There has never been a dreamer quite like Satoshi Kon, and there has never been a nightmare quite like Perfect Blue.
Kon built his body of work on the duality of individuality and the fluidity of consciousness. Though his films never achieved an overwhelming commercial success, his influence, especially upon the likes of Darren Aronofsky and Christopher Nolan, is staggering. Melding the wondrous with the actual, Kon’s work digs into the machinations of ambition and the human experience. In his obituary for the filmmaker, The Guardian’s Andrew Osmond wrote, “Kon thought that people lived in multiple realities, such as those of television, the internet and the realm of memory.” Kon pulled the bulk of his narrative energy from the notion that often, these separate realities can become less and less distinct.
In the majority of Kon’s tales, as these barriers between the real and perceived deteriorate, growth occurs. In Paprika, the exploration of the self through a dream-trekking device ultimately allows the film’s cast to forgo the mundane expectations of their careers and society, actualizing themselves as lovers and artists. In Millennium Actress, a woman’s life-long journey through cinema is merely the vehicle to find the person who impacted her the most. However, Kon’s cinematic debut, Perfect Blue, posits a terrifying thesis: There is no other outcome but peril when one’s own fundamental understanding of their self is eviscerated. Furthermore, how can one possibly salvage themselves when the industry they are ensnared by curates and commodifies their own persona?
As a wave of idolization cascades across urban Japan, a 21-year-old aspiring pop idol opts for an abrupt career change. Mima (Junko Iwao, Ruby Marlowe), a member of the musical trio CHAM!, grows frustrated with the immaturity and stagnation of her public persona. In tandem with the pressure of her talent agency and the reluctance of her best friend and manager, Rumi (Rica Matsumoto, Wendee Lee), Mima takes a high-profile role on the crime series Double Bind. The burgeoning darkness of her performance comes traumatic and feverish hallucinations in the form of a deformed paparazzo, Me-Mania, and a specter of her former pop self.
Kon wastes little time dissecting the toxicity of infatuation, both intimately and commercialized. No aspiring women or children await Mima’s final performance with CHAM!, but a legion of men shooting the shit as if they were speaking on fantasy football or Magic: the Gathering. Placing his frame behind the performers, and an avalanche of flashing cameras and rowdy press greets the bubbly icons. After an outburst of violence in the crowd spurs Mima to announce her future endeavors, the aforementioned Me-Mania remains in ruin, bloodied by the recent altercation and dumbstruck by the apparent loss of his muse. In his video essay over the film, Super Eyepatch Wolf finds this moment exceptionally crucial, as Kon glances through Me-Mania’s eyes: Holding his cupped hand a few inches from his face, Mima dances in the photographer’s palm before skipping away to another section of the stage. As early as Perfect Blue’s opening sequence, it is strikingly clear the public Mima is a fabricated persona and more importantly, an object.
Mima’s susceptibility to psychological and physical torture is compounded as she discovers her choice is violently refuted by many of her fans, and her own identity is digitally hijacked. After a passing journalist and an anonymous postcard leads Mima to the discovery of Mima’s Room, an online chatroom where a supposed Mima shares detailed insight about her own life, she grows weary of the prospect of a stalker. Attempting to brush it aside as harmless, Mima cannot help but feel a piece of herself violated and ripped away from her.
“The you in you isn’t the you you think is in you.” – Satoshi Kon
Mima’s agreement to perform as a victim in a grizzly scene of sexual assault on the set of Double Bind solidifies her distress, fracturing her own perception of reality as a trail of violence follows closely behind her. The aforementioned scene, as troubling as it is iconic, was packaged as necessary by her male talent agent, a way to finally break the curse of her limited capacity as a former pop star. However, Mima’s supposed stardom is not shielded by privileges of celebrity; Kon, and by a haunting extension Mima’s Room, illustrates her grocery shopping, daydreaming on a subway, and living simply in a small apartment. The simulated violence she experiences on set quickly transpires into a very real possibility.
In the film’s second act, Kon meshes Mima’s realities into a single, unfiltered experience. The past and the present grows indistinguishable, as well as Mima’s life on and off the set. There is never a moment for the actress establish her bearings, as a morsel of realization explodes into a cacophony of unfathomable questions. Her specter, the pop star Mima, begins to taunt her, stressing how the “real Mima” would never allow herself to be brutalized. Likewise, Me-Mania receives continual goading from the author of Mima’s Room, convinced the actual Mima is an agent actively working against the idea of Mima he holds dear. Kon finds perception in the wake of this industry as both a grand manipulator and an uncontrollable force, propelling all involved towards violence and self-destruction.
Those involved with Double Bind are discovered murdered with their eyes gouged, and Mima considers herself responsible. Even the prospect of an unknown entity orchestrating her trauma, which Mima once presumed likely, is shaken as the corpses pile up. Pop idol Mima becomes a prolific presence, arguing the actual Mima has become “filthy and tarnished,” unworthy of any microbe of success let alone life. Mima can only shake her peril when her influences manifest into tangible and physically abrasive forces, those of which in a moment of instinct, she strikes out against.
Mima’s only hope against her suffocating ego and industrial pressures is her endurance. Mima weathered the pitfall popularity and can outlast the agents of such a vicious cycle. She does not emerge unscathed, however, accepting that the delicately crafted figure of Mima the pop idol and now Mima the actress will never be a true reflection, but a persona within what Kon describes as a separate reality, temporarily diving in for only as long as needed to facilitate her artistry.
Ultimately, to wander too far into a notion of an identity, rather than one’s true self, will inevitably yield cognitive cannibalism. As Kon illustrates in the film’s climactic encounter, madness begets madness.
