who attempt [a] return to undifferentiation, in fantastic tales, are doomed to failure” and “terminate with the madness, suicide or death of the divided subject: self cannot be united with ‘other’ without ceasing to be. (90-91). In the film’s climax, Mima only achieves a reintegration of her fractured selves at the expense of Rumi’s sanity. Mima’s words in the film’s final scene “I wouldn’t be where I am today without her” then take on a particular pertinence: by Rumi ‘becoming’ Mima’s double, Mima is able to achieve reintegration.

To visually reinforce the theme of the doppelganger, Kon peppers the film with images of Mima – on TV screens, editing screens, photographs, and reflections. The first reflective device is a train window. Mima is on her was home from a day of acting when her double suddenly appears in place of her own reflection. This speaks not only to an aspect of Mima that she is trying to bury, but as the public image of herself as an innocent pop idol, an image that she is trying to leave behind her to expand her career. One cannot disregard the pressure the Mima feels as a public figure and the consequences that she faces for not living up to the expectations of her fans. Perfect Blue’s preoccupation with identity is visually represented through Kon’s use of reflective surfaces and images. These various reflections – Mima as actress, Mima as pop idol, Rumi as doppelganger – create contradiction and paradoxes the reflect Mima’s increasing confusion about the boundaries between dream and reality.

The double of Mima’s room – one physical and one virtual on the internet – also parallel Mima’s state of mind through the film. Her physical apartment becomes increasingly disheveled over the course of the film. Her pet fish die. She packs up all her CHAM memorabilia. As she begins to lose her grasp on reality, she depends on the neat and tidy virtual Mima’s Room to fill her in on what she did during the day. Wide shots of her apartment – viewed through her window from across the street – are frequently used also visually emphasize her isolation. Mima lives alone in a small, solitary apartment. The singularly lit up space visually isolates her from the world around her.

Kon also enhances the emotional impact of the film by overlaying images and scenes on top of one another. An example of this is the montage sequence that Kon creates to depict both a murder scene (Mima’s nightmare) and Mima’s nude photo shoot (reality). The inter-cutting between Mima’s stripping and the violent murder underlines the level of degradation that Mima undergoes in the photo shoot, and the traumatic effect it has on her psyche. This is something that the viewer senses on an emotional level. Without a word of dialog Kon effectively portrays Mima’s splintering psychological state and her exploitation. He also reinforces the main dramatic question – Who is Mima? Will Mima discover who she really is? Kon’s underlining of this question is the most haunting and recognizable aspect of this film; Excuse me, who are you?

The Female Performer and Her Audience

As mentioned in the beginning of the paper, Magnetic Rose, Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress are strongly interconnected. In all three, the main themes revolve around a central female performer and her relationship with her audience. In fact, female idols seem to be a subject of particular fascination for Kon Satoshi. When viewed in sequence, these three works take the audience from an extremely dark and negative interpretation of the performer-audience relationship towards a more positive and constructive one. In Perfect Blue, the dynamic between Mima and her audience is extremely destructive. Not only is Mima stalked by a deranged fan and attacked by her psychopathic manager, but she is under subtle yet constant pressure to change herself and her image to meet the demands of her management, her fans, the media, and her family. Clearly this is a task she couldn’t possibly succeed in and we see the toll it takes on her psychological state over the course of the film. However, unlike the singer Eva Freidel in Magentic Rose, Mima manages to draw herself out of the nightmare of false identity and illusion.

In both Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress, Kon explores the way an audience can inject itself into the narrative of film and it’s a great visual representation of the fact that we are never ever an entirely passive audience. In Perfect Blue, the audience has a very negative effect on Mima, who is very young and has a completely undeveloped sense of WHO SHE IS, until the resolution of the film. We, as the literal audience, are exposed to this – in the beginning we are consuming Mima’s image just as the fans in the story are – she is portrayed as an object of desire, something to be consumed. Simultaneously, however, Kon is showing us the effect that our desires are having on Mima’s psychological condition – it’s essentially tearing her apart.

