Perfect Blue with Giana and Chika of Shoujo Sundae

00:00:00
Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions asked if movies have.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and best start changing with the Bechdel Cast.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to the Bechtel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus, my name is Caitlin Dorante. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test as a jump of goof point. The Bechtel Test, of course, being something invented by our best friend, Alison Bechdel.

00:00:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, and she'll tell you more about it at her house later where we're going to hang out.

00:00:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, just kidding.

00:00:40
Speaker 4: I mean this is actually kind of interesting because we're talking about, you know, super fans and parasocial distance.

00:00:48
Speaker 3: Today.

00:00:50
Speaker 4: We are not going to perfect blue, Alison Bechdel. That's the Bechdel Cast.

00:00:56
Speaker 3: Promise. We promise.

00:00:57
Speaker 4: If you are not familiar with the Bechtel Test, we'll tell you what it is. There's many versions of the test. It was originally in Alison Bechdel's incredible comic collection Dice to Watch out For. She has of course gone on to have an incredible career in graphic memoir. But the version of the test that we use require that two characters of a marginalized gender speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue, and that exchange should be meaningful, not a high high. But what does count is women in conflict, and that's what we're gonna get into today.

00:01:35
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:01:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, we didn't know how to start this. It's hard when it's just like, what is a funny way to start a conversation about perfect Blue? We'll figure it out.

00:01:45
Speaker 3: But I did. I panicked. I didn't.

00:01:47
Speaker 4: I was like, there, any joke would feel very insensitive.

00:01:51
Speaker 3: It's a heavy film.

00:01:53
Speaker 4: Although I think that we could be in that group.

00:01:56
Speaker 3: What do you think?

00:01:57
Speaker 4: I think we could do it.

00:01:58
Speaker 3: I think we could be in the in the group, Oh in the problem you mean cham exclamation point Cham.

00:02:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm a huge I'm part of the Chamfam.

00:02:07
Speaker 3: Oh my Chamfam.

00:02:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, casual not scary, Yeah of course.

00:02:12
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we're all pop girlies here. It's true. And I'm the Sea and Cham.

00:02:18
Speaker 4: I'm the Ham. You're the Sea, I'm the Ham and uh huh's kind of how our band works.

00:02:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, amazing.

00:02:25
Speaker 4: Maybe you've heard of us. I'm excited to talk about it. And the star of the movie for me is explaining how the internet works, which makes sense because it's nineteen ninety seven. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it made me giggle. I was like, look at this, it's called a computer. There's something on the internet.

00:02:42
Speaker 3: Is it good?

00:02:43
Speaker 4: And then the movie posits no, yeah, I think it take this age quite well.

00:02:49
Speaker 3: I mean truly, yes. Yeah, she explains what computers are, she explains what the Internet is. The recipient of this information does not understand, and kind of to this day, I also do not understand.

00:03:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a whole Well, we'll talk about internet culture. I feel like this movie's really ahead of its time in that regard. Yeah, but let's get our guests in here, because this movie needs to be discussed, and now.

00:03:13
Speaker 3: It really does. The movie, of course, is perfect Blue. The guests are the hosts of the podcast show Jo Sunday. It's Jianna and Chica. Welcome.

00:03:24
Speaker 1: Yes, hi, Hello, thank you so much for having us. We're so excited to be here.

00:03:29
Speaker 3: Thank you for being here. Tell us more about your podcast. Well.

00:03:33
Speaker 1: Showjo Sunday is a delectable podcast we like to say, covering show, show and jose media, anime films, sometimes manga, dissecting it through our segments that are all ice cream pun names. So we go through all of our feelings, taking apart each and everything we have felt watching it and looking into the symbolism and the story writing, and just digging in if you will, to every bite we can.

00:04:05
Speaker 3: Yummy, tell us about your relationship with this movie, Perfect Blue, Chico. Why don't you go first.

00:04:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, once upon a time, when I was a young warthog, I was very much so into anime. I didn't know what it was. I just thought it was cartoons. I mean it is, but then it's Japanese animation, and so I couldn't really tell the difference. So in the beginning, or at least in the nineties, I was watching like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z and stuff like that, and I would go to Blockbuster and I would just be like, I'm going to find the type of shows that I like. I can tell because it's drawn differently. And so I picked up Perfect.

00:04:57
Speaker 3: Blue, Oh as a child.

00:05:02
Speaker 5: As a child, Oh, I really shouldn't have watched that movie.

00:05:10
Speaker 4: You couldn't have known you couldn't have known.

00:05:14
Speaker 5: No, I couldn't have because it's just like, because we've seen Mima and like the cute outfit and everything, and I was just like, oh, like this seems great. Uh so my relationship with it, it's like it's nostalgic. But then it's also like a little bit flabbergasting, just because I really had no business watching it.

00:05:41
Speaker 4: I mean, I feel like we all have that piece of media that really you're just like and that changed the course of my life in a way I wasn't prepared for because I shouldn't have been looking at it fascinating. Wow, Yeah, what about eu Gianna?

00:05:56
Speaker 1: My history with this film is far less interesting. So honestly, I kept hearing about it from Chica because you know, we've talked to some people about our history with anime, and she would always bring up how she watched Perfect Blue Too Young, and I was like, what is this movie? Like, what is it about this movie? I'm like, we're gonna watch it eventually, so like, I guess I'll find out. And we had previously covered Millennium actress on show Show Sunday, and I wasn't a huge fan. I know it's a hot take, but it was like a personal thing. So I was like, oh man, I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna feel about Perfect Blue. And then we watched it to talk about it with you guys, and it definitely exceeded my expectations. For sure.

00:06:42
Speaker 3: Oh cool.

00:06:43
Speaker 1: I liked it much more than Millennium Actress. But it certainly certainly left an imprint.

00:06:50
Speaker 3: It'll do that.

00:06:51
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, Caitlin, had you seen this before?

00:06:55
Speaker 3: I had, because when we covered Black Swan on the podcast, Yeah, this movie comes up in the research quite a bit, and we'll get into it later. But I wanted to watch it and just sort of like compare it to Black Swan, because I mean, the short story here is that Darren Aronofsky was like rumored to have acquired the rights to do an American remake of Perfect Blue. But then he's like, never mind, I didn't get those rights and I didn't do that. And then years later Black Swan comes out and a bunch of people are like, hang on, this movie is very similar to Perfect Blue. Are you sure you didn't And then he's like, no, no, no, it's not even inspired by Perfect Blue, And I just made up this identical story all by myself.

00:07:48
Speaker 4: There's a lot of deep lore about this that we can get into.

00:07:52
Speaker 3: But I didn't realize.

00:07:52
Speaker 4: Because I haven't seen Requiem for a Dream. But I think that that movie has even more direct connection also from Perfect Blue, where it's like Aronofsky is a serial offender and like he had actually met Satoshi Khan before and they had this Like I would love to watch a dramatization of this lunch we had that Darren Aronofsky seems to have thought went very well, and Satashi Khan was like he's kind of a clown and had some I think understandable resentments that Aronofsky was this big shot director ripping off his work quite a bit, and Satoshi Khan was struggling as a director. And also just like the I don't know the poetic irony that he passed away the week before Black Swan even came out, so he didn't even get to see it. Like it's very like it's not all about Eve, but it's not not all about you.

00:08:51
Speaker 3: It's wild. Yeah.

00:08:52
Speaker 4: I haven't seen Requiem for a Dream though, and I don't think I want to.

00:08:56
Speaker 3: I have seen it many times. I am intimately familiar with that I'm not sure why, because it's not the type of thing that I tend to gravitate toward. But I've seen it a bunch, and the similarities between Perfect Blue and Requiem for a Dream are far more esthetic. Yeah, he's like pulling direct shots slash like animation, the way that a shot is framed.

00:09:19
Speaker 4: It's just pulling for the storyboards directly, right, pretty much.

00:09:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so he's replicating those for different shots in Requiem for a Dream. The similarities between Perfect Blue and Black Swan are far more like narrative and thematic. So he's just, like, you know, stealing different components of Perfect Blue for various of his movies. I have thought.

00:09:41
Speaker 4: I don't because I'm not an Aronofsky defender by any means, but I am kind of a Black Swan defender. Yeah, that's okay, and I do feel like it was meaningfully different enough for me. But I also it's clearly he's pulling from it, and I just wish he had just said that, like the I think the problem was he didn't admit it.

00:09:59
Speaker 3: I know that's the annoying thing.

00:10:00
Speaker 4: Because if you admitted it, I think the stories are different enough that, especially if you're a big shot director, why not shout out right someone who you are clearly very influenced by. It almost is it's like an Aronofsky problem versus a black Swan problem.

00:10:14
Speaker 3: Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah, no, it's again, it's like this happens all the time, where like a later movie will pay homage to an earlier movie or be influenced by an earlier movie, and it's just a matter of like the creative mind behind the later movie admitting, like, yep, I drew influence from this earlier thing, and then the fact that he refuses to do that Aeronovsky does just don't.

00:10:37
Speaker 4: Be a white Harvard guy about it, which Aeronofsky struggles with, right right, Yeah.

00:10:43
Speaker 3: No.

00:10:43
Speaker 5: I saw a YouTube video somebody had translated Satoshi Khan having like sort of mini lectures about Perfect Blue, and he directly talks about Darren Aronofsky and talks about how he pulled like the bath scene, like yes, yeah, it's very specifically pulled the bath scene, the bird's eye view underwater view from Perfect Blue. And he was just sort of laughing at the homage because he said that he asked him about it, and then Darren was like, oh, it's an homage and he's like, oh, I guess I should also do homages to other people like that in my films too, Like.

00:11:26
Speaker 4: It's so trick. I Yeah, there's a great piece on a substack called animation Obsessive that like broke down the exact.

00:11:34
Speaker 3: Like, I don't know.

00:11:35
Speaker 4: The beautiful part of the Internet is someone has always done the work for you. And yeah, the conflicting quotes about because it also seems like Satoshi Khan felt different about it at different points in his life, and that towards the end of his life in particular, he was like, nah, fuck this ooh. Also, I mean as early as the two thousands after he first met Ronowski, he said, I'm feeling pathetic. It's a pitiful tale when the person being paid homage too has less name recognition, less social credibility, and less budget to spend. So it seems like Satoshi Khan's issue was at its core, like why not give me credit? Like if you're so influenced by my work, why can't I get my projects funded? Yeah, and there's culture vulture stuff to be examined there too, we'll.

00:12:22
Speaker 3: Get back to.

00:12:22
Speaker 4: Sorry, So we got into the Aeronoski stuff immediately were.

00:12:26
Speaker 3: So all this to say, I did watch this movie. I think we covered Black Swan back in like twenty nineteen, so that's when I first saw Perfect Blue, and we you know, talk about it a bit on that episode as well, for any listeners who want to go back and.

00:12:42
Speaker 4: Live at the Bellhouse if I'm remembering right.

00:12:44
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed, yeah, so yeah, but that was my first and kind of only exposure to Perfect Blue, and then rewatched it a couple times to prep for this episode Jamie, what about you? What's your relationship?

00:12:57
Speaker 4: I hadn't seen it before. Yeah, I think that's the whole story. I have seen Satoshi Khan's last movie, Paprika, because it recently. It must be having like some kind of anniversary or something like that, because it like re released at AMC's recently. I didn't see it there, but it's I don't know, I've just been seeing it around a lot, and so I didn't do a particularly like intense careful view of it.

00:13:22
Speaker 3: But I saw his last.

00:13:24
Speaker 4: Movie and I had conflicted feelings about it, and then this is his I believe, his first feature.

00:13:31
Speaker 3: That I like a lot.

00:13:33
Speaker 4: I mean, especially from just like an animation perspective. It's so engrossing in a way that, like, I don't know how many movies I've seen at all like that, especially ones that are so short, and the way that he animates the crisis that Memama is having. It, I just have like, never seen anything quite like it. It's amazing story wise. I got some questions that I'm excited to talk to you about.

00:14:02
Speaker 3: Yes, let's take a quick break and then we'll jump back into the recap and we're back. Oh, we're back.

00:14:21
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the events of Perfect Blue. Shall wait, It's not complicated at all, Caitlan, I'm sure this was a breeze to put together.

00:14:28
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have a very easy time.

00:14:30
Speaker 4: Although very short movie. I will say it's like eighty less than I think if you take the credits out, less than eighty minutes long. We're talking space jambling.

00:14:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's awesome. I love it. I'm delighted. Yeah that it's socior More movies should be seventy seven minutes long. Yes, content warning at the very top for things like sexual violence, rape, stalking, coercion. The story takes place in Tokyo. I believe we open on a performance by a pop girl group called Cham exclamation Point, which has three members, one of whom Mina seems to be the star of the group. She's idolized by the fans. Also at this concert is a security guard man who is leering very creepily at Mima, as well as a group of young troublemaker men, and there's an altercation between them and the creepy security guard.

00:15:38
Speaker 4: I am curious what you think about, like what level of famous are they because it seems like they're kind of famous, but I can't tell. They're performing at the mall, Like I'm not like, are they maltor famous, which does feel like a very nineties, ye two thousands convention of like they're maltor famous, they're gonna go big time or not?

00:15:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I did Britney Spears do a mall tour before. Oh yeah yeah, so like they could be on the way up, because later we're hearing about them charting in the top one hundred. But it's like in the eighties, so I think they're like working their way up the pop ranks.

00:16:15
Speaker 4: They're paying their damn dues. Yeah, yes, have any of you ever been to a maltar?

00:16:21
Speaker 3: I mean they don't really happen anymore as far as I know. But like I didn't know that was a thing.

00:16:26
Speaker 4: So no, I mean neither. Yeah, I feel like I missed out on something. I caught the tail end of it. And in middle school I got to go to a degrassy malteur. Whoa wow, and that was so amazing, and Drake was supposed to be there, but then he did not show up.

00:16:43
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness.

00:16:44
Speaker 4: So it was just like one of the objectively kind of flop cast members of De Grassy. But my cousin and I were really excited.

00:16:53
Speaker 1: I would have been thrilled.

00:16:54
Speaker 3: That's amazing. Oh it's great, Jamie. You and I should do a Bechdel cast mal tour.

00:16:59
Speaker 4: I honestly, it still does. I feel it's more like outdoor malls, Like sometimes you'll catch like younger musician performing at an outdoor mall. Indoor mall tours are washed though it's a convention of the past.

00:17:11
Speaker 3: Sure fine, anyway, they're doing a mall tour and intercut with this concert at the mall are I think these are flashback scenes of Mema with her like talent manager team discussing Mima's career. So there's a woman named Rumy who wants Mima to stay in the pop group CHAM, while mister Tatacoro wants Mima to pivot to acting and is trying to land her a part in a TV drama series. So back to the concert, Mima announces that this is her last show with CHAM. The audience is like, no, we love you, don't go, and then someone in the crowd hands her an envelope. It's like fan mail kind of thing. So Mima goes home to her small apartment, she feeds her fish, and she opens the envelope and inside is a letter saying I'm always looking at Mima's room. Here's a link to it. But she doesn't know what that means, and she doesn't know what the internet is, so she just kind of brushes it off.

00:18:23
Speaker 4: Incredible imagine, I wish, I wish Yeah.

00:18:29
Speaker 3: And then she receives a fax remember fax machines, she has one, and the facts is just like this print out of sort of like ransom note style lettering. It seems that just has the word trader written over and over again. So clearly someone is upset that she left the pop group and they're being very creepy about it. Then we cut to the set of Double Bind, which is the drama sere that Mima has landed a very small role in.

00:19:04
Speaker 4: Which reminded me of Twin Peaks a little bit. There's like a similar thing that happens in Twin Peaks. There's a I had to look it up, but there's a show within a show called Invitation to Love in Twin Peaks.

00:19:17
Speaker 3: I forgot about that.

00:19:20
Speaker 4: I don't know why it clicked for me, but it did. And Twin Peaks was big in Japan.

00:19:24
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:19:25
Speaker 4: There's a lot of cultural exchange going on.

00:19:27
Speaker 3: Sure, sure, for sure. Yeah. So Mima is playing the younger sister of a woman who was murdered in the show, so that's her character. She's nervous about her performance. She sees that creepy security guard on the set of the show, and then Mima's manager, Guy Tadakoro, opens an envelope that turns out to contain a small explosive and he's injured, and it seems like the envelope was intended for Mima. So things are ramping up and he's kind of like.

00:20:04
Speaker 4: Ha ha, don't worry about it, right, if that happened in my head, I would not be like, hah, don't worry about it.

00:20:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, how is it just a prank? That's a straight up threat.

00:20:14
Speaker 3: He's bleeding.

00:20:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:20:16
Speaker 4: I was like, wow, he really is dedicated to the game. He's like, don't worry about it. It's just a scratch.

00:20:21
Speaker 3: I'm good tis but a scratch.

00:20:23
Speaker 5: So much blood on the floor and everything. It's just like, oh, no worries, Yeah, okay.

00:20:30
Speaker 3: Everyone downplays it.

00:20:31
Speaker 4: Guess him self esteem man, when you text ha ha. No worries. But there's lots of worries. There's only worries. I mean, I guess.

00:20:39
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:20:40
Speaker 4: That's a lot of this movie.

00:20:41
Speaker 3: It's just like, yeah right. Roomy also is like, no, don't even worry about it. We definitely shouldn't have called the police. And yeah, Mima's the only one being like, unlikely thing for Ruby to do. Interesting anyway. So a few days later, Rumy comes over to Mima's apartment and sets up a computer with the Internet ever heard of it?

00:21:04
Speaker 4: For mema fully branded, fully branded, like, here's a Macintosh computer. I think they're using an actual browser that once existed too. I was like, did mac pay to be the scary computer for perfect.

00:21:17
Speaker 3: Blue maybe maybe interest Anyway, So Mima goes to that link that she saw in the letter for that thing called Mima's Room, and it turns out to be this like blog slash diary thing where someone is writing about Mima's life as if they are her and describing intimate details about her life that you would only know if you were a Mima or if you were stalking her. So she's freaked out.

00:21:50
Speaker 4: For anyone that's ever had a scary paraspoxual experience, I feel like that it's done really well here where she's like, oh, this is so cool.

00:22:00
Speaker 3: Oh oh wait, there's.

00:22:02
Speaker 4: Like yeah, that's that's how that goes.

00:22:05
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yes. So then we cut to the set of the show Double Bind again, Rumy and Tatakoro have another conversation about Mima and her career. They learn that cham is doing quite well without her, and they now have a song on like the top one hundred list, which they never had when Mima was a part of the group. So they're sort of like this, Oh, did Mima do the right thing? She's maybe having some hashtag ragretes kind of thing. Though Mima is given a few more lines on another episode of this show, so she returns to set. The security guard seems to continue to be stalking her. He's coming to set, he's videotaping her. Then the writer of the show, mister Shibuya, writes a scene in which Mima's character will be raped on the TV show. Rumy doesn't want her to do the rape scene, but Tata Quorro says it's important that Mima do this, so Mima agrees to it. That night, on the Metro, Mima gets a quick glimpse of her reflection, but it's not her reflection, it's a different version of her in her like pop girl outfit.

00:23:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is like one of the more obvious black swan obviously ripped off, like this exact sequence.

00:23:39
Speaker 3: Yes. Then Mima is back on the set of Double Bind shooting this rape scene and it is brutal. We will talk more about it later, but it's very traumatic for Mima, and the security guard is there watching the whole thing. Mima goes home and has a breakdown. She also discovers that her fish are dead, and it's like, did someone kill them or did she just forget to feed them again, We're not sure. She sees another vision of this kind of like alternate version of herself, like pop Idol Mima, and she's kind of real and kind not because she's like floating and bouncing around not really obeying the laws of gravity. So you're just like, is this a hallucination? Is it a real person? We don't really know. It also becomes clear that the security guard is the one posting to Mima's room website and like writing this diary under the alias Memania and similar to the like pop Idle Vision Mima. He thinks it was a mistake for Mima to leave the music group and pursue acting. He's furious about it, and he maybe murders the screenwriter about it, because that guy is brutally killed one night, but we don't see who the assailant is.

00:25:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, but we hear cham yes, yes, cham on the boombox haunting.

00:25:18
Speaker 3: Yeah. Again.

00:25:21
Speaker 4: It's just like it is so incredible, how seamless it all kind of comes together of how many different sources are literally put in words in Mima's mouth, whether it's her fans or the screenwriter.

00:25:33
Speaker 3: I mean, at least for him.

00:25:34
Speaker 4: It's kind of hard to be like, oh no, the screenwriter, like he's awful. Yeah, yeah, And who will mourn him. But there are movies that try to say something simpler that really bonk you over the head with it.

00:25:47
Speaker 3: But it just is so seamless here for sure. So then Mima reluctantly participates in a nude photo shoot. Her photos end up in magazine. The Stocker security guard buys like all the copies of the magazine so that no one else can see this version of Mima. He thinks that she is an impostor, and the real Mima is this like floating ethereal pop idol Mima. Cut back to Mima filming scenes of Double Bind, where what's happening in the show to Mima's character seems to be mimicking what's happening to Mima in real life, where her character is seeing things that aren't there and is confused about what's real and what's not. And then real Mima sees pop idle vision Mima again and starts chasing her, almost gets hit by a bus or a truck or something.

00:26:53
Speaker 4: It should be said. At this point, pop Idle Mima is wearing the outfit.

00:26:58
Speaker 3: Of the movie. Yes, red dress, not quite yet, She's still We're not at red dress. We're not yet yeah, there's so many sequels.

00:27:06
Speaker 4: Okay, well, buckle in, because I was really dazzled by the Red Dress. It's so far beyond the point that I'm like, let's take a moment for.

00:27:14
Speaker 3: The red dress. Yeah, it's currently still the like pink and white dress. Yeah, still iconic, but for sure, but not quite not the red dress. Right anyway, So there's this whole chase sequence. But wait a minute, was it just a dream? I don't know. Then Mima has a conversation with Rumy about her distorted perception of reality. Then that scene abruptly transitions to Mima back on set shooting the same scene we just saw her shoot or was that a dream? And then Mima's having another conversation with Rumy and was that a dream? So basically, Mima's grasp on reality is really falling apart. Cut to the psychiatrist's character in Double bind saying that the murderer character in the show is just an illusion that Mima's character fabricated. But maybe that illusion found someone to possess and that's who's killing all of the models in the show. Or maybe Mima's character has dissociative identity disorder and it was her committing the crimes when she's a different persona, and that one such persona is a former pop idol turned actor working in a drama series, and we're like, wait, is that what's happening to Mima in real life?

00:28:41
Speaker 4: I had to rewatch that secuence like four times and I'm still at the end. Was like, huh, we don't know, and we're not supposed to know. Yeah, I know, but I was like, I'll figure it out.

00:28:53
Speaker 3: No, no, no no. Then another man is brutally murdered, I think the photographer who did the nude photo shoot.

00:29:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, with the iconic lass line, you're a weird pizza guy, pizza boy, You're a weird pizza boy.

00:29:12
Speaker 3: And then curtainstead.

00:29:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, stab ice pick wow, yes, god you brutal death.

00:29:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, very basic instinct murder weapon. Anyway, so it seems like maybe Mima is the weird pizza boy murderer, or maybe that was just a delusion because she wakes up from a nightmare. But then she also finds bloody clothes in her closet, so maybe she is murdering. We don't know. They finish shooting double bind and at this point Mima like truly has no idea what's real and what is not. Then the security guard abducts Mima. There's another brutal assault scene the so Mima is able to fight him off and get away. But wait, was that real or was that a scene that they were shooting for Doublebind? We don't know. And then we get a reveal that the floating pop Idol vision version of Mima was maybe roomy this whole time. And this is the Red Dress sequence right now, we're there, Yeah, a moment for the Red Dress. Yes, yes, it seems like maybe Rumy is trying to live vicariously through Mima because Rumy is also a former pop idol something that I didn't really pick up on from watching the movie, but it's something I kept reading when I was doing research for this movie. So it's one quick exchange.

00:30:52
Speaker 1: Okay, it's like one line, like when they're initially talking about Mema pivoting into becoming an actress. I because I think mister Tatacuorro says something about like, oh just because like it didn't work out for you or something. It's like something along those lines.

00:31:06
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, yeah, got it, Like apparently she didn't fit the beauty standards, and so that's why she ended up having to quit or stop being an idol.

00:31:17
Speaker 4: I see, and that seems and it's like the I don't know, I'm excited to talk about Roomy. Yes, same, but this is like super common in entertainment, Like how painful it has to be to be facilitating this for other people and knowing all of the shortcomings and still having to be like, nope, this is great. Great is business in the world, Like you might find yourself putting the red dress onto.

00:31:42
Speaker 3: I don't know. Oh yeah. So Roomy attacks Mima. They start fighting. There's a chase sequence, but also like pop idol, Mima is sometimes roomy and she's floating around again, and we're like, wait, is this real? And it all culminates in Roomy impaling herself on shards of glass and then nearly being hit by a truck, but Mima pushes her out of the way and saves her, and then we cut to some time later. Both Mima and Rumy have survived their multiple stab wounds. Mima visits Roumy, who is a patient at a psychiatric hospital, fully convinced that she is a pop idol. Mima, on the other hand, is now a famous actor, and the movie ends with her looking at herself in the rear view mirror of her car being like, I'm real because she had overheard like nurses at the hospital being like, is that the real Mima? There's no way she would be here, and she's like, no, I am real.

00:32:56
Speaker 4: Wink the end cue amazing credits music. So good.

00:33:03
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, So that's the movie. Let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss, and we're back.

00:33:21
Speaker 4: We're back, chi kid, Jana, I will'll let you take the reins here. Where would you like to start? There's so much to talk about. Where does one begin with?

00:33:30
Speaker 1: Perfectly, Caitlin, I.

00:33:33
Speaker 4: Wanted to That was a really good summary given the challenge you were up against.

00:33:38
Speaker 3: Yes, I really worked hard on it. It could not have been easy.

00:33:43
Speaker 5: Chef's Kiss, especially the dream part where it was like, oh wait, is she waking up? Did this happen? And then again and.

00:33:50
Speaker 4: Then every two lines you have to be like or is it right?

00:33:54
Speaker 3: Or is it It was definitely hard to summarize. But there are different scenes in the movie where either like Rumy or Tadakoro or like I can tell how hard you tried Mima, and I feel like that. I'm like, I tried so hard with this recap, so I'm glad it went well.

00:34:13
Speaker 4: We could start by finishing the conversation we apparently were very eager to have, which is the Aronofsky. Sure thing, Yeah, I guess is there anything else that we wanted to say to that? And I think the thing that stuck out to me that like I hadn't read about but it clicks very fast, is like this period of time. This movie comes out in nineteen ninety seven.

00:34:41
Speaker 3: Same year as Titanic and my brother Wow, and so a lot of incredible debuts this year, but that this is a period of time that again I'm referring to this animation obsessive post that we can link in the description where there was a lot of movies and film in the US and Japan about reality fuckery and double images in a way that I mean, I think this is like a really strong example that it's someone usually a white American, borrowing too heavily from another artist.

00:35:20
Speaker 4: The example that I didn't know because I just I am not a huge matrix head, but was how heavily the witch House Keys were pulling from ghosts in the Shell when pitching the Matrix, and that the Matrix, while Ghost in the Shell, I think, did well, but like the Matrix became this global phenomenon, and there is this pattern of white American directors I think, really blurring the line between homage and.

00:35:49
Speaker 3: Just lifting stealing.

00:35:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean everyone's mileage is going to vary their I don't even know how to feel about it in certain places, I think narratively, I don't know.

00:35:59
Speaker 3: I hope that.

00:36:00
Speaker 4: I feel like Black Swan is different enough from Perfect Blue, there are obvious similarities. I think that Aronofsky definitely needed to acknowledge this influence and even better credit and compensate Satoshi Khan in some way. Yeah, I think these are two great movies that I don't know. I can see that Aernofsky is also pulling from stuff that is not Perfect Blue and Black Swan.

00:36:30
Speaker 3: For example, Swan Lake, he.

00:36:34
Speaker 4: Is pulling from pretty heavily that also features dueling images and personas. Like I think Perfect Blue is a very very clear, heavy influence, and it was insecure and gross and disrespectful that he did not properly credit Satoshi Khan for the influence he had in the work. But I also don't fully buy that Black Swan's fully ripped off of Perfect Blue due to the Swan like of it all.

00:37:01
Speaker 3: I don't know. Fair Yeah, he basically just like swapped out this drama series Double Bind, and he's like, instead of that, what if Swan Lake?

00:37:12
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know, because Perfect Blue is about a forced career pivot. Yeah, Black Swan is more of a promotion within a system, true true, which again does feel like the dynamics of that are pretty different.

00:37:26
Speaker 3: I want to talk about the dynamics in Perfect.

00:37:28
Speaker 4: Blue of like this pivot. Yeah, that seems to be happening basically against her will. I know that she's not technically a child star. They say that she's twenty one, right, but I feel like the dynamics of child stardom are really present here.

00:37:44
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, because it says that she was in She started in Cham two and a half years ago, so she would have been you know, like eighteen nineteen, so she kind of started as like a teen star at the very least, so very young. Yeah yeah, yeah, just to provide a little bit more context on the development of this movie, and then yeah, we can get into more theme stuff. So this source material was originally supposed to be adapted to a live action film. Sotoshi Khan was approached and he agreed to do it, but there were funding issues, so the project kept getting like quote unquote downgraded to animated film, and the idea was that Satoshi Kan basically had to make it as a straight to video animated film. He took the source material and the first version of the script, which was written by Sadyuka Marai, and made quite a few changes to it, but then he and the screenwriter worked together to write a new script that introduces different things that Satoshi Kan wanted to play around with, such as the like play within a play component, the blurred lines between reality and dream. He wanted to focus more on the main character, Mima's inner struggle, things like that, and part of it was that psychological thrillers were not a mainstream genre in anime at the time, so there was like no real precedent for this story to be adapted to an animated film.

00:39:31
Speaker 4: Which is how perhaps a young Chica ends up watching it by accident.

00:39:37
Speaker 3: It's not what you would expect, it's right, and it wasn't expected to do well at all. Everyone thought that this movie would be immediately forgotten.

00:39:46
Speaker 4: Well, and it kind of didn't do well when it first came out.

00:39:49
Speaker 3: No, but then it ended up like screening at various festivals around the world and it gained a following. There's some other like interesting distribution stuff, but it's not so super relevant to our discussion. But yeah, so that's kind of the context. As we hinted at, there's all these themes that get explored. There's like things around the pressures of becoming a celebrity, the pressure to acquiesce to the demands of powerful entertainment industry people, the idea of like becoming a commodity to be bought and sold, and.

00:40:28
Speaker 4: The idea that like there's like this repeated idea that Mima should be grateful that this is happening, which is obviously something we still see all the time, particularly with young women, like it is critical that she does not acknowledge.

00:40:48
Speaker 3: The parts of this that are difficult or.

00:40:50
Speaker 4: You're ungrateful, and like again, it's from all of these different angles. She needs to appease her agents because she should, Like she says it explicitly at one point, like, well, they've done so much for me, Like who am I to push back?

00:41:05
Speaker 3: On what they want. Mm hmm.

00:41:07
Speaker 4: Same thing with her fans, where they're you know, it's hard to cross a line more severely than her fans are, but she has to be grateful for them. And then there's like a line again that's explicitly like the fans know what is best for you and we are going to which is such a fan mentality. Oh like name of fandom Where this is not present somewhere, it feels like it really clearly understands contemporary internet culture, which is wild.

00:41:39
Speaker 1: Yeah for how old it is.

00:41:40
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. There's another scene also where it's before the photo shoot where Memon knows that she'll be photographed nude. She has locked herself in her dressing room. She seems very apprehensive about it, and Tadakoro is like pounding on the door, being like, I thought you decided to go through with this. Everyone's waiting for you. So just like the pressure she feels, people are coercing her, not letting her change her mind. It's all stuff that again like still happens to this day. There's a long history of people in the entertainment industry, particularly people of marginalized genders and marginalized people in general. Being taken advantage of and heavily exploited.

00:42:29
Speaker 4: And then asked to say thank you.

00:42:31
Speaker 1: Basically yeah, yeah.

00:42:33
Speaker 5: I think they even have like after she has to do the rape scene, they essentially have her go on this press tour talking about how she wants to be a serious actress, and they had I think, just prior to it even happening, Tadakuro is talking about Jodie Foster, which I was just like, oh yes, oh okay, which I was just like, I know more of her later work, but I was like, let me go look back at like in and around the time Perfect Blue was being made, and I guess she had won an Oscar for the Acquired where she was playing a character that ended up getting raped.

00:43:17
Speaker 3: Oh wow, okay, and.

00:43:18
Speaker 5: Like the movies about like the legal case behind that and her like trying to win that, and so it's just like, oh, okay, there are more cultural ties within this than I had originally thought of.

00:43:33
Speaker 4: I didn't know that specific I thought that was like referencing the fact that she'd been a child start, but like that totally makes oh my god, that's brutal.

00:43:43
Speaker 3: I thought it was referencing specifically her character in Taxi driver where she plays like an underage sex worker.

00:43:50
Speaker 4: Right, But yeah, I think I can really only speak to American culture with any sort of detail. But this career phase that we're seeing Mima in we see all the time. We still see now. It's like, what we see with Mima is how something like this can go when you don't have proper support. Yeah, you could really kind of name any Disney or Nickelodeon pipeline child star to go in quote unquote legit as a young adult as an example of this. And sometimes it seems like, again we just don't know. It seems like the young actor has the support. Familiarly, we don't really see Mima's family. She references them once and she's like, they probably won't like seeing me get sexually assaulted on TV, but whatever, Like her family is not engaged.

00:44:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seemed like when she was originally doing the pivot, the career pivot, it seems like she was excited about acting, like this new prospect of it, and she has that phone call with her mother, and her mom's essentially like putting all of that down, like guilting her about not being a singer, saying how the whole family was waiting on the next single and saying that's singing is what you do best. So it almost feels like even if she wanted to lean on her family for support, like maybe she wouldn't get it because it's like, oh, well, you made this choice. Now these are the consequences. You know. It feels like she might get that kind of response.

00:45:23
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:45:23
Speaker 5: Yeah, like her just trying to I feel like her becoming an idol was an uphill battle, and so now her wanting to do something else, it's just like, but we're used to you being an idol. Now we actually like it now, like why would you change? And you know, it's good to want to change, but then it's also just as good to have people be able to accept different versions of you.

00:45:49
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:45:50
Speaker 5: I also want to just note really quickly before any of the listeners like read me the Riot Act the Jodie Foster film is the accused. It's not the acquired.

00:45:59
Speaker 3: My bad. Okay, Okay, you're fine, you're fine. We didn't know what existed, you're goodding, Yeah, didn't know the difference.

00:46:07
Speaker 4: I think this was like what struck me?

00:46:09
Speaker 3: Well, what do you think?

00:46:10
Speaker 4: Like it seems like Mima prefers to be a pop idol to being a serious actress. But the more the movie went on, I'm like, we never really hear her explicitly state what she wants exactly. Yeah, we hear that her family and obviously her fans and Roomy want her to be a pop idol, and they have their reasons, and that her agent and the director it's they want her to be an actress. We don't really know, like we can guess what Mima wants, but she's very young. She's so like understandably sort of like pulling her hair out over wanting to please everyone in an industry where that's completely impossible. And I just it made me so sad because like, I don't who knows what she wants.

00:46:56
Speaker 3: She probably doesn't know she exactly. Like she's still young enough to be quite impressionable and not that young people and you know, early twenties people can't have autonomy, but like she is in a juncture in her life and career where she thinks she needs to be listening to the people who have more power and experience than her.

00:47:23
Speaker 4: Right, Like her entire adult life has been defined by trying to please everyone, which is like obviously like a super common experience, just rarely at this level. I do like that they don't make her super super famous though, because I do think that that makes her uniquely vulnerable, right, because she does have these fans that she feels still kind of accessible to, because she's still performing at the mall, she still has her own shopping, she's still like she lives in like a pretty normal looking apartment.

00:47:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, a studio apartment question Mark.

00:47:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, I mean, but that's I can see that being true. There's I mean, pop groups of the nineties didn't make money at first. It was usually like their managers that made money. Yeah, So it's like she's kind of living a normal life, but also she's not and there's no one protecting her. It's like a very kind of scary level of notoriety to be at.

00:48:23
Speaker 5: It seems like, Yeah, it made me feel more critical of like that kind of pop star to sex symbol transition that a lot of musicians like go through all of the time. I know, especially like the Disney Stars. It's like, Okay, they did Disney and then it's like, Okay, I'm breaking out. I'm grown now, so I'm either going to put out like more sexually charged music or maybe they will pivot into acting and doing very serious roles. But I never thought that. I think I was just under the impression that was something that they wanted. I never thought that maybe that transition itself could be manufactured for the benefit of other people.

00:49:11
Speaker 3: Well, I got the impression, and maybe this is just kind of like my head canon, but that it wasn't Mima's idea at all to leave the group and pivot to acting. It's what her managers and specifically mister Tadakoro thought it was best because there's different conversations about how, you know, pop idols are not taken seriously. And then like the gap that my mind filled in is, oh, probably because it's a medium of entertainment that tends to appeal to people of marginalized genders and sexualities girls, so she has to become a quote unquote serious actress doing dramatic roles.

00:49:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seems like he's just trying to like flesh out his like roster. And also it's so bizarre how many times he's like, well, girl groups aren't serious, one of the two remaining members of.

00:50:01
Speaker 3: The girl group. Yeah, yeah, right, But the idea is that also that pop stars at least at the level that they're at, and as we see evidenced by the studio apartment that Mima lives in, like, they don't make much money, but actors make more money. So it seems like part of Tadacoro's motivation for wanting Mema to pivot to acting is so that he can exploit her more and make more money off of her. And it goes back to the whole like commodifying human beings thing. And there's all these scenes where they are talking about Mema as if she is a commodity. Sometimes Mima will be in the room, sometimes she's not there, but either way, they're never treating her like a person. They're never considering her feelings and her comfort level and what she wants. They're just like, and then we're doing this for you, and then we landed you this role and you are quitting the group and did it. All this stuff it's just again very endble of what happens a lot in real life.

00:51:03
Speaker 4: And Mima, like, I think of like a scene that the towards the very beginning with Rumy and Tatacuoro, where you know, I think that we are sort of led to believe I mean intentionally by the movie that Rumy has more what's in Mima's best interest? She you know, a broken clock is right twice a day, where you know, I agree with Rumy. When Rumy is like, you shouldn't have to be in this really exploitive rape scene if you are not completely comfortable with it, which Mima is not, but she is afraid to say so. Rumy tries to give her the opportunity to bow out of it. But the reason she does that has to do with her. It doesn't have to do with Mema and so. But just anyways, that scene at the beginning where Mima is just sitting there and like passively listening to them argue over her future, like that's normal for her, That's It's like, clearly that is just the dynamic that she has been conditioned to feel like she should be grateful to have in the first place.

00:52:08
Speaker 3: I just I love her.

00:52:11
Speaker 1: I know.

00:52:13
Speaker 3: I want to talk more about the rape scene, and again we'll place another content warning here because it is long, it's brutal. It being animated does not make it any less hard to watch. I'm interested in everyone's thoughts on this, but to me, there was a troubling kind of visual juxtaposition of on one hand, it's clear how horrific this is for Mima, and as you're watching it, you're often forgetting it's a staged scene that they're filming for TV. Oftentimes you're just like, oh, this feels like an actual rape that I'm watching, So it's it's really traumatic and brutal. But on the other hand, the way it's like quote unquote shot slash animated is in a way that is similar to how a lot of porn is shot. Like it seems to be reveling in the in the sexual violence, but like this emphasis on the sexual the like you know, it's almost presented in a way that it's like this is sexy, right, Like the way it's framed Again, is this weird juxtaposition between like this is horrific, but also like look at how like I don't know, I don't know if I'm making sense. Yeah, no, it's it's I don't like it. I don't like it.

00:53:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, me neither.

00:53:46
Speaker 3: It feels very exploitative to me.

00:53:48
Speaker 4: It was the case of like attempting to comment on the thing, but then just kind of doing it right. Yeah, I didn't think that there was the commentary around that was not meaningful enough. I don't know if there is any Maybe that's my hot take.

00:54:06
Speaker 3: It's like, I don't know if.

00:54:07
Speaker 4: There's really any explanation of staging a sequence like that, even an animation where it is making meaningful commentary enough to justify it happening.

00:54:18
Speaker 3: I just don't think that's true.

00:54:20
Speaker 4: And I always especially side eye it when it's like men men, men at the top, I'm like, yeah.

00:54:25
Speaker 3: Well, where the fuck do you get off?

00:54:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, I just didn't.

00:54:30
Speaker 3: I didn't like it. I didn't think it said anything.

00:54:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm very much with you on that. I think something that, at least for me, made it. We know it's fake, we know it's staged and it's acting. I'm doing air quotes for people who can't see. Yeah, but I think the reason why it feels so real is because we know that she's uncomfortable filming it, so it may as well be real. The fact that it goes on for so long and it's like, you know, she's just so she eating to cope like that is that is real. That is real trauma happening to this person, and we're experiencing it too, And also, like Jamie was saying, just knowing like men made this scene is also I like, I feel violated a little bit watching that as a woman, you know, mm hmm.

00:55:19
Speaker 5: I was also very uncomfortable, and I was just kind of like, when is it in?

00:55:24
Speaker 3: Like okay, yeah, yeah, when does it? It's so long?

00:55:29
Speaker 5: Once the light went out of her eye, I'm just like, I think it's done.

00:55:32
Speaker 3: We get it.

00:55:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, the point was made. The point was made. Like I I literally had tears in my eyes watching that scene, and it took me off guard to be like, oh I'm crying like that. It really affected me.

00:55:43
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:55:44
Speaker 4: The one thing that I will say is that that sequence made me at least grateful that this was not adapted into live action.

00:55:52
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:55:53
Speaker 4: Right, But that's about all I can say for it, I think.

00:55:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and to your point, Jamie, I did consider, like, well, this is a show within a movie, so perhaps it is the movie perfect Blue commenting on the way that other media tends to, you know, like glamorize, slash, pornografy rape, or if it's just the movie also doing that. And I did read that Satashi Khan made the like, you know, show within the movie Double Bind as a sort of like parody, like his intention was to criticize Japanese TV dramas that tend to like imitate Hollywood fads and tropes, and that he was aware of movies like Basic Instinct and Silence of the Lambs and things like that. Well sure, but again it's also the movie still showing this very exploitative, very again pornografied rape scene. And I'm not saying this to like disporn inherently, but just the way that like, again I'm not articulating myself. Well, but you're watching the scene and you're just like, oh, why are her like titties bouncing so pornographically? Yeah? Right, and why does the murder sound like sex? Yeah? Sorry, you know what I mean.

00:57:25
Speaker 4: It's just, yeah, I don't think that he because we.

00:57:29
Speaker 3: All know what he's referencing. Mm hmm.

00:57:32
Speaker 4: But at some point it's just like, I don't really care what men think of that scene in general. Yeah, yes, I'm not saying that men. Obviously, I have people of all genders are affected by this, but in general, I'm not really interested in what straight men think about that scene. I do hope that it would make them uncomfortable, and I wonder if that is like more what Stashi Kam was going for is to take who would normally be the intended audience for stuff like that and really make them sit and consider, well, what if the actor performing this didn't want to do it? And maybe that was more where his head is at. But as someone who like that content is not made for me and I don't like it, I felt like punished and really made uncomfortable by it.

00:58:24
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I'll say that in the lecture series that I like saw about it, which it's like, I'm glad I watched it just because it provided me with more context on this, and I think that's the thing, like I had to watch this on streaming essentially, but we don't get access to like, you know, those DVD extras of like people talking about the scenes or talking about stuff like that. But when he was talking about the rape scene, he said, he said he went too far, and that when he was making Perfect Blue, he was not under the impression that it was going to be like widely released. He thought it was going to be like a home released type of thing, and so when he saw the scene and it's like on a theater side screen, he was like uncomfortable with it. Yeah, And he essentially was saying that the rape scene itself was like the death of her pop idol persona, which is why like when she ends up being in like the dressing room and she's wearing all black and stuff, because she's mourning that version of herself like before it happened. And so I was just like, oh, okay, well, I'm glad you were uncomfortable because so was that right?

00:59:50
Speaker 1: We appreciate a self aware king.

00:59:53
Speaker 4: I do appreciate that he I mean, I wish more directors were willing to like interact because it's like, you know, it doesn't excuse it.

01:00:01
Speaker 3: But the nineties, I mean, that's.

01:00:03
Speaker 4: A lot of what he's referencing, Like erotic thrillers in the eighties and nineties were.

01:00:08
Speaker 3: Full of shit like this.

01:00:09
Speaker 4: I am interested that about because I hadn't I hadn't seen that quote, and I guess something that I don't quite know. I'm just curious what you all think, because I was like, eh, am, I okay. There feels like there's sort of this more conservative idea than most of this movie holds up, that her being sexually assaulted in reality or on screen means that she is permanently damaged. Good the idea that once something horrific has happened to you that was completely out of your control, you can no longer sing pop music, question work. I just find that to be a very weirdly patriarchal idea that it doesn't feel like the movie's really pushing back on. I don't know, because it's obviously like I'm a survivor of it myself. It certainly changes your life in many many ways, but I don't really like the implication that it means that you cannot return to your passions or and you have a total and permanent loss of self, because I just don't think that's true. I was sort of like, maybe I'm overly projecting, but it didn't feel like that idea was pushed back on very much.

01:01:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this on different episodes, and it's almost always media written and directed by men, where there will be someone, usually a woman, who is a survivor of sexual assault, and that is her defining trait as a character. That's kind of the only thing we know about her, that's what's motivating her every choice, and that is obviously not true for survivors of sexual assault in real life. But there's just this tendency to like revel in sexual violence, and that manifests in different ways. It manifests how a rape seem will be framed, It manifests how a survivor will be characterized. But it's just, yeah, it's a lot of men not knowing how this actually manifests for real survivors.

01:02:25
Speaker 5: Definitely. I think there's just also this overall idea of Mema trying to find out who she is, but it's like, who is Mima without the male gaze. At one point, she's this pop idol and she's put on this pedestal by her fans, which are mostly like men. Then she's doing this TV series Double Bind, and she is now following this script by this man where if she's leading her pop girl image, if she wants to be taken seriously, then I'll add a rape scene and she has to access out and then even when the scene was happening, So so she kind of had mentioned the fact that it's also a commentary sort of on like the amount of spectators that come, because I guess this was I mean, since it's in the nineties, I don't know if intimacy coordinators existed in the nineties, Nah, I did not, But it's like pre intimacy coordinators, pre security because who are all of these random people that are not normally there? That's not like Crewe and.

01:03:41
Speaker 3: The one security guard is is her number one stalker?

01:03:44
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, And that part felt like intentional commentary, But again it's like, if that's his intentional commentary, that still doesn't justify showing a long exploitative rape.

01:03:56
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, scene.

01:03:57
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm glad we're all on the same page about that because I was, like I was, but it's such a good movie, and also that happens in it, right, This kind of switches focus to Roomy a little bit. I'm curious what everyone thinks about Roomy, because again, I think it was kind of a mixed bag for me, where I think that there is some interesting commentary going on with Rumy, but I also feel like there are some tropes at play because.

01:04:23
Speaker 3: We don't really know her well enough.

01:04:26
Speaker 4: We get like that little information that she had briefly been a pop idol or she was aspiring to be bigger, and then Tadakuoro just basically says it didn't work out for you, But it's implied that it has to do with her looks and her body type, and that she's almost trying to like live out this dream she couldn't have through Mima.

01:04:50
Speaker 3: I don't know, how do we feel?

01:04:52
Speaker 1: I was confused about the direction they took Roomy because like, it's an interesting twist for sure to be like, oh, like Rumy's jealous of her. I think the hardest left for me is I think they heavily implied, because you know they're doing the double bind, has this plot an idea going on, and it's also being mimicked by real life. Is it determined at the end when Rumy is in the mental hospital that she has the ID. I don't because I think that's heavily implied. I think it's implied, Okay, because that really bothers me. Yes, I like that's something we talk about on the show a lot.

01:05:30
Speaker 4: Is like, Yeah, obviously you don't want to say mental illness in film is off limits, but if you're doing something like this, do not attribute it to a specific mental illness.

01:05:41
Speaker 3: Yes.

01:05:42
Speaker 4: I think the ultimate example of that for me is the opening sequence of Midsommar, and at the end they're like bipolar and you're.

01:05:49
Speaker 3: Like, no, all right, No.

01:05:52
Speaker 4: I wasn't sure if that was suggested in I mean, I was confused.

01:05:55
Speaker 3: It's a confusing movie.

01:05:56
Speaker 4: I didn't know if that was happening in the text of the TV show because TV shows do that all the time and it was commentary, or if they were just saying that this is how did manifests.

01:06:09
Speaker 3: Or if this scene where Mima is going to visit Roomy at this hospital, if that's just another figment of Mima's imagination and this is her kind of compartmentalizing that persona or like, we don't know, especially with the little like wink and nod at the end where Mima looks in the mirror and she's like I'm real and it's like.

01:06:31
Speaker 5: But are you?

01:06:32
Speaker 4: We don't know.

01:06:33
Speaker 3: But either way, there is certainly, I think a demonization of mental illness and specifically of dissociative identity disorder, and it's implying that if you have this, you're going to murder.

01:06:48
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think like they had said something about like sometimes the regular Roomy comes back and then like sometimes she's someone else. I thought that they had said something like that towards the end which it really implies the DD thing. Yeah right, I know, like back then there was more of a misunderstanding on the disorder and so people were using it as like plot points.

01:07:09
Speaker 3: Oh but it's I mean, I'm not.

01:07:11
Speaker 1: At all excusing that because it's equally frustrating, but yeah, I didn't like the usage of that at all.

01:07:17
Speaker 5: It made me think of because I think that was also just before the film came out, like when Selena was murdered.

01:07:26
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I thought that as well.

01:07:29
Speaker 5: Like I haven't seen any quotes from him, being like I saw that and then I decided Rumy is going to partially be inspired by.

01:07:40
Speaker 3: I like Yolanda Salzavar, I thought that too.

01:07:42
Speaker 5: Yeah, but yeah, I don't like how they kind of demonize mental illness and stuff, and like, of course we don't get to see a trial or anything like that. But then it's just like, okay, well there was mister Shibuya, there was Tata Korro, there was the me Mania guy, Like.

01:08:03
Speaker 3: Right, what was going on there? I also think in regards to Rumy's character, that there is fat phobia in that she is a little thicker than your typical, you know, beauty standard super thin woman.

01:08:20
Speaker 4: And it's implied that that's part of why she wasn't successful, right, yeah, which is a.

01:08:25
Speaker 3: Thing that happens, but that this has led to this deep murderous resentment and the fact that she's the only you know, female character who has a bigger body, and that she's this delusional, resentful killer.

01:08:39
Speaker 4: I didn't like that trace at all. And also just that her stalker, who's the security guard, is physically othered in a way that feels like it's telegraphing, like well, because he is not conventionally like western beauty standards handsome, of course he would do this Like there is just that you know that hmm. Some we've seen in villains from time immemorial of physically uthering someone as a shorthand to say like, don't trust this person, and they're trying to hurt the beautiful, virginal young woman.

01:09:16
Speaker 3: It's like hundreds of thousands of movies.

01:09:18
Speaker 4: But it's again, there's just like these really basic othering tropes that this movie is not above including.

01:09:27
Speaker 3: So the young men who are causing trouble at the concert at the very beginning, the main instigator of this trouble making is a darker skinned person has hair that looks kind of like dreadlocks. It seems like it might be a black character. And I don't know a lot about anti black racism in Japan specifically, but I do know that it exists everywhere around the world, and it just feels like a very racist choice for the one or at least dark skinned character to be this like violent. Yeah, he's you know, punching people, he's threatening people in the crowd. It feels like it's just playing into very racist tropes.

01:10:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, and throwing things on stage two. Yeah, which people are doing that came back. I don't know why they are doing that again now.

01:10:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, like we whipping bottles at puffsters.

01:10:24
Speaker 3: Or cell phones. Yeah.

01:10:26
Speaker 5: But yeah, and then he was the he was Memnia's first victim too, I believe.

01:10:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so subtle, but there's just like a little like poster somewhere and it's implying that that young man is like missing or maybe has been murdered. But yeah, that happens off screen, but we do see this like image of that young guy as if he has been abducted or murdered. Yeah. Another thing was and again not clear if this is the movie. Commenting on media tropes, or if it's just the movie doing the trope or a little bit of both. But the TV drama series that Mima gets cast in, Mima plays a character whose older sister has been murdered, and in one of the episodes we learn that the sister was murdered by this I don't know if it was a serial killer or what, but someone who kills women and peels off their skin because he wants to wear it in order to become a woman, or at least that's what the psychiatrist's character speculates. And it's the whole, you know, transphobic silence of the Lambs storyline, where a person who was assigned male at birth murders cis women to wear their skin and become a woman. Again, we don't know if it's just like that's almost satire in the movies, like commenting on this trope, or it's just doing the trope, but it's certainly there.

01:12:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is maybe too hard of a line, but like I feel like if you cannot discern that answer, then it's you're just doing the trope.

01:12:12
Speaker 3: It's not effective.

01:12:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking. I'm like, if we have to think that hard and look into the tiniest crack to figure out if it's satire or not. I don't think it's really effective satire.

01:12:24
Speaker 4: Right sure, Like effective satire can be surprising and like horrifying and clear like all at once.

01:12:32
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:12:33
Speaker 4: Again, It's like this movie is in conversation with so much that happens before and after in media, where it's hard not to think about Silence of the Lambs when that idea is introduced, right, because that was like the not that it was the only that was the movie, the Prestige movie that came out just a couple of years earlier that used that same plot point. But if it's a reference, it's not being subverted or commented on, So it's just almost being like, there, remember Silence of the Lambs.

01:13:03
Speaker 1: Did you like it?

01:13:04
Speaker 4: Like I don't know what the yeah, which just feels covertly transphobic.

01:13:08
Speaker 3: And just like, yeah, nasty stuff. Yeah, for sure. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to talk about?

01:13:15
Speaker 5: I would say, well, this has definitely happened after the fact. But like when it comes to idols either being harmed by their fans or killed by their fans, I could say that one case is like Christina Grimmy. She was a singer that got big because of the voice, and then one of her fans killed her at one of her autograph signings, and that was in June twenty sixteen. But then the month prior in Japan, there was a jay idol I guess singer actress. Her name's Mayutomita, and her stalker found out where she lived and then ended up stabbing her multiple times because she had returned gifts I guess expensive gifts that he had.

01:14:07
Speaker 3: Bought for her.

01:14:08
Speaker 5: And because of that particular case, Japan had to revise their anti stocking laws to include online threats, which I thought, I.

01:14:18
Speaker 4: Thought that a woman has to die to get laws like this changed, almost without fail.

01:14:24
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I know Christina did.

01:14:26
Speaker 3: But Mayu.

01:14:27
Speaker 5: I think Mayo is still alive and she was able to I think she also sued the government as well. So it's like, but the fact that online threats only just got added to their anti stocking laws in May twenty sixteen is a lot.

01:14:45
Speaker 3: It's absurd.

01:14:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like I also think about the attack at the Ariana Grande concert around that same sort of period of time as well, Like, yeah, I think like, ultimately this movie needs to be called out for parts of it that are dated, unclear, and more it seems like shock than commentary. But what I do think this movie encapsulates well, although it is still clearly I don't know, at no point was I like, was this written by a woman? Like it obviously isn't, But I do think it kind of encapsulates the feeling of not belonging to yourself very clearly in a way that is like very.

01:15:27
Speaker 3: Rooted in pop culture globally.

01:15:30
Speaker 4: Of like there's just no part of Mima that belongs to herself, and it seems like at least, at very least all of the creatives for all of these missteps is very aware of that and presenting that as a horror scenario. That's what really works about this movie, totally showing this experience of her just not even having a moment to be like who am I? What do I want? You know, that's not a possibility for her, And at the end, like it could be scene as like kind of eerie ending, But I find it very sad because if she is real, this is someone who's just like all she's done is fulfilled.

01:16:12
Speaker 3: What Tadakora wanted for her.

01:16:15
Speaker 4: We still don't know that she's doing something that she feels fulfilled by.

01:16:20
Speaker 3: We just note the victory is supposed.

01:16:22
Speaker 4: To be surviving the experience, right, and that's really depressing.

01:16:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is bleak, but no, it's very astute commentary. Any other final thoughts.

01:16:36
Speaker 4: We made it, We did it. We made it.

01:16:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, we made it. I'm just like we can all take a deep breath.

01:16:41
Speaker 4: This movie does pass the Vactel class. Not in particularly pleasant ways, but it does.

01:16:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is you know, Mima talking to her mom about Mima's career, Mima talking to the actress that she's in Double Bind with, and their scenes in the show Double Bind also pass the Bechdel test. So it's a pass within a pass.

01:17:06
Speaker 4: So in a way it was a feminist no yea, yeah, it does pass quite a bit.

01:17:13
Speaker 3: And then obviously Mima and Rumy talk. But does the whole sequence where Rumy is trying to stab Mima at the end, does that pass the Bechdel test? You could argue yes, because stabbing attempts are a form of communication.

01:17:30
Speaker 4: It counts.

01:17:31
Speaker 3: It's feminists, no notes, it counts to rate the movie on the Bechdel cast nipple scale, where we rate it zero to five nipples. Examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, Well, now we're in a pickle. We are in a pickle. Yeah, because again, there there's a lot of themes that this movie explores very effectively, as far as the commodification of celebrities and especially the way that young women are heavily exploited. Of course, this extends to marginalize people in general, and of course there are like Cis, white men who are deeply exploited by the entertainment industry. But it seems as though the like primary survivors of this tend to be marginalized people.

01:18:26
Speaker 4: I mean, it is. It doesn't seem it is.

01:18:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. It is. So the commentary and examination of that and just again the pressure. I just kept thinking about, how like there's this through line of against something we see in real life all the time, of women and other marginalized talent agreeing to something they don't want to do because they don't want to be labeled as being difficult and then.

01:18:53
Speaker 4: Being tried to and I think Chica you mentioned this earlier, but like and then being trotted out to perform can retroactively basically as a way of making people feel comfortable.

01:19:05
Speaker 3: Watching the exploitation. Yeah yeah, it's a very quick, kind of almost throwaway moment in the movie. But there's a quick scene where Mima is on her way into her manager's office, and this is after things have started to get pretty weird for her, and there's like a group of like fanboy men standing outside being like hi, Mima, and she walks past them and ignores them, and then one of them says like, Oh, why do they become so unfriendly when they become actresses? And it just like makes you think of all of the you know, like celebrities and actors who are women who have been labeled as like, Oh I heard so and so is such a bitch, And it's just like, is it that or is it a woman responding to constantly being harassed and exploited and mistreated.

01:19:51
Speaker 4: We can't retrudge the Chapel Roone discourse, but it comes to mind, right, yeah, like requesting personal space makes.

01:19:58
Speaker 3: You it a bitch a bitch, right right? Establishing boundaries makes you a bitch that kind of thing. So all of these components and this commentary are really I think effectively done in the movie, but then you have all of these other moments of like, is it satire or is it just playing into the trope? Not clear enough, so it's probably just the trope. Again. The way in which the brutal rape scene is framed and animated was just again so exploitative and unnecessary and horrid. So I don't know. I split down the middle two and a half nipples. I'll give all of my nipples to the red dress.

01:20:41
Speaker 4: At the end, I'm gonna go to baby. I almost kind of want to go a little lower, which is tricky, big. I mean whatever, This is just the intersectional feminist ranking of it, because I do like this movie, and I think that there's animation wise, as an animation head.

01:20:58
Speaker 3: It's fucking incredible.

01:21:00
Speaker 4: I feel like it captures one dynamic really well and then a lot of other dynamics not well at all. But I'll go too, because I do think that this movie is acutely aware of the hyper exploitation, the hyper vigilance, and was really early to call how internet culture was going to factor into fans feeling even more entitled to someone's time and body and future. I feel like that is you know it's been attempted a lot of times and rarely this well, and that that's really special. And then there's, like we've talked about for the last hour and a half, a lot of things, that this movie just really needed more women at the top of the creative chain, and that the mistakes this movie made, even in nineteen ninety seven were largely avoidable because if this creative team could captures so many ideas so clearly, so far ahead of everyone else, it's like, almost without fail, if you have a couple of women, just more than one so they can talk to each other, a lot of these things could have potentially been avoided. But I'm gonna give it two. I'm going to give one to Mima and I'm going to give one to her fish. Her support system, I think that was her support system, was unfortunately.

01:22:25
Speaker 3: A jar offish. Oh, and who died? Who died? Yeah, leak you hate to see it? How about you, Chica and Gianna?

01:22:34
Speaker 1: Oh, it's hard to find something to say that hasn't already been said. To be honest, I'm so very much on the same page as you both, because it did accomplish things like commenting on the tropes, but at the same time, it was like, are some of it satire? But it was also so aware of the toxicity within fan culture and portraying that in like an expert way. But then there's the mental health aspect that's concerned. And again, can't reiterate enough that more women at the top of this really could have benefited the beats of those more difficult to swallow parts of the movie. So I think I'm going to agree with a two and a half. But the question is where to give them.

01:23:17
Speaker 3: That's always the question.

01:23:19
Speaker 1: Oh the remaining members of cham Oh my God, of.

01:23:22
Speaker 4: Course, best of luck to them. Honestly, I kept thinking of them as Kelly and Michelle I say three girls, I'm like, that's Destiny's child.

01:23:35
Speaker 3: Yeah. I kept as I was watching this movie, being like, hmm, this is what would happen if Josie and the Pussycats went way more wrong than it does. Yeah, as far as the dynamics of the band go.

01:23:49
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, I think I would give it three nipples. I feel the same way as you all. I think it would have been way higher if a woman had been because then it's like, okay, certain things, it's like, this is too long what do you mean by this? Like, I think if there had been at least a woman on the team, or multiple women on the team that could like push back at certain stuff, then this would have been higher for me. But as to who I'd give it to, think I'd also give it to Champ, So it's like Cham. I think Yu, Kiko and y are their names. But if I'm wrong, don't quote me.

01:24:28
Speaker 1: Uh.

01:24:29
Speaker 5: I would also the mom in the beginning, because even though she was kind of pushing back and stuff, she was still like, Hey, I'm sort of invested in your career.

01:24:42
Speaker 3: I don't really know that.

01:24:44
Speaker 5: I like where you're going with it.

01:24:45
Speaker 3: But classic mom behavior.

01:24:47
Speaker 5: Yeah, classic mom behavior. So it's like mom and I guess the third one is just Mima being able to survive at all, or like get out of all of that, because I was just like, oh, especially when the truck was coming, I was like, oh, it's over, she's done for truck Cunn has got her.

01:25:07
Speaker 3: Oh okay, never mind.

01:25:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, So her being able to move out of it, Although I think I would have liked it if that story was kind of discussed a bit more of like how was she able to get a stronger sense of self to then even decide to visit Roomy in the first place to see like how she was doing and stuff like yeah, because I don't know if I would visit somebody that was trying to stab me.

01:25:37
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, side note, I know we're on final thoughts, but like, why did she push her out of the way truck? If I'm so honest, it would have been by for me, Like right, she.

01:25:50
Speaker 5: Put her hands up in the air, and I was just like, I guess you know.

01:25:53
Speaker 1: This is your choice.

01:25:53
Speaker 4: She was ready to go, right, Yeah, okay, yeah, I did wonder. I was like, were we supposed to that? Like there was a mother daughter thing between them, and that was why she was protective of her, because I if that was what the aim was, it didn't come across.

01:26:12
Speaker 3: Oh, that didn't even occur to me.

01:26:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe that's just me coping and trying to figure out what he's going for. But like, I don't get why Mima would be like, no, we've got to I mean, it is tragic that Rumy was not able to have the career that she probably deserved to have. But if someone stabbed me, I would let.

01:26:31
Speaker 3: Them get hit by a truck.

01:26:33
Speaker 4: Especially if they just stabbed me, like just yeah, that's divine intervention.

01:26:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, that feels like instant karma.

01:26:42
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like I wonder if it was the whole because then the wig part happened where she took the wig off and suddenly she was Roomy again, and then she put it back on and then she was Mima. Then maybe real Mima was still kind of like, who is the real Mima?

01:26:58
Speaker 3: So then she pushed is that me?

01:27:01
Speaker 1: Oh right?

01:27:02
Speaker 5: Yeah right, so is she pushing herself out? And then it's like, oh, that was actually Roomy? Who stabbed me? Why did I do that? But well we will never know.

01:27:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, we truly won't.

01:27:15
Speaker 4: But it has been wonderful trying to figure it out with you. But thank you so much for coming on the show truly. Where can we find your work?

01:27:25
Speaker 1: So you can find us across socials at show show Sunday on Blue Sky. We're at Showsuresunday dot com. We're also on threads. Yeah, we're available to be heard on podcast platforms, whatever preferred podcast platform you listen. We are on there, yay.

01:27:46
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:27:46
Speaker 5: Yeah. And that show Joe with a You and Sunday like ice Cream Sunday, and it is our anniversary month, and we're nearing our one hundredth episode. So if y'all are big, big fans of show Joe Anime or Jose Anime, you can check out our catalog. We might have talked about one of your favorite films or TV series.

01:28:13
Speaker 3: Yeah amazing. You can follow us on mostly Instagram at Bechdelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon aka Matreon, where we have a whole back catalog of bonus episodes, plus two new bonus episodes every month, all for five dollars a month. What a bargain, I think, What a treat, What a dream. It's sort of like a little Sunday of our own, you know, with sprinkles and a cherry on top with that.

01:28:48
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, how do we dismount for perfectly?

01:28:50
Speaker 3: Let's go feed our fish to make sure they don't die.

01:28:55
Speaker 4: Remember to feature fish, do.

01:28:56
Speaker 3: Remember to feturefish for crying out loud, Ye bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie loftis produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by mo La Boord. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo in Merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree slash Bechdel Cast