Paprika, or Can't see the forest for the tropes.
I just saw Paprika at the SIFF (Seattle International Film Festival). I basically went to see this on the recommendation of Newsweek. Here is their article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18628579/site/newsweek/
The movie is visually interesting, but really the tropes are just too much. This movie is the same as Akira and all other "anime" type movies I've seen (which isn't that many). Shall I list the Tropes?
1. Science is bad. At some point some character is going to ramble nonsensically about how science is bad. There wasn't a single word that made sense or has any philosophical grounding. This drivel totally lost me with Akira. I don't think I paid attention to a single word after that - Akira was pretty tenuous to that point. Paprika goes through the required anti-science rant. I think the times have changed though, in Akira it was a scientist that was ranting, where is in Paprika it was the bad guy, who was in a weird trance. So I think that even though the makers of the movie thought they were required to rant about science, they realize that it is dumb, so they relegated it to the bad guy in a bad moment for him. So there is hope.
Pause in the list.
What I find interesting is that the audience for this genre seems to be the cream of the crop of the software development world. While sitting in my seat waiting for the film to start I heard conversations about various video games and general computer talk. This audience which makes their living off science sits there and takes this weird form of prejudice without complaint. I think the reason they do that will be clarified in the next few points.
The issues these movies address are the stuff of the high school cafeteria philosophizing. The "Environment" and "War" - but what about the roles of women and the relationship between men and women and power and its uses, stuff beyond the trite rules to live by. Paprika actually touches on this, and to me this is the best part of the movie, the relationship between the Fat Scientist and Dr. Chiba the adult Paprika.
Back to the list.
2. The hero has to fall into three roles, the innocent girl, the truculent young man, or the ever optimistic youth. This movie has decided that a spunky, young woman is the hero. Wise beyond her age, capable of being both adorable and a stone cold seductress in a matter of frames. I'm not sure who this character is supposed to appeal to. Not me. And what is her relationship with the cop in the movie? Some high school kid doing a little "hostess" work on the side to pay for Hello Kitty pencils?
2.5. The most grating thing about Paprika is her high pitched voice and her mannered ways. Lavish attention was payed to the way the fingers in her hands where placed. There's something creepy about it, as if it was a man acting like a "young girl" behind the drawings. I've been accused of not appreciating the genre, my fan friends say that I don't understand it, that all these tropes are required for these movies to be what they are. And that the merit of anyone Anime movie is in relation to others of its kind. This kind of grading on the bell curve is admirable in high school, but out here where the wolves lives, I don't think it cuts it.
pause:
So this is what is interesting: The audience for the movie wasn't all male nerds. There were a lot of women. What do they think of Paprika? Do they think she's some kind of weird Transvestite or does she really represent a woman/girl/female for them? The problem with anime, is that it renders personalities very badly. The authors attempt to define archetypes and fall far short of their mark. Perhaps because they are so eager to make cool drawings that they spend too little time defining a story. Paprika had its moments - if they gone more in those interesting areas they might be able to broaden their audience to something larger than the Otaku crowd.
3. Tentacles. What the heck? Akira had this, Paprika has this, Spirited Away had an entire character that was a big tentacle, they all have it. I think its part of the Film Board of Japan. "Hmm you want to make a film about dreams? Does it have penile tentacles grasping a young woman? No? Oh, you have to put that in to get export rights."
4. Dolls. I really don't know enough about Japan to see this one through. BUT we're talking about the American audience here. And we love our creepy dolls. Paprika, in the vein of Spirited Away had a lot cutesy dolls and other items coming to life. In the movie there is a big parade of these walking down a city street. Again this is a recurring item in Japanese Film Anime I've seen.
5. Giants. What is it about these movies that end the same. Akira, Spirited Away, Paprika, and so on. They always have to end with some gigantic half insane overpowered thing that's stomping everything. Is this the echo of the bomb? I don't think so because then that Shall We Dance movie would have ended with some apocalyptic dance that destroyed Tokyo.
6. The dwarfish scientist/wiseman/Yoda. Again I can go down the list of anime that has this character. Frankly I'm sick of it. I'm too lazy to look it up, but it must have some cultural significance. Perhaps it represents some underfed Shinto priest, or some Buddha figure that is important to the psyche of the Japanese. Kind of like Cowboys for us.
I've expressed my disdain for Anime around my friends, I call anime "Japanese Cartoons" to annoy them, I feel like a pre Iraq Republican baiting his friends with how Al Gore invented the internet, it has the same spluttering effect - I know, I have spluttered. What I find amazing is that I bring up all these points, the dubious characterization of women, the tentacles, the anti-science stance and they still defend these movies. I don't really understand why. I usually have a theory for everything (not one theory that covers everything but a series of them, my S.O calls them "Crack Pot", I call them "Momentarily Brilliant"). What I find amazing is that I still go once in a while see these movies, some article or the "buzz" making me think that that this one will be different. Paprika has evolutionary changes compared to others, but they are slight mutations from its previous generation. I'll keep going to these things when they come out. But to counter Newsweek's article: these movies are not movies for adults, they barely have an adult theme. Showing boobs isn't adult - its High School.
