Paprika, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Reject Gender Binaries
By Naren Varadarajan
There are few anime directors who can claim to have pushed the medium forward as much as Satoshi Kon. Despite only having worked on four films before tragically passing away, each of his films is incredible in its own right. Although vastly differing in subject matter, there is one thematic throughline that runs throughout them all, that being the exploration of some kind of duality. Perfect Blue, for example, is about the separation between a singer’s stage persona and their real self. Usually, Kon chooses to look at the dissonance these dualities cause, while generally leaving what is to be done about said dissonance vague, or failing to address it entirely.
Paprika deals primarily with the interaction between reality and dreams. In it, the protagonist, Chiba Atsuko, lives a sort of second life through her alter-ego, Paprika. Via an invention called the ‘DC-Mini’, Paprika is able to enter into people’s dreams, acting as a therapist in doing so. Chiba herself is seen by most people to be a brilliant if cold-hearted woman. She is, in other words, trying in earnest to be the masculine ideal that is so often pushed as being what is required to succeed in a workplace.
The film takes careful strides in communicating that this doesn’t reflect who Chiba really is, but it does raise some interesting questions about said perception. One of her coworkers, Morio, displays many of these same qualities, but the critical gaze with which Chiba’s peers view her is absent. This is simply a consequence of the age-old double standard of praising assertive men and vilifying assertive women. Paradoxically, Chiba is forced to conform to these masculine norms in order to succeed, but finds herself the subject of much dislike in doing so.
Paprika becomes a coping mechanism for her, and is everything Chiba is not. Paprika is compassionate and cheerful, and more akin to the feminine norm so often seen in various media. At various points in the film, men comment on just how much they love Paprika, and although she denies it, Chiba idolizes her just as much. This veneration of her feminine traits is exactly what causes her so much dissonance. She comes to rely on Paprika to solve her problems, and has difficulty in believing in her ‘real’ self’s ability to do much of anything. The only character that outwardly loves Chiba more than Paprika is Morio, albeit in a twisted manner.
Watching the film it becomes fairly obvious that Morio feels emasculated by Chiba being more successful than he is. His ‘love’ for her supposedly real self is just a manifestation of his desire to possess her, as a means of affirming his masculinity. Meanwhile, the person that Chiba actually likes, Kosaku, is the polar opposite of Morio. Kosaku is selfish, childlike, and obsessed with food above all else. This contrast between the ‘ideal man’ and the man she actually likes causes Chiba to lash out as Kosaku often, as though hoping that in yelling at him he’d change.
All of these things come to a head near the end of the film, when Seijiro, Chiba’s boss, attempts to remove the separation between reality and dreams, causing all sorts of mayhem in the process. Paprika and Chiba attempt to stop him, but nothing they throw at him seems to work. With their friends having either been subdued or turned into grotesque caricatures of themselves, Chiba absorbs Paprika into herself before, in true anime fashion, turning into a giant version of herself and, well, eating Seijiro.
It’s certainly out there as one of the weirder endings to a film, but metaphorically, it does make perfect sense. After all, it’s really the culmination of all the trouble Chiba has throughout the film with her two selves. It’s her recognising that in separating and idolizing one side of herself, all she’s doing is further establishing that these two selves, the masculine and the feminine, are things to be kept separately. Really, thinking about it it’s fairly ridiculous to expect them to be that way, when looking at the people around you instantly disproves this immediately. Realizing how damaging keeping these sides of herself apart are, Chiba chooses to ‘absorb’ her feminine traits back into herself.
In this way, Paprika resolves its dissonance, in saying that internalizing and upholding gender binaries is inherently harmful, and that Chiba’s arc was ultimately about figuring out that she is both masculine and feminine, as is everyone else. This is by most standards a fairly progressive message, especially considering the film was made in Japan, a place notorious for its strict gender norms.
Of course, it isn’t perfect by any means. Chiba does end up with Kosaku even though he shows zero interest in her romantically, which makes no sense given the entire point of the film was about Chiba figuring out who she really was. Even so, it achieves something few films do: making a story all about ‘believing in yourself’ without falling into the inane pseudo-philosophical trappings the subject matter is plagued by.
