Fame and Delusion in Perfect Blue and Mulholland Drive
By Rafael Torres
Edited by Franco Luna
From American Idol to Requiem for a Dream, the struggles--and pitfalls--of fame are a topic explored by many pieces of media. Whether it’s the luck of ‘making it’ or the tragedy of failure, there is no shortage of stories about the famous Hollywood Dream. But equally as gripping--and intense--are the struggles of those who do make it. It is not surprising, then, that many movies have explored this theme and its resolutions, two examples are Perfect Blue (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001). This article will explore both characters’ journeys into fame, the horrors waiting for them there, and their escape.
On the surface, both movies’ protagonists share a few similarities. Both Mima and Betty (Diane Selwyn’s alter ego during her dream) are spritely young women making their first forays into show business. Both have experience doing small-time gigs (Mulholland Drive’s opening sequence is implied to be a dancing competition that Betty/Diane wins). Both are presented with golden opportunities, take them, and watch as their dreams turn to nightmares. Their nightmares even take similar forms--in typical Surrealist style, their subconscious, along with its emotional baggage, manifests as visual and auditory phenomena felt by both them and the audience.
This, however, is where the similarities end, as each character’s experiences with the limelight manifest as the delusions that give each film its horror. As we learn at the end, Diane is a failure in both love and career, whereas Mima is a success, graduating from her former band at the start of the movie. Diane sees her failure as the fault of other people, and in her delusions, she “punishes” them by placing them within the plot of a conspiracy that prevents her from succeeding.
Some minor characters become outright malicious. For example, a man in a cowboy outfit at a party becomes a mouthpiece for whatever syndicate plots to cast another actor instead of Betty. Not even outsiders are spared--everyone, even people who couldn’t possibly know her, are threats. Still, others become vehicles to fulfill Betty’s fantasy. Camilla’s boyfriend is cast as a director who is struck by Betty when he first sees her but cannot play her in his show. Perhaps the most extreme example is Camilla. What is so striking about the Camilla we see in the real world is that she is perfectly normal, independent, even admirable. She announces her engagement in front of Betty and doesn’t notice the latter’s envy. Her sex with Diane is sterile, a pitiful curl on her eyebrows, and the sentence ‘We shouldn’t do this anymore’ her only concession--in stark contrast to the unsure, desperate Rita, dependent on Diane even to figure out her identity. Diane’s delusions are thus a form of escape, a way for her to achieve the impossible dream of making it in Hollywood.
While Diane’s dream remains unfulfilled, Mima’s turns into nightmare. Perfect Blue’s antagonists are specters, unseen figures that gaze at Mima from the shadows. One of them is a stalker (Me-Mania) that blogs about Mima’s life in first person with eerie accuracy, and a ghost-like figure, seen only by her, of the pop idol Mima. Just as Mima is physically exposed by her employers--first in a rape scene that sullies her reputation as a clean-cut pop star, and then in a series of nude shots for adult magazines, a taboo in the business then--the ghost of the former, pop idol Mima ‘exposes’ her as a sell-out, taunting and shaming her repeatedly for leaving CHAM, and Me-Mania ‘exposes’ her actions and thoughts through his blog to the outside world. Mima’s exposure is enhanced by the motif of stage lights, which at the start of the movie, dazzle us, the audience.
Later on, they become painful and ill-defined. Mima is seemingly unable to escape their glare. