- This topic has 7 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 7 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
How would you diagnose Mima’s breakdown? What’s her problem? How does it come about? What is her treatment and cure, if any?
I so badly want to respond to this question right now but I have a physical headache from trying to process this entire movie and I need to sleep it off
Mima has an identity crisis. I mentioned before on a different topic, but Mima’s desire to disconnect herself from her pop idol image is her initial problem. This isn’t something that can be done in the way that Mima desires. She wants to completely cut off this part of herself and become a different person; she tears down the poster of CHAM, she wants nothing to do with her former identity. One cannot simply decide to rid themselves of their different identities, just because they choose to. Mima went about pursuing a different and new identity for herself in the wrong way. Instead of making peace with her former pop idol image, and accepting this as part of her past, she tries to erase it, and wants to disentangle herself from that image. This is what initially causes Mima’s breakdown.
Throughout the film, Mima begins to loose her mental stability. She hallucinates and has delusions–but are they really her own? She tries so hard to focus on her present and future self as an actress that her former pop idol image begins to haunt her, and taunt her, into thinking she’s made a mistake, that she needs to revert back to who she once was. Mima is no longer able to distinguish illusion from reality, and doesn’t even truly know who she is anymore.
Is there a legitimate mental disease that Mima has, something akin to Rumi’s Folie à deux? I’m not sure, and I don’t even know how Mima regained her mental stability, if she did at all. While Rumi is the person who ultimately resides in a mental institution at the end of the film, the audience can’t help but wonder if Mima should be there, as well. The creepy smile that Mima gives at the end, pairing with her line, “I’m the real thing” is incredibly ambiguous, and it is very hard to decide what happened to Mima during the time from when she and Rumi nearly got run over, to the present.
Mima’s problem originates from alienating herself from what perceives as her identity. Her phase as a pop idol defined who she was and her decision to remove herself from that bubble left her with an identity crisis. Living in and through media (that focused around pop idol culture) for an extended time may have caused her to live in an alternate reality. Although Mima’s alternate reality is not clearly shown to the audience (as opposed to Miguel or Heinz’s alternate realities in Magnetic Rose), Mima’s struggle identify herself when she changes the direction of her career indicates that her entire being revolved around only one stage of her life.
Ironically, Rumi is Mima’s cure. Rumi acts as the embodiment of Mima’s pop idol phase, or Mima’s past. Through Mima’s conflict with Rumi, Mima is able to isolate herself from what the pop idol culture portrayed her as. Mima is able to “find” herself again and the last line of the anime confirms this.
Or does it? As long as Mima lives through media, there will always be something similar to an alter-ego for her. Perhaps Mima’s career as an actress will create another alternate reality for her, just as the pop idol life did for her.
Mima’s breakdown is very complicated but the simplest way to put it is that Mima is having an identity crisis. Mima is torn between the two different persona’s that she has in her mind. She is stuck living in between her identity as a former innocent pop idol and a new persona she is trying to pursue as a mature actress. Mima’s problem is that she cannot move past her time as an idol in CHAM. She is constantly thinking about her life as an idol and has momentos of CHAM in her room. There is even a scene in the movie where Mima imagines herself back in CHAM after they had gotten into a ranking in a magazine. This problem comes about through the strain that Mima puts on herself to become this beautiful actress even though she still feels that the idol part of her is still very much a part of her. Mima finally snaps out of thinking about of her idol days when Rumi reveals that she is obsessed with being idol Mima. After Rima tries to kill Mima but fails, Mima finally receives some sort of freedom from her past idol self. This can also be seen in the final scene where Mima visits Rumi in the hospital. Mima has become the mature actress she had been trying so hard to come and it really shows when Mima says the last line in the movie which are along the lines “I’m the real Mima.”
Mima’s mental breakdown derives from the conflicts of her identities. On one hand, Mima wants the public to accept her role as an actress, as she mentions several times during multiple interviews. However, her identity as an actress does not conform to her own expectation: she tries to create the actress identity through others’ will and expectations, which in most occasions are against her own values (ie. agreeing the rape scene.) The disparity between her imagination as an actress and her reality prompts her to question herself, and leads to her mental breakdown.
On the other hand, Mima is so eager to be accepted as an actress, that she determines to abandon her former identity as a pop-idol. The more she wants to get rid of the idol identity, the more she is involved in the conflict of two roles. After the rape scene, the illusion of idol Mima constantly interferes with Mima’s life: the illusion appears in the mirrors, in Mima’s dream, and even solidifies in Mima’s reality. Near the end of the movie, Mima even has problems distinguishing the reality from dreams and rounds of illusions. The chaotic arrangement of realities and dreams exactly reveals her identity crisis.
The conflict of identities finally is cured due to Mima’s acceptance of her formal identity. As shown in the final scene, which Rumi tries to kill Mima, Mima at first runs away from Rumi as the idol Mima. Mima’s rejection and tempt to escape can be seen as her opposition to her former identity. However, in the last Mima saves heavily wounded Rumi from a truck. I think the symbolic meaning of this act is Mima finally accepts and recognizes the idol personality as one important part of her. Her former identity cannot be forgot, but can be accepted and live with it.
Mima struggles to separate herself from the pop idol image that she feels suffocated by. After her resignation from CHAM, she attempts to say goodbye to the idol Mima as she strives to become an actress. I would say her problem is completely trying to cast away her idol identity; however, it’s not entirely possible as she continues to exist as Mima the pop idol to her fans and media. At the start, Mima receives very minimal lines in her role as an actress and CHAM ends up on the top 100 magazine, which most likely causes her to question if she had made the right choice to have this change in career. She isn’t able to fully escape from her idol image as even the writers and directors are reluctant to give her additional lines because of the idol image that she had. Her hallucination of the imaginary Mina begins after she agrees to do the rape scene for Double Bind. These hallucinations reflect Mima’s inner feelings of doubt and uncertainty that she had made the wrong choice which becomes increasing prevalent when her career takes a darker turn. I felt like a turning point would have been when Mima goes back to her home after filming the rape scene and her fish have died. The death of the fish symbolizes the death of her innocence.
The cure seemed to come from Rumi, who believes herself to be the real Mima. Through the struggle between Rumi and Mima, Rumi attempts to kill Mima with the mindset there can’t be two Mimas. This forces Mima to face reality and to make a choice that she is who she is.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.