Watched: High, but only like, a little

My friend Sylvia decided we'd be watching Perfect Blue Tuesday night. I had to rewatch the last half an hour over again the next morning.

Instantly, I felt massive discomfort watching Mima preform as a pop idol. She's up on stage singing with two other smiling girls, bright and bubbly. Gradually, you see more and more men in the audience, before realizing the entire concert is just attended by fanatic men--who even break into fights while they preform. Their whole careers are based off the direct consumption of their images, as women, pretty, petite, bright, cheerful, safe, fantasy women. And the main consumers are obsessed men, we even see the main stalker in the audience for the first time. without these men, you're left to think, these girls would be nothing. the implied submissiveness lies in this fact, and is enforced by the marketing of the girl's career as pop idols--as women, they'll always be there for you. they're always readibly availible.

Mima leaves her group, as her managers rebrand her to be an actress, after a seemingly hopeful small success. This comes at a cost, higher than what it first seems. (CW: sexual assault) She's forced to do sexually explicit scenes, as one of her managers tries to push for more lines. God, it's fucking awful. She has to act out a rape scene in a club over and over again, men justs grabbing all over her body. She get's photographed for a shoot, and the photographer pushes and convinces her to take all her clothes off. Her nude body is published all over magazines.

This "rebranding of image" is detrimental, degrading even. Mima's career change simply takes the fantasy of the perfect, virgin woman you can project your adoration unto, and tears it down. There's nothing left to imagine now that you've seen many men take her on screen, and now that her body is plastered all over the magazines. The destruction of past reputation isn't so different the second time around, they're just marketing her as sex object for other kinds of men. She starts to see a ghost of her past, a Mima who taunts her for tarnishing her repuation for being so physically revealing. Mima of the past is still a pop idol, and probably reflected Mima's deep down desire of remaining a pop idol.

Her stalker is devasted. His precious idol is a whore, she's been all used up. She's not all his anymore--that is until Mima's ghost seems to be having communication with him, as well. This is a plot point I really liked, it shifted my assumption that Mima's ghost was just a manisfestation of her inner conciousness. It makes me wonder if Mima's ghost was just an idea of Mima that existed as her branded pop idol self. Mima's stalker doesn't want to let go of this infatuation with this persona that's been marketed to him--and Mima doesn't want to let go of the persona that she was goaded into becoming, the person she had to always step into. The comfort pop idol Mimi is gone for them both.

Of course, it's much more sinister for Mima's stalker. Because, without him, there is no Fantasy Pop Idol Perfect Virgin Woman Mima. There is just reality.

As time goes on, the insanity intensifies. Mima's sense of day to day reality fades, and the storylines of the women she acts as blur with her own life. And in the show she's filming, her character even goes through the same. exact. thing. at least that's what I interpreted, but I could be totally wrong, lol. Mima's ghost convinces her stalker that he must protect her--the image of perfect pop idol Mima. He has to kill--the impostor, the real life Mima. This part was insane, it made my stomach turn.

He tries to kill her, but as pathetic men tend to do, he fails. She kills him--and he body dies to do the dead body of the director who got murdered earlier. He got murdered for writing the part of the show where Mima has "tarnish her repuation." The autonomy of Mima is nonexistent. She's either supposed to be sweet and innocent and the perfect 'girl,' figure, someone to love and protect. Or she must be the tantilizing, inviting woman whose sexuality is always being expressed, even if it's through actions of violence towards her. She isn't protected anymore, she becomes dirty, she becomes the whore.

She kills him, she kills him, she gets away from him. One of her managers takes her home, notably the older woman who steps in for a mother figure for Mima. This woman in particular did not want Mima acting, she thought Mima would be better suited at being a pop idol. Although it may seem like this woman cares for Mima, and does not wish to subject her to the outwardly sex hungry world of television and film. Mima should stay precious, delicate, although she would still be the center of desire for men. But this way is better, this way is cleaner.

At this point, another blurred moment happens again. The ghost of Mima comes to kill Mima because her stalker obviously didn't finish the job. But in Mima's ghost reflection, it's the older woman, Mima's manager. Mima's manager wants Mima to die because she cannot revert back to her old, safe self. Mima runs, and her ghost still finds her, although it is not clear if Mima imagines her ghost actually being her manager. Mima kills another person, and it turns out to be her manager (but was it just her, or is Mima's ghost able to possess others? Does her ghost exist out of her head?)

She's killed two people who wanted her as a product, one for enjoyment and pleasure, and another one for projection and profit. I mean, isn't that was true womanhood is all about? You have to find yourself a way to serve others pleasurably, but not too much so, but I mean, if too much so, you deserve to get exploited and degraded. You are either too innocent or too provocative, there is no acceptable, happy medium everyone tells you you should find. To be a woman is to be a fantasy and to be a fantasy is to not exist, and well, how can you exist if your whole purpose is to not be real?

God, I'm so high and I'm rambling and I'm angry at the world for misogyny. Anyways, the whole thing turns out to be that her manager had DID and had a Mima alter, and she became obsessed with killing the real life Mima. Kinda bleak, and honestly, underwhelming. I expected something more blurred, harder to decipher, leaving the film open-ended. But I guess after the lifetime of shit Mima had just got put through, she deserved to ride off in her fancy car. No, I'm the real thing.