Takashi Miike, Audition

  

Takashi Miike, Audition

Miike's Audition is a statement film in Asian horror cinema that contains traces of culture and identity, providing a pathway for intricacies, societal gender norms, and personal and ethnic identity to be discussed, challenged, and better understood through the film's storytelling and cinematography.

"Kiri, Kiri, Kiri"  as simple as it is, was the horrifying sound that the audience hears when a kind and timid Asami tortures her so called lover, causing a parallel between what the audience believed a character to be and what they actually turned out to be. Audition relied on "shocking imagery and graphic violence, can be aesthetically and ideologically linked in their being produced outside of the closed, vertically integrated Japanese studio system” (Choi 200). As Japanese films delved from being produced by big cinema companies, the creative freedom of the producers allowed the directors to hone in on important and controversial topics, presenting them in modern media. The fact that both main characters, in their own way, were bad, delves from the normal cinema plot where there is a villain and a hero in each story. This, alongside Aoyama's revalation, being a kind and caring father, but the circumstances and pressures put on him by his family and society made him make bad decisions. The personal identity of these two characters and how two sided they were in reality, allows the audience to see the theme of a parallel between the reality and the facade that people show in public. The identity of a person is not always what it seems, and that one can be kind and still betray those close to them. 

Culturally, the objectification and manipulation of women is an intricacy that is investigated throughout this film. Asami was simply an object for Aoyama to manipulate as seen from the beginning when he sees her resume and immediately is entranced by her timid and beautiful looks and starts thinking about all of the things that he could do to her. From the beginning, Aoyama's views of Asami were blurred, as seen in the number of times he drinks throughout the film and the sequence in the beginning where he spills his drink on Asami's resume the first time he picks it up. In that scene, the audience gets a glimpse of their complicated relationship, and as the scene continues, it becomes apparent that Aoyama's views on Asami were more importantly to manipulate her, as seen in how eagerly he awaits her phone call and how often and how quickly he calls her to meet. 

Societally, the gender norms as well were detailed throughout the film, from the pressures on Aoyama to get remarried and Asami's plea for someone to love only her. This film was portrayed as a feminist film, showing a sexist society where women are objectified and are seen getting back at the people and the society that wronged them through violent revenge. The patriarchal society provided those roles and expectations for the various characters in the film, forcing them to make decisions that they should not have. Opposing arguments suggest that this film is not a feminist film, as a result of Asami herself being a victim as well as a perpetrator. Throught the film, Asami's portrayal as well as the society suggests isolation, "by the space, largely unfurnished except for a telephone. Audition also draws upon various Tokyo locales, such as the subterranean, run-down bar in Ginza, where the owner of the bar was killed and chopped to pieces, and the former ballet studio located in Suginami Ward, where Asami was molested by her stepfather" (Choi 19). These spaces in Tokyo give both feelings of familiarity and repulsion, a sense of “abjection,” the concept of letting go of things that one would still like to keep. The old capital Tokyo, indeed, has a number of these derelict spaces, which enrich the megalopolis with history and nostalgia, and yet they are also dysfunctional and archaic, waiting to be discarded in order to introduce something new. The dysfunctional society further delves into the changing gender roles in the film, portraying a feminine naïve character as the villain.