Susan Napier identifies this as ‘the role of the gaze’ and points out that “much of the film’s action is determined by the variety of gazes directed at Mima.” Mima’s management is primarily concerned with her monetary value to the agency, her fans consume her visually, and her stalker Mi-mania sees Mima as something that should be possessed and controlled. Even Rumi, who seems to be Mima’s only ally through the course of the film, wants to possess Mima’s image – by literally being her. In particular, the televised rape scene is interesting in this respect. The viewer sees Mima in her scene through a variety of mediums – directly on screen, through the televisions playing the scene to the director, and reflected in the lens of the camera itself. Additionally, Mima is also being viewed by a variety of spectators, including her management. Mid-rape, Kon stops the action and Mima and the actors must hold their awkward positions while equipment is rearranged. The actor playing her rapist whispers, “I’m so sorry” to Mima. This isn’t the climax of the plotline, but I think Perfect Blue definitely reaches a very strong emotional climax with this scene. As the audience, we are complicit in her rape; we are consuming it for our own entertainment. At the same time, however, it is horrifying to watch because we understand the impact this is going to have on Mima. It plays a role in Mima’s character development, but it also makes us as an audience stop and say, “This is horrible. Why is this entertainment?” At this time, however, it is prudent to point out Kon Satoshi’s intentions with Perfect Blue;

No, the film is not based on any criticism. If the audience gets the impression from watching the film that the idol system in Japan is like that, I’m embarrassed. Of course I did research before making the film and I visited a number of these idol events, but I didn’t see the kind of example that is used in the film. Also, to reveal behind-the-scenes secrets about the entertainment world was never my intention. I simply wanted to show the process of a young girl maturing, becoming confused because her old set of values gets shattered, but who is reborn as a mature being as a result of that. That’s what I wanted to describe. But because I had to stick with the idea of an idol, the film came to talk about that particular world. [Midnight Eye Interview]

Regardless of Kon’s intention, Perfect Blue can serve as a useful jumping off point for a discussion on the nature of the idol culture inJapan and the position of women in media in general. Mima’s entrance into the acting world and her subsequent exploitation in rape scenes and nude photography is not an unusual course of events for young Japanese idols. The visual consumption and commoditization of women is also common enough in bothJapan and theUnited States to merit further discussion. Hopefully, members of the audience will notice their reaction and start to exam some of the other ways we consume the images of women in the media.

Interpretation

Perfect Blue is a complex film and it does far more than tell a suspenseful story. Kon Satoshi uses dreams, hallucinations, and doppelgangers within a complicated layered narrative to draw the audience into Mima’s fractured identity and perception. The entire film is a prolonged attempt to make the audience experience what Mima is experiencing, including her inability to distinguish between the real and the false. The climax and resolution of the film all revolve around Mima’s sole dramatic question: Who am I?    Of course, the climactic revelation that Mi-mania was only a tool in Rumi’s delusional plot is problematic. The stalker’s willingness to believe that Rumi is the real Mima (despite obvious physical differences) seems forced and too coincidental to be completely believable. Additionally, Rumi’s psychosis (that she is Mima) dovetails too neatly with Mima’s delusions that she is being tormented by her pop-idol alter-ego. When Rumi’s reflection finally betrays the false Mima’s true identity, Kon continues the visual imagery of Mima struggling with her phantom alter-ego long past the point when she is actually struggling with the flesh-and-blood Rumi.

Perfect Blue can be analyzed on a variety of levels. In terms of the film’s connection to the anime genre, Kon’s use of binaries is probably the most important. There are numerous anime that deal with binaries such as reality/fantasy, male/female, modernity/tradition, organic/synthetic, body/mind, and body/soul – Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Serial Experiments Lain, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Armitage and so on. Perfect Blue falls neatly into this category, as Mima struggles to establish a distinction between reality and hallucination as well as establish her own personal identity as opposed to the public image of her created by modern society (the media, the internet, and her fans). The fascination with binaries within Japanese animation can be connected back to the country’s own history.Japan has undergone several periods of rather extreme and somewhat forced Westernization – first during the Meiji period and later during the post-war American occupation. Because so much of modernity is a foreign transplant, it makes it much easier to delineate betweenJapan’s traditional past andJapan’s modern, Western-influenced society.

Similarly, the image of the young girl or ‘idol’ has attained iconic status in Japanover the last two decades. The young girl has become a signifier of contemporary Japanese consumer culture in its obsession with the ephemeral (youth and beauty) and the material. The aspect of vulnerability (readily apparent in all shojo figures) is of particular significance in relation to contemporary Japan, underlining the fact that the country is intensely aware of its unique place among nations – economically powerful but militarily vulnerable, with its centuries old traditions seemingly threatened from both within and without (Napier). The simultaneous exaltation and consumption of young women within pop culture is a fairly routine occurrence in Japan; the female as a cultural icon has increasingly come into ascendance in the postwar period, though Japanese women have far less political and socioeconomic power than their American counterparts. In this sense, Perfect Blue is at its core an examination of Mima’s struggle to establish a strong sense of personal identity within modern Japanese idol culture. While Magnetic Rose explores a similar theme and reaches an exceedingly negative conclusion, Kon Satoshi’s films on a whole have very positive representations of women that subtly exalt the feminine over the masculine. Much of the positivity and conviction demonstrated by Mima’s character in the last few minutes of Perfect Blue are present in Kon Satoshi’s next work, Millennium Actress, where the protagonist’s involvement with the Japanese film industry is a constant source of strength and courage throughout her life.

If you look at a dream overall, it’s very difficult to discern the meaning. However, as time goes on, there might be certain meanings in the background. Movies that you can watch once and understand entirely – that is the type of movie that I don’t really like. [I wholeheartedly agree with you hear, Kon] However, if you are able to understand 70 to 80 percent of what’s being relayed, and there’s still some percentage left that would allow for your own interpretation…that’s the type of movie that I do like. There might be a certain part that you don’t quite understand, but there is a portion that rests in your heart. [Kon Satoshi, Midnight Eye interview]

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Works Cited

Carroll, Noel. “Nightmare and the Horror Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings,” Film Quarterly: A Selection, Eds. Brian Henderson, Ann Martin, and Lee Amazonas,Berkeley,Los Angeles, andLondon:University ofCalifornia Press, 1999.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny” (1919), Art and Literature,London: Penguin Freud Library, 1985.

Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion.London andNew York:Methuen, 1981.

Kon Satoshi, dir., Perfect Blue (Yume Nara Samete). DVD.US: Manga Entertainment, 1999.

Mes, Tom. “Midnight Eye Interview: Satoshi Kon,” Midnight Eye (2 November 201), URL:  http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/satoshi_kon.shtml

Napier, Susan. “Excuse Me, Who Are You?”: Performance, the Gaze, and the Female in the Works of Kon Satoshi,” Cinema Anime, ed. Steven T. Brown,New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2006.

Robinson, Tasha. “Perfect Blue: Hitchcock for the 1990s,” In Science Fiction Weekly, 5.129 (Oct. 4, 1999), http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue129/anime.html

Romney, Jonathan. “Review of Perfect Blue,” Sight and Sound (August 1999), URL: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/176

Ruddell, Caroline. “Breaking Boundaries: The Representation of SplitIdentity in Anime,” Animation Studies, vol. 2, 2007.

Scheib, Richard. “Review of Perfect Blue,” The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review, (1998), URL: http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/perfectblue.htm

For a discussion of Kon in relation to Fincher and Lynch, see the article “Satoshi Kon” by the French critic “Jay” in Otaku (May.June 2003)” 20-2 1.

Because extreme over-eating and mandatory quality time with in-laws isn’t gruesome enough already, here are the 10 Best Horror Movies for Thanksgiving. Remember, it’s hard to run away from monsters and cannibals with a stomach full of turkey, so plan the most efficient exit strategy out of your house before binge-eating yams and pumpkin pie. It might just save your life, or at least help you avoid a goodbye kiss from your great-grandmother Besty-Lou. If you’re like me, you may enjoy using horror movies to dissuade people from hanging out with you. But, for the social butterflies among you, I’ve divided this list into ‘funny’ and ‘gruesome’:

10 – Funny: BLOOD FREAK (1972) dir. Brad F. Grinter

I’m not sure how hard this movie is to get a hold of – I saw it at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA during one of their late-night exploitation cinema marathons. The film follows Herschell (Steve Hawkes), a young man who falls into a questionable crowd and begins to engage in recreational drug-use and casual sex. Not long afterwards, his job at a turkey farm leads him to be exposed to a genetically-modified turkey meat. Much like Spiderman, Herschell is soon transformed into a mutant, blood-thirsty Turkeyman (AKA a man wearing a very fake turkey head) and begins drinking the blood of drug-addicts to fuel his own addiction. In the end, we discover that the entire film was merely a marijuana-induced hallucination. Perhaps the strangest of all anti-drug messages, the entire film is an extended metaphor on the horrors of drug addiction. Think of it as an alternative to DARE for your teenagers:

9 – Gruesome: FEED (2005) dir. Brett Leonard

If you’re worried about over-indulging this holiday season, you may want to watch Feed as a deterrent. Alex O’Loughlin stars as Michael Carter, a ‘feeder,’ someone who derives sexual satisfaction from feeding overweight women large quantities of food. After stumbling upon his website, Australian sex-crime investigator Richard (Jack Thompson) travels toAmerica convinced that Michael is actually maliciously capturing and feeding these women to death. While the movie starts out strong, it loses it’s footing halfway through and never regains its momentum. Still, an interesting premise that’s quite apt for this holiday:

8 – Funny: BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL U CAN EAT (2002) dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis

Avid films buffs will likely prefer the 1963 Blood Feast, the first film to ever feature blood splatter. But this film provides a slightly newer take on the camp classic. Revisiting one of the most important films in the splatter genre, Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat is more of a remake than a sequel. Fuad Ramses III inherits his grandfather’s old property and quickly falls under the control of Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Bent on satisfying her need for blood and flesh, he happily embarks on a murder spree, killing and cooking the lovely women of the town and feeding them to the inhabitants. Full of bad dialog, nudity, and a few genuinely funny moments, Blood Feast 2 is a good movie for those who enjoyed The Evil Dead franchise. Despite its flaws, the film still manages to be rather enjoyable:

7 – Gruesome: RAVENOUS (1999) dir. Antonia Bird

Guy Pearce stars in the frontier revisitation of the Native American Wendigo myth as Captain John Boyd, recently transferred to a remote fort in the Sierra Nevadas. There, he encounters a traumatized stranger who recounts a story of cannibalism. As Boyd ventures out into the wilderness to search for survivors, he is drawn deeper into the mystery and the deranged mind of a killer. This movie has a lot of talking and focuses more on the characters rather than the more ‘horror’ oriented parts of the story. Kids and childish adults will be easily distracted:

6 – Funny: POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD (2006) dir. Lloyd Kaufman/Troma Entertainment

Troma Entertainment puts their unique spin on the ‘ancient Indian burial ground’ trope with this story about a fried chicken fast food chain that expands onto such a spot. Now cursed, the restaurant patrons begin suffering from severe food poisoning and are soon fighting for survival against a horde of revenge-bent zombie chickens. Like most Troma films, this movie is extremely campy and not for everyone. But if you’re amused by fake vomit, blood and gore or have an intense hatred of Colonel Sanders, this is the film for you:

5 – Gruesome: CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980) dir. Ruggero Deodato

Before The Blair Witch Project made ‘found-footage’ horror movies fashionable, there was Cannibal Holocaust and the mondo film movement in Italy. Also known as ‘shockumentaries,’ mondo films are semi-documentary films that focus on taboo practices and extreme subject matter. Cannibal Holocaust revolves around the found documentary footage (half-fake, half-staged) of a anthropological crew investigating cannibalism in the indigenous tribes of the Amazon. As the movie progresses, we discover that the film crew staged many of the events and their inhumane treatment of the natives is exposed. Cannibal Holocaust features disturbing special effects, extremely violent images, and the real mutilation and torture of animals. Definitely not for the faint-of-heart and certainly an appetite-suppressor:

4 – Funny: MOTEL HELL (1980) dir. Kevin Connor

Make no mistake; this film is definitely a spoof of classic slasher films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Psycho. Motel Hell follows too sinister farmers – Rory Calhoun as Farmer Vincent and Nancy Parsons as his wife – who kidnap unsuspecting travelers, bury them up to their necks in an outdoor garden, and hold them prisoner until their flesh is tender enough to eat. Certainly an interesting method of meat-tenderization and an interesting idea to entertain while you baste your turkey:

3 – Gruesome: THE WOMAN (2011) dir. Lucky McKee

Ladies, if you want to make sure your hard work in the kitchen is appreciated this Thanksgiving, you should think about popping The Woman into the DVD player before dinner. The Cleeks are an idyllic American family, at least to the casual observer. However, when successful lawyer and father Chris (Sean Bridgers) discovers a feral woman living in the woods, he decides to capture her, chain her up in the family’s cellar, and civilize her. From here, the film spirals out of control and becomes an interesting study on civilization and the brutality that men are capable of inflicting upon one another (or, in this case, women). This film is delicately layered and extremely horrific, dark and demanding. If you’re among a bunch of horror movie buffs this Thanksgiving, this would spark some interesting conversation over dinner.

2 – Funny: THANKSKILLING (2010) dir. Jordan Downey

This movie defines ‘low-budget.’ A fowl-mouthed, homicidal turkey (perhaps made of papier-mâché) is bent on seeking revenge for his fallen brethren. A slew of horror-movie stereotypes – the jock, slut, nerd, etc. – come home for Thanksgiving break and get killed off one-by-one. Look forward to watching this one after consuming ample amounts of spiked cider and repeating some of the great one-liners like “Gobble gobble, motherfucker” and “You’ve been stuffed!”

1 – Gruesome: THANKSGIVING (2007/forthcoming) dir. Eli Roth

I’ll admit it, this is a complete cop-out. Eli Roth’s feature-length version of Thanksgiving is slated to release in 2013, according to some film websites. Inspired by his 2007 ‘fake’ trailer for Grindhouse, Thanksgiving is a unique take on 1970s slasher flicks…with a turkey-themed plot. If the trailer is an indication, Thanksgiving will be just a gruesome as Roth’s previous works (Cabin Fever, Hostel) and it is the only movie by Eli Roth that I really want to be in existence. Watch the trailer and get ready to carve some meat: