How Per­fect Blue pre­dict­ed the dis­turb­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of the internet

Satoshi Kon tried to warn us. Either Per­fect Blue was way ahead of its time, or it noticed spe­cif­ic things about what the media and inter­net do to people’s treat­ment of women and per­cep­tions of them­selves long before such sub­jects became part of the main­stream dis­course (prob­a­bly both). This year marks the 20^th anniver­sary of the psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller animé’s orig­i­nal pre­mière at the Fan­ta­sia Film Fes­ti­val. To cel­e­brate, Ani­mé UK is bring­ing the film back to cin­e­mas, allow­ing audi­ences to reawak­en their appre­ci­a­tion or dis­cov­er it for the first time.

Of course, any obser­va­tion of Kon is stung with melan­choly. Sev­en years after the Japan­ese auteur’s untime­ly death from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, a void remains in fea­ture ani­ma­tion. His final project, The Dream­ing Machine, remains uncom­plet­ed. In his rel­a­tive­ly short career as a direc­tor, Kon inspired the likes of Dar­ren Aronof­sky and Christo­pher Nolan. (Black Swan is essen­tial­ly an infe­ri­or ver­sion of Per­fect Blue, like­wise Incep­tion of Papri­ka.) Had he lived, who knows what fur­ther impact he might have made.

Kon recog­nised the dis­turb­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of the inter­net at a time when most were pre­oc­cu­pied with the utopi­an, egal­i­tar­i­an future it was sup­pos­ed­ly bring­ing us. In 2017, at a time when the media’s dan­ger­ous capa­bil­i­ty to obscure the truth is final­ly being exposed, not to men­tion the ram­pant insti­tu­tion­al misog­y­ny and sex­u­al abuse across so many indus­tries, Per­fect Blue feels not one bit out­dat­ed, besides the blocky and unwieldy com­put­ers. This is a film about a young woman dri­ven to the brink of insan­i­ty by the stress­es of the enter­tain­ment indus­try demand­ing per­for­ma­tive emo­tion­al flay­ing from her, by the gaslight­ing of anoth­er woman who believes her­self the true own­er of the protagonist’s iden­ti­ty, and by the pre­da­tions of a cyber­stalk­er in a time before most peo­ple knew what that even was.

The inter­net was imag­ined to grant a lev­el play­ing field upon which com­mu­ni­ca­tion could be had with more free­dom than ever before. Kon was among the ranks of authors like William Gib­son and Neal Stephen­son, who fore­saw instead how it grant­ed an unprece­dent­ed realm of per­for­mance, one which could tru­ly allow for an indi­vid­ual to cre­ate a per­sona that could be divorced from their pub­lic self in any num­ber of ways. And of course, the next log­i­cal ques­tion that aris­es is whether the pub­lic or online self is the ​“true” one.

The rela­tion­ship between iden­ti­ty and one’s per­for­mance of them­selves is at the core of most of Kon’s works. He explored this not just in our rela­tion­ship with the inter­net, but also with enter­tain­ment, our work and our dreams. In dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of these inter­re­lat­ed iden­ti­ties, he found ter­ror, dra­ma, and beau­ty through the ways they clash or fuse. This self-rela­tion­ship is a source of ter­ror and uncer­tain­ty in Per­fect Blue, reflec­tion and eval­u­a­tion in Mil­len­ni­um Actress, mys­tery and won­der in Papri­ka, and all of the above in his TV series Para­noia Agent. Even Tokyo God­fa­thers, which stands apart the most in his fil­mog­ra­phy, changes our under­stand­ing of its char­ac­ters through care­ful unwind­ing of the pasts they’ve concealed.

In Per­fect Blue, pro­tag­o­nist Mima is a J‑pop idol who upsets her fans by attempt­ing to shift to act­ing, destroy­ing their per­cep­tion of who the ​“real” Mima is. It is from the anonymi­ty of the inter­net that her stalk­er, ​“Me-Mania,” is able to get inside her head. Ear­ly scenes in which Mima guile­less­ly chats up the clear­ly deranged Me-Mania on her new com­put­er are cringe­wor­thy. I’d imag­ine mod­ern audi­ences will laugh uproar­i­ous­ly at them, find­ing iron­ic humour in her naivety (and by exten­sion, how naïve many of us were about online chat­ting at the time). I’d argue that this dat­ed aspect only grows in hor­rif­ic poten­cy as the years pass. After all, while most of us are wis­er about who we talk to online, social media has only aggra­vat­ed fans’ sense of own­er­ship over artists, and how deranged they act when this feel­ing is challenged.

As the stress­es of play­ing a rape vic­tim in a TV dra­ma and the grow­ing num­ber of mur­ders around her cause Mima to start won­der­ing her­self what’s real, Kon demon­strates the mas­tery of dream illog­ic that would become his hall­mark. A scene which ​“solves” the mys­tery turns out to be a shoot for the show Mima’s act­ing in. Me-Mania’s attempt­ed rape of Mima blends with the sim­u­lat­ed rape she ear­li­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in, and then in turn it is made ambigu­ous whether it hap­pened at all. What is real­ly going on is less impor­tant than what Mima believes is going on, as the stakes are her own men­tal sta­bil­i­ty and self-asser­tion. Thus, when she ends the film declar­ing ​“I’m the real me” with a smile, that small beat feels like an out­sized triumph.

That’s an under­rat­ed dimen­sion of Kon’s work. Unlike many oth­er direc­tors who favour films about mad­ness, he always was more inter­est­ed in bring­ing his char­ac­ters to a bet­ter place than break­ing them. There’s a strange ten­den­cy among writ­ers to assume that self-inter­ro­ga­tion can only lead to wors­en­ing anx­i­ety and doubt (there is, per­haps, more than a lit­tle pro­jec­tion in that). But Kon’s pro­tag­o­nists come out of their ordeals hap­pi­er and more self-assured, in defi­ance of the mes­sage pop cul­ture fre­quent­ly sends that men­tal ill­ness can­not be over­come. Like the lead of Papri­ka, his films believe that self-explo­ration can weak­en neu­roses, that peo­ple can con­quer or learn to live with their demons. In spite of the dark­ness Kon saw in media and tech, he always assert­ed that there was a light we could reach. His light is still missed.

Per­fect Blue is released 31 Octo­ber. Find out more at per​fect​blue​movie​.co​.uk