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Home , Helen McCarthy, Satoshi Kon

Psychoanalytic Cyberpunk Midsummer-Night’s Dreamtime: Kon Satoshi’s Paprika

Timothy Perper, Martha Cornog

Mechademia, Volume 4, 2009, pp. 326-329 (Review)

Published by University of Minnesota Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mec.0.0051

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/368639

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] Japan begins to flirt with a return to milita- Paprika’s psychoanalytic cyberpunk exploration rism, it is one that is still relevant. of fantasy and reality. Paprika is not a difficult the way Lain N otes and Innosenzu are. Its images draw from avant- 1. http://imdb.com/title/tt0405821/ garde anime but Kon’s earlier 2. and Helen McCarthy, is a more adventurous challenge to filmic conti- The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Ani- nuity and separation of frame, background, and mation Since 1917, revised and expanded edition action. Paprika reinvents some well-known con- (Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 2006), 90. cepts—that dreams are windows into other re- 3. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ alities and have great power, that the boundar- encyclopedia/anime.php?id=3439 ies of self are not set by consensus reality, that 4. Peter Williams and David Wallace, Unit 731: troubles stew in the worlds revealed by dreams, Japan’s Secret Biological Warfare in World War II and that dreams can be accessed like playing a (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 48–49; Sheldon DVD with the bio-psycho-electronic DC-Mini Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological machine in the film. Such ideas go back to Lum Warfare, 1932–1945, and the American Cover-Up in Beautiful Dreamer and the 1945 British film (New York: Routledge, 2005), 81–82. Dead of Night, and to Freud, Alice in Wonder- 5. Williams and Wallace, Unit 731, 241. land, and Australian aboriginal ideas about the 6. Igarashi Yoshikuni, Bodies of Memory: Dreamtime as that great place of gods, totems, Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, and origins that lives with us forever in eternal 1945–1970 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University synchronicity.2 So Paprika invites a middlebrow Press, 2000). audience to see familiar mysteries in vivid, pri- mary-color life. But Paprika can bewilder certain viewers. Psychoanalytic Cyberpunk Something is difficult in Paprika—the nature of Midsummer-Night’s Dreamtime: dreams, of the kami, and of art itself. Kon Satoshi’s Paprika Take an example of what Paprika is not. In T imothy Perper and the classic Wizard of Oz film, Dorothy travels Martha Cornog from a black-and-white, Depression-era America to a Technicolor Land of Oz located in a dream- Kon Satoshi (director). Paprika. 2007. like Somewhere Else, and, when Dorothy finally : Sony Pictures. ASIN B000O58V8O. returns to Kansas, the film becomes a trip There Translated as Paprika. Columbia-Tristar. and Back. But the DC-Mini machine in Paprika ASIN B000PFU8SO. is not a magical cyclone bringing us to a Slum- berland where fantasy comes true. Yes, one can Paprika is a delicious animated version of a sci- enter dreams through the DC-Mini, but the ma- ence fiction novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui about a chine opens a two-way gate. The DC-Mini lets device that allows psychologists to enter peo- the dream world escape from our minds and ple’s dreams.1 Although much lighter in tone materialize in concrete solidity right here in our than Kon’s previous films, Paprika is deeper world. Then its power becomes contagious. Be- than it seems. Three of the most illuminating cause it lets dreams emerge into reality, dreams allusions in Paprika are to Ryutaro Nakamura’s coalesce into ever more complex dreams—and 1998 Serial Experiments Lain, ’s then those dreams become real. So anyone using 1984 Beautiful Dreamer, and Oshii’s 2004 In- the machine can infect other people’s dreams. nosenzu. These three create a map for locating When three DC-Mini machines are stolen at the

326 review & commentary

Mechademia4_inside.indd 326 9/17/09 9:27 AM start of Paprika, a quickly escalating mass of flirting, having a wonderful time in her world. intersecting dreams becomes real for everyone Paprika is the main reality of this film. collectively. And in the hands of a psychopath, Proof? Not hard. Dreams are a playground the machine is deadly. of primal needs, emotions, fears, and desires. In Paprika, the Dreamtime—a place of Of these, what the Freudians call “oral needs” origins, totems, and kami—is not a private, are basic, and who does Paprika/Dr. Chiba alternate mental-psychological-cognitive state like the most? Dr. Tokita, partly because he is but becomes the interpenetrating registers immensely fat but also because he is the clos- of a unified collective reality. The Dreamtime est to the Dreamtime: his are the appetites of opened by the DC-Mini is therefore close kin dreaming. Paprika/Dr. Chiba knows about ap- to the Wired in Serial Experiments Lain. So the petites: in the crucial scene of the film, she/they DC-Mini machine is not simply a psychological cheerfully devours the now immense bad guy, passport for entering a hallucinatory Slumber- Chairman—all of him—in one hugely hungry land. It is a reification machine and is familiar moment of pure incorporative appetite. Shlurp. from Shakespeare: And Paprika—and Dr. Chiba, when she gets into it—can be very sexy. We see Paprika’s flir- The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, tatiousness more often and more openly than Doth glance from heaven to earth, we see Dr. Chiba’s sexuality, but Dr. Chiba likes from earth to heaven, the way Dr. Tokita feels, and Paprika thinks it’s And as imagination bodies forth just fine that a huge, dream-enhanced Dr. Tokita The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen (he is now a robot) picks up Dr. Chiba and pops Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing her into his mouth. If there is any single image A local habitation and a name.3 of desire in the film, it is this. One might think that devouring the heroine is a quick ticket to a The DC-Mini machine is precisely such a pen. bad end, but that is not the logic of Paprika—or One person, Paprika herself, stands outside of dreams. Dr. Chiba will soon rematerialize to these processes.4 Even middlebrow reviewers pull Dr. Tokita out of a wall where his newly have noticed that Paprika is not simply psy- dream-enhanced but clumsy giant robot body chologist Dr. Atsuko Chiba’s alter-ego for enter- got stuck when he collided with a building. And ing patient’s dreams but is a flirty, standalone with that, we encounter two additional myster- goddess of dreams in her own right.5 In fact, ies: the nature of the Dreamtime and the origin Paprika runs away with the film: its detective- of Paprika. story frame (who stole the DC-Mini?) and its The dreams inPaprika are not solely individ- Beautiful Dreamer/Innosenzu–style dream imag- ual inventions come to life. Instead, the Dream- ery are no match for Paprika skipping down a time also embodies a collective unconscious, street or popping up on some random ’s where myths, legends, and beings of folklore T-shirt or fluttering through a marvelous se- all reside. Viewers can decide if such legends quence with little fairy wings while giant tree existed first only in imagination and later were roots chase her. The cyberpunk frame induces brought to physical reality by the DC-Mini or if us to see Paprika only as part of Dr. Chiba’s per- the legends always inhabited a Dreamtime and sonality, someone younger and sexier hidden merely pop through to visit us whenever the under the psychologist’s austere Professional machine is used. Either way, they’re real now— Female Scientist manner and costume. But that robots, walking mailboxes and refrigerators, view is too narrow: Dr. Chiba is also Paprika’s beckoning cats, Buddhas, dolls European and alter ego. Paprika is playing, flying, laughing, Japanese, tiny airplanes—all on living parade

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Mechademia4_inside.indd 327 9/17/09 9:27 AM with great and noisy enthusiasm in the streets mind set into the quasi-realism of one of Kon’s of Tokyo. Fortunately for civic order and sanity, favorite animation styles. Paprika is among them. But when we meet the bad guy, Chairman, One of Paprika’s origins is as the tapir (baku) he is a dead ringer for Kim, the hacker in Oshii’s who eats nightmares, most notably from Ru- Innosenzu. He’s more than a trendy visitor from miko Takahashi’s Lum Urusei * Yatsura and from another anime; he’s a warning that the mise en Oshii’s second film version of Lum, Beautiful scene we’ve seen is not the real background of Dreamer. Apparently, this tapir was originally this film. And Paprika herself is not from In- Chinese folklore,6 but Takahashi adopted him. nosenzu at all—for example, she bounces about Paprika is not a tapir, and she is not exactly eat- skipping and (multiplied into four Paprikas) ing a dream, but she is eating monsters from a disdainfully sneering at two harmless young dream world, so she counts as an honorary, if men who try to meet her and then taking off symbolic, tapir: someone who, against Western on a motorbike that becomes a car. Realism, logic, controls dreams by turning their most even the quasi-realism of the opening dream basic mechanism (the appetites) against them. sequence, simply evaporates: we have entered Lain would understand perfectly. the Dreamtime—not the dream of an anxious The second origin figure isMahoutsukai Sally psychiatric patient, but the Dreamtime itself. ( Sally), from the 1966 by And now the film is home. It is about the Yokoyama Mitsuteru.7 Paprika, too, is a mahou Dreamtime and isn’t a detective story at all. tsukai, someone who can use and control magic. It’s about those portions of the cosmos where In fact, even if Paprika is older, she looks a good dreams and totems live, and where—it turns deal like Sally, and both are quite playful. And out—so do bubbly mahou tsukai like Paprika. both can fly. Kon’s film is a delightful fantasy/allegory about So, does any of this help us understand the consensus reality versus freedom and creativ- film? Well, yes. ity. In the end art and freedom win, and the film Take two early scenes. The first is a quite feels like springtime. straightforward dream sequence. In it, the It isn’t clear how come Dr. Chiba knows dreamer-protagonist Detective Konakawa lacks Paprika. The two are good friends, and Paprika volition, and places and shapes morph fluidly pops up whenever Dr. Chiba needs her. But one into things they are not. So if Paprika’s primary conclusion is clear. Dr. Chiba and Paprika do not colors, movement, and events make no con- merge with each other so much as enhance each scious sense, they still reveal a palette for por- other. They are dwellers not on the threshold but, traying dreams. like Lain, are inhabitants of multiple worlds. The Then Konakawa awakens, and we return to result is that both Paprika and Dr. Chiba are per- neo-futurist sci-fi machines, shadows, and omi- fectly happy that Konakawa rescues Dr. Chiba, nous metallic-blue corridors, all from Bubblegum now become a semi-naked Jane to his Tarzan in Crisis and . These cross- a Tarzan movie (plus a talking chimpanzee in a references to Beautiful Dreamer and Bubblegum movie poster) that Konakawa has dreamed up Crisis elicit a repertorial menu based on our fa- for himself and Dr. Chiba. In the Dreamtime, miliarity with anime. When we try comprehend appetite-laden narratives stand as archetypes Paprika using this repertoire of cinematic cross- for the lesser realities of everyday life. talk, we enter into certain viewing relationships Throughout the film, as the participants’ to the film. One is the middlebrow vision men- dreams fuse and interact, the viewer is in- tioned above. Then Paprika becomes merely a vited to disentangle different dream fabrics. sci-fi detective story about the mysteries of the Paprika herself does not have her own dream

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Mechademia4_inside.indd 328 9/17/09 9:27 AM figurations, as befits her role as kami of the Japanese in 1980 as Yume ha shinsei, in Worldwide Dreamtime, but everyone else’s dreams, some- humor SF masterpiece selection 1, ed. Asakura times malign, sometimes benign, are vivid and Hisashi, (Tokyo: ). complex. From Dr. Shima comes a vibrantly 3. Shakespeare, A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, loud totemic procession; a repeated nightmare Act 5, sc. 1. plus Tarzan from Detective Konokawa; decayed 4. She is actually not the only one. In another dolls, corpses, and graffiti from Himuro; para- allusion to Serial Experiments Lain, in Paprika’s noid butterflies and rape from Osanai; power- “www.radioclub.jp” bar—where she’s a regular maddened tree roots from the Chairman; a and even runs a tab!—the two bartenders are also cheerful, if large, robot from Dr. Tokita; and, external to the dream machine. But their voice from Dr. Chiba, a charming, low-key romance. actors are Satoshi Kon and Yasutaka Tsutsui, the Against them are the dull tones of waking re- director and the author, so they’re allowed to ality and cityscape ferroconcrete, which cannot stand outside the dream frame. If you ask where compete with dancing umbrellas, frog bands, this bar is, the answer is the Dreamtime. or even the abandoned theme parks of the 5. Justin Sevakis, “Beyond My Mind: Paprika,” Dreamtime, more accurately, the immensely Protoculture Addicts 92 (May–June 2007): 20–25. rich graphic imagination of Japanese art itself. 6. For traditional Japanese dreameaters There is no question where Kon stands on that (baku), see Hori Tadao, “Cultural Note on Dream- issue. In Paprika, art wins. ing and Dream Study in the Future: Release from So, unlike Innosenzu, where entry into the Nightmare and Development of Dream Control decadent parallel universes of cyberspace im- Technique,” Sleep and Biological Rhythms, 3 (2005): plies profound danger and loss, Paprika ends 49–55; Adam L. Kern, Manga from the Floating happily. The evil Chairman has been devoured, World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyoshi of Edo Konakawa is free of his anxieties, and Dr. Chiba Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University has happily latched onto Dr. Tokita, who does Asian Center, 2007), 236, figure 4.26. For a not seem to mind at all. By implication, the modern example of the tapir as dreameater, see DC-Mini machine—with some new access Takahashi Rumiko, “Waking to a Nightmare,” in controls!—will be approved by the government, The Return of Lum: , 141–56 (San and people will be happier with their dreams. Francisco: Viz, 1995). And behind the dreams, the Dreamtime itself 7. Yokoyama Mitsuteru, Mahoutsuki Sarii beckons. (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2007).

N otes 1. Yasutaka Tsutsui, Paprika (Tokyo: Shin- chosha, 1993). The novel was first serialized in トレンド 1991. The Sony DVD is in Japanese only, but the Torendo Columbia-Tristar DVD is French-made and has Interview with Murase French, English, and Arabic subtitles. Both are Shuko and Sato Dai region 2 DVDs. D eborah Scally, Angela 2. And goes back to British science fiction Drummond-Mathews, writer Peter Philips’s 1948–49 Dreams Are Sacred, and Marc Hairston in which psychiatrists invent a machine allowing the therapist to enter a patient’s dreams. Like the Murase Shūkō and Satō Dai have worked to- DC-Mini, their contraption also causes untold gether on some of the most notable anime problems. Philips’s story was translated into of the past decade. Murase was an anima-

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