Why Takashi Miike’s Audition is a piercing… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why Takashi Miike’s Audi­tion is a pierc­ing fem­i­nist film in disguise

12 Feb 2019

Words by Daisy Phillipson

Young Asian woman in casual attire sits at a wooden desk, deep in thought.
Young Asian woman in casual attire sits at a wooden desk, deep in thought.
There’s so much more to this J‑horror hit than meets the punc­tured eye.

At the time of writ­ing, the world is still strug­gling to find its foot­ing fol­low­ing the dis­rup­tive shake caused by the #MeToo move­ment. Although efforts to tack­le dis­par­i­ty both with­in and out­side of the enter­tain­ment indus­try con­tin­ue, the cul­tur­al shift remains in its seedling stages due to the com­plex­i­ty and divi­sion over how to respond to gen­der-based vio­lence on a glob­al level.

As the work of male auteurs finds itself under a brighter spot­light than before, it seems entire­ly fit­ting that Takashi Miikes J‑horror hit Audi­tion is return to cin­e­mas with a new 2K restora­tion. Equal­ly as com­plex and divi­sive in its dis­play of gen­der-based vio­lence (but not in the way you’d expect), 20 years on the film is ripe for reap­praisal with fresh, albeit taint­ed, eyes.

Since unleash­ing his film­mak­ing debut onto unsus­pect­ing view­ers back in 1991, Miike has proven him­self to be a true cin­e­mat­ic mav­er­ick with a pro­lif­ic work eth­ic and dar­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty. Not all of his work pro­motes an even craft and tone, yet one over­rid­ing theme that nev­er seems to fal­ter is Miike’s obses­sive com­pul­sion towards the­atri­cal gore often result­ing from hyper­sex­u­al violence.

Per­haps the most noto­ri­ous exam­ple of this is 2001’s yakuza thriller Ichi the Killer, the film that cement­ed his rep­u­ta­tion as the agent of extreme blood­shed and bru­tal­i­ty. That same year, Miike descend­ed fur­ther into stom­ach-churn­ing per­ver­si­ty with the low-bud­get, high-com­e­dy Vis­i­tor Q, fit­ting the nev­er-safe top­ics of pros­ti­tu­tion, drug addic­tion, incest, necrophil­ia and all forms of uncon­ven­tion­al fetish into a 90-minute runtime.

It’s no sur­prise that such films have come under scruti­ny for their unabashed explo­ration of deprav­i­ty. Through­out his career, Miike has been hailed both a fem­i­nist and a misog­y­nist, with some deem­ing his approach to sex­u­alised vio­lence deeply exploita­tive. No work sig­ni­fies the com­plex­i­ty and divi­sive­ness of his oeu­vre more than Audi­tion, which not only launched Miike on an inter­na­tion­al stage but sparked the rise of J‑horror.

Although Audi­tion is billed as a hor­ror, the film is ini­tial­ly decep­tive in this regard, fol­low­ing the sto­ry of Aoya­ma (Ryo Ishibashi), a mid­dle-aged pro­duc­er and wid­ow­er who is con­vinced by his son Shige­hiko (Tet­su Sawa­ki) to find love once more. Togeth­er with col­league Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimu­ra), Aoya­ma embarks on a series of audi­tions for a made-up act­ing role, the scenes of which pro­vide an unex­pect­ed jolt of com­ic relief, evok­ing a sharp, satir­i­cal com­men­tary against the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women.

In the con­text of the Har­vey Wein­stein scan­dal and sub­se­quent #MeToo move­ment, the screen test mon­tage appears to echo the per­ni­cious show busi­ness cliché of the cast­ing couch. Can you keep this one for anoth­er job?” Yoshikawa remarks, after dis­cov­er­ing woman #21 spe­cialis­es in porn. Even­tu­al­ly Aoya­ma sets his sights on Asa­mi (Eihi Shi­ina), a near-per­fect arche­type of what his docile wife should be: timid, soft-spo­ken, attrac­tive, mod­est, tal­ent­ed, sweet; her alleged puri­ty expressed through an all-white attire.

It’s at this point, just when the pair’s rela­tion­ship begins to bloom, that Miike pulls the rug out from under us. The lat­ter half of the film descends into scenes which, with gen­er­ous help from an impec­ca­ble sound design, ensure you’ll nev­er look at piano wire in the same way again.

Young Asian woman in casual attire sits at a wooden desk, deep in thought.

As a vic­tim of male abuse from an ear­ly age, Asa­mi is dri­ven by an obses­sion to inflict pain upon her new lover, using man­ga-style tor­ture meth­ods as pun­ish­ment for his male-cen­tric arro­gance. Due to the repeat­ed flash­backs of Asami’s ear­ly abuse and the result­ing car­toon­ish ful­fil­ment of the venge­ful female trope, it’s per­haps unsur­pris­ing that Audi­tion faced claims of being an exploita­tive pro­jec­tion of male anxiety.

On clos­er inspec­tion, how­ev­er, Miike asks us to con­sid­er the cul­tur­al con­text in which the film is set. Based on a nov­el by Ryu Muraka­mi, who often uses social com­men­tary to skew­er con­cerns fac­ing mod­ern Japan, Audi­tion offers an inge­nious twist on nation­al fem­i­nin­i­ty by sub­vert­ing the pas­sive female hor­ror narrative.

Back in the ear­ly 2000s, the pow­er dynam­ics of men and women with­in Japan­ese soci­ety were shift­ing, much to the dis­may of Aoya­ma and Yoshikawa, who con­nect this shift to the demise of the entire cul­ture. Con­cur­rent­ly, the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of the female form was, and still is, wide­spread in pop cul­ture, high­light­ed in the film with glar­ing mock­ery by the numer­ous par­al­lels drawn between women and dogs, not to men­tion the afore­men­tioned audi­tion scenes.

By Asa­mi lash­ing out against these increas­ing­ly tire­some expec­ta­tions, prov­ing to be the most extrav­a­gant para­dox to the obe­di­ent” wife Aoya­ma was hop­ing for, the sub­text appears to mock the anti-fem­i­nist push-and-pull still present in today’s soci­ety. With­in Miike’s twist­ed envi­ron­ment and the realms of hard­core hor­ror, our antag­o­nist is an exag­ger­at­ed fem­i­nist icon in leather-clad disguise.

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