xoxoxo e: paprika

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

paprika 's dream world

Vintage has recently re-released Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993's mind-bending novel Paprika. Set at Japan's Institute for Psychiatric Research, two brilliant scientists, psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba and inventor Kōsaku Tokita are developing a tool they have dubbed the "DC mini" which can allow psychiatrists to enter a patient's dreams, and which they hope to use to cure a variety of psychic aliments, from anxiety to acute schizophrenia.

In order to work as a "dream detective," which is considered illegal, Atsuko has created an alter ego called Paprika, to more easily invade, and in many cases, inspire dreams. Unfortunately for Paprika her secret identity is no longer very secret, and someone has stolen the DC minis and has started using them to drive everyone at the Institute insane. The differences between the world of dreams and the real world is becoming more and more difficult to determine, and with increasingly deadly results.

Although it has an initially interesting concept, Paprika is a very slow read, with at times some very plodding prose. The inter-office politics at the Institute, and the absurd notion of the main characters developing such an unstable device as a way of vying for a Nobel Prize, bogs down the initially clever sci-fi premise. The dreamscapes that Paprika and her friends explore include some interesting imagery, but readers will be far more rewarded by Satoshi Kon's wonderful 2006 anime adaptation of the novel.

Satoshi Kon's Paprika was chock-full of amazing images

Although Atsuko/Paprika may be the heroine, and a potential Nobel prize winner for her lethal co-invention (exactly who is reviewing these inventions, by the way?) she is far from a feminist or any kind of female role model. The two-dimensional "dream doctor" falls in love with all of her (older) male patients and is frequently the (willing) recipient of their rape fantasies. Rape and virtual sex seem to be the core of her diagnostic technique. A lot of the attitudes about sex - gay or straight - leave a bad taste for the reader. It is unclear if the author, Yasutaka Tsutsui (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, What the Maid Saw: Eight Psychic Tales), who is much revered in Japan, intended his characters to be misogynistic, homophobic, or both. Maybe a poor translation has eliminated a sense of satire in regard to the sexual politics of the novel, but it seems not.

Most of the characters, except for one of Paprika's patients and champions, Deputy Chief Commissioner of Police Konakawa, are downright unpleasant. Innocent people are mauled and destroyed left and right when the dream world starts to take over the real world, but with no real world consequences. Paprika and her friends don't seem to have any regrets about the public impact of their deadly invention. The ever-growing love-addled male Paprika-posse just keeps taking her out to eat after each escalating disaster, to public places where her enemies can easily get to her.

The late Satoshi Kon created a brilliant anime film based on Paprika in 2007. Many of the characters were condensed, and most of the boring office-related dialogue was excised. This book can best be viewed as an interesting inspiration for a superior work of art.

Originally published on Blogcritics: Book Review: ‘Paprika’ by Yasutaka Tsutsui

Monday, November 08, 2010

a dash of paprika

I recently watched two movies I've been wanting to see for a while, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, by the great Hayao Miyazaki and Paprika, by Satoshi Kon. I have been a huge fan of Miyazaki for ages, but only recently discovered Kon, unfortunately coinciding with his recent death from cancer.

Both movies feature strong female heroines, something that is quite common in Japanese animation, anime. Why is it so easy for audiences to accept a strong female hero, who is often still quite feminine when she is an animation, but not so easy when she is flesh and blood? We seem to want our human heroines to be larger than life and to be able to kick butt and take names just like, well, men. Now don't get me wrong, I love Angelina Jolie in Wanted (although calling her a heroine in that movie is stretching it a bit— maybe female lead is more accurate), but part of the fun of being a girl is getting to dress up all purty, so it's fun to see that too. Buffy Summers could pull it off.

Nausicaä, who also happens to be a princess, but blessedly unlike the typical Disney concept of the same, is smart, resourceful, compassionate— everything a true leader should be. She is willing to sacrifice herself to save the world, both flora and fauna. The drawing, as usual with Miyazaki, is just stunning. The hues of the blue sky and dry sands that Nausicaä glides over are fantastic. The unusual landscapes are somehow like nothing you've ever seen before and real at the same time. Miyazaki manages to work in an environmental theme as well. And even though the story is set in a post-apocalyptic world, my daughter was as thrilled as I. The Ohmu, insect-like creatures which are both threatened and threatening, could have easily just become monsters, but somehow Miyazaki gets us to care for them and their survival as much as the young princess.

Paprika, an adults-only anime, was just as wonderful, yet wildly different than Nausicaä. The eponymous heroine, who may be real or a dream, guides Kon's surreal tale. Part science fiction, part detective story, all fantasy, Paprika takes us on a strange trip through people's dreams and mind control. It splices together ideas about filmmaking, existence, and true love. Just when you think that things are getting too fantastic, Kon either adds or strips away another layer, sometimes simultaneously, to take you a little further down the rabbit hole. His animation is a wonderful collage of standard anime, realistic drawing, and photorealistic images. As dizzyingly as things moved, there were some sequences that will stay with me—Paprika pinned like a butterfly to a table, a crazy parade with good luck kitties and frogs, a man running down a hallway that melts around him.

When Paprika was over I tried to remove the disk from the DVD player, but instead of coming out, it just seemed to go deeper and deeper into the device. I slipped my hand into the slot where the disc tray is, but neither the tray nor the disc would budge. Suddenly I felt like I was in the movie Videodrome, which had flitted across my mind like one of Kon's blue butterflies while I was watching Paprika. I can't say I am a huge fan of that particular Cronenberg film. In fact one viewing many years ago was more than enough. But I can say that some of it's imagery—weird, even gross, was indelible. Like Paprika, not easily forgotten.

I finally had to get a screwdriver and loosen the top of the device to extract the disc, in case you wondered. But that's too real-world practical a solution and not interesting. I probably should have left things in the realm of dreams.