The movie is visually interesting, but really the tropes are just too much. This movie is the same as Akira and all other "anime" type movies I've seen (which isn't that many). Shall I list the Tropes?
1. Science is bad. At some point some character is going to ramble nonsensically about how science is bad. There wasn't a single word that made sense or has any philosophical grounding. This drivel totally lost me with Akira. I don't think I paid attention to a single word after that - Akira was pretty tenuous to that point. Paprika goes through the required anti-science rant. I think the times have changed though, in Akira it was a scientist that was ranting, where is in Paprika it was the bad guy, who was in a weird trance. So I think that even though the makers of the movie thought they were required to rant about science, they realize that it is dumb, so they relegated it to the bad guy in a bad moment for him. So there is hope.
Pause in the list.
What I find interesting is that the audience for this genre seems to be the cream of the crop of the software development world. While sitting in my seat waiting for the film to start I heard conversations about various video games and general computer talk. This audience which makes their living off science sits there and takes this weird form of prejudice without complaint. I think the reason they do that will be clarified in the next few points.
The issues these movies address are the stuff of the high school cafeteria philosophizing. The "Environment" and "War" - but what about the roles of women and the relationship between men and women and power and its uses, stuff beyond the trite rules to live by. Paprika actually touches on this, and to me this is the best part of the movie, the relationship between the Fat Scientist and Dr. Chiba the adult Paprika.
Back to the list.
2. The hero has to fall into three roles, the innocent girl, the truculent young man, or the ever optimistic youth. This movie has decided that a spunky, young woman is the hero. Wise beyond her age, capable of being both adorable and a stone cold seductress in a matter of frames. I'm not sure who this character is supposed to appeal to. Not me. And what is her relationship with the cop in the movie? Some high school kid doing a little "hostess" work on the side to pay for Hello Kitty pencils?
2.5. The most grating thing about Paprika is her high pitched voice and her mannered ways. Lavish attention was payed to the way the fingers in her hands where placed. There's something creepy about it, as if it was a man acting like a "young girl" behind the drawings. I've been accused of not appreciating the genre, my fan friends say that I don't understand it, that all these tropes are required for these movies to be what they are. And that the merit of anyone Anime movie is in relation to others of its kind. This kind of grading on the bell curve is admirable in high school, but out here where the wolves lives, I don't think it cuts it.
pause:
So this is what is interesting: The audience for the movie wasn't all male nerds. There were a lot of women. What do they think of Paprika? Do they think she's some kind of weird Transvestite or does she really represent a woman/girl/female for them? The problem with anime, is that it renders personalities very badly. The authors attempt to define archetypes and fall far short of their mark. Perhaps because they are so eager to make cool drawings that they spend too little time defining a story. Paprika had its moments - if they gone more in those interesting areas they might be able to broaden their audience to something larger than the Otaku crowd.
3. Tentacles. What the heck? Akira had this, Paprika has this, Spirited Away had an entire character that was a big tentacle, they all have it. I think its part of the Film Board of Japan. "Hmm you want to make a film about dreams? Does it have penile tentacles grasping a young woman? No? Oh, you have to put that in to get export rights."
4. Dolls. I really don't know enough about Japan to see this one through. BUT we're talking about the American audience here. And we love our creepy dolls. Paprika, in the vein of Spirited Away had a lot cutesy dolls and other items coming to life. In the movie there is a big parade of these walking down a city street. Again this is a recurring item in Japanese Film Anime I've seen.
5. Giants. What is it about these movies that end the same. Akira, Spirited Away, Paprika, and so on. They always have to end with some gigantic half insane overpowered thing that's stomping everything. Is this the echo of the bomb? I don't think so because then that Shall We Dance movie would have ended with some apocalyptic dance that destroyed Tokyo.
6. The dwarfish scientist/wiseman/Yoda. Again I can go down the list of anime that has this character. Frankly I'm sick of it. I'm too lazy to look it up, but it must have some cultural significance. Perhaps it represents some underfed Shinto priest, or some Buddha figure that is important to the psyche of the Japanese. Kind of like Cowboys for us.
I've expressed my disdain for Anime around my friends, I call anime "Japanese Cartoons" to annoy them, I feel like a pre Iraq Republican baiting his friends with how Al Gore invented the internet, it has the same spluttering effect - I know, I have spluttered. What I find amazing is that I bring up all these points, the dubious characterization of women, the tentacles, the anti-science stance and they still defend these movies. I don't really understand why. I usually have a theory for everything (not one theory that covers everything but a series of them, my S.O calls them "Crack Pot", I call them "Momentarily Brilliant"). What I find amazing is that I still go once in a while see these movies, some article or the "buzz" making me think that that this one will be different. Paprika has evolutionary changes compared to others, but they are slight mutations from its previous generation. I'll keep going to these things when they come out. But to counter Newsweek's article: these movies are not movies for adults, they barely have an adult theme. Showing boobs isn't adult - its High School.
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