Psychological horror and thriller films provide a medium for exploring how women aren’t believed or taken seriously by the world around them. These films achieve this by using psychological disturbances to make the female characters seem merely hysterical by onlookers. Perfect Blue (1997), directed by Satoshi Kon, is a tremendous animated example of capturing turmoil, the male gaze, purity culture, and the pressures of the Japanese music industry.
The film explores purity culture through the ’90s music industry, the meaning of maintaining an image deemed palatable and acceptable, the male gaze, and the difficulty of breaking free from societal expectations. Perfect Blue (1997) follows Mima (Ruby Marlowe), a young Japanese idol who decides to leave her group, CHAM!, to pursue an acting career. Just as Mima believes that this decision will be best for her, she endures bizarre events, including a stalker named Me-Mania (Bob Marx) and a string of murders.
These events take a toll on her mental health, leading her to lose touch with her own reality. Perfect Blue establishes how vile male obsession can be and how it warps the ways fans view Mima.
Perfect Blue exposes the truth of exploitation in the entertainment industry.
Perfect Blue makes it obvious early that Mimia is extraordinarily successful in her J-Pop group, CHAM!. She’s acquired a level of popularity that will only continue to skyrocket if she continues her musical career. However, instead of continuing with her group, she decides to retire from the music industry and pursue an acting career. The on-stage announcement ends up being a disaster and fails to elicit the desired results.
It’s uncomfortable to watch Mima struggle to rally the crowd, and she doesn’t look entirely excited about her decision to leave the certainty of sticking with what she’s used to. Instead of encouraging her to pursue her dreams, even her manager, Rumi (Wendee Lee), is quick to dismiss what she wants and to make it about herself. Her wants and desires, whether she regrets them later or not, aren’t being taken seriously because everyone has their own agenda.
The reality of the film and television industry hits Mima hard when it becomes clear that those in charge will exploit her. The writing is purposeful in showing that Mima isn’t being seen as someone with agency by either Me-Mania or anyone else she’s working with. On one side, she’s being idolized and viewed through a lens of purity and desirability, shaped by her “pure” former image as an idol. Meanwhile, on the other side, she’s forced to break out of that image by way of a more explicit role in the television show, Double Bind.
Mima’s mental health deteriorates as people fight to take her agency.
Rather than playing a minor character, she’s thrust into a role that requires her to film an onscreen rape scene. Mima experiences extreme distress because of it, and it begins to impact her mental health even further. As the film progresses, she appears even more alone, as nobody is in her corner to offer genuine support through her distress.
The fact that Mima is new to this industry makes her more naive about how it functions, how people treat their actors, and how women are easily discarded if they’re not living up to expectations. Her experience on the set of Double Bind folds into how Me-Mania views her. All of these components, as well as her questioning why she decided to pursue acting, lead to Mima’s mental state deteriorating.
Mima is left to spiral on her own, depicting just how isolating fame can be. She leaves a secure position with CHAM! and enters a business that immediately thrusts her into discomfort and exploitation. Rather than acquiring a role that would make her feel like she made the right choice, the polar opposite happens.
The toxicity of purity culture is explored in Satoshi Kon’s classic.
The animation style contributes to the film’s sense of distress and chaos. One minute, something feels real, and the next minute it’s clear that Mima’s experiencing psychosis.
Of course, women not being believed or taken seriously isn’t something that solely occurs in the Japanese entertainment industry. However, the fact that the film takes place outside America shows how purity culture and objectification manifest in other parts of the world. The animation style utilizes imagery that captures Mima’s declining mental health, whether that’s through the mirror reflections or the bathtub breakdown, where her scream is silenced in water.
The layer of Mima being an Asian woman adds to the conversation, because of how misogyny and purity culture manifest across different cultures. Mima’s a grown woman, but her label required her to be cutesy, easy to admire, and a desirable figure to help keep interest. Meanwhile, the other side of industry treatment is a different type of sinister intent.
There’s nothing wrong with owning your body, performing nude or sex scenes, taking part in taboo films, or television series. But Mima’s position is that of someone who never thought she’d be having to immediately film scenes involving harm coming to her body. Nor was she expecting to be this mentally impacted from taking on this role that should’ve pushed her new career path forward.
Perfect Blue explores how the industry sees women as expendable commodities.
As Perfect Blue continues its psychological ride, Mima directly encounters Me-Mania. Me-Mania further contributes to her trauma by attempting to rape and kill her, instructed to do so by a mysterious figure – one who reveals themselves to be close to Mima.
After Me-Mania is violently murdered, we learn that Mima’s manager, Rumi, was the cause of many of the perilous events throughout the film, including the string of killings. Rumi developed a personality meant to replace Mima’s, believing her client had strayed from her pure image. Rumi was a former pop idol who refused to conform to societal pressures, and her career failed as a result.
Rather than being embraced, Rumi was shunned, and that’s reflective of more than just the music industry in the late ’90s. As she didn’t reach a level of popularity in her day, Rumi decided to live vicariously through Mima’s success as her manager. Once Mima veered away from her idol career, that further broke Rumi’s mind and led to the killing spree and manipulation. This further lends to the narrative of how the industry chews women up and spits them out.
The film ends on a tragic note.
The film’s ending is slightly tragic. While Mima manages to escape from Rumi, who is trying to kill her, Rumi ends up in a psychiatric facility. Rumi remains unstable, and Mima has to live with everything that happened. Still, the final shot indicates that Mima will embrace everything that she currently is, rather than try to be something she’s not.
The film interrogates how societal pressures affect different types of women in the industry. There are levels to experience, especially when you take into account intersectionality and how it shapes how people move in the world. The film forces its audience to consider how the male gaze affects people, especially in Japan’s music industry. And the costs that come with either maintaining an image of purity or breaking out of that.
Perfect Blue reels viewers in with its beautiful visuals and makes you watch a depiction of obsessive male fans, purity culture, and patriarchal standards in Japanese culture. Satoshi Kon’s vision for this film is fully realized from start to finish, delivering a tightly wound and uncomfortable look into what it means to survive in an industry that’ll chew you up and spit you out.
You can watch Perfect Blue on HBO Max or rent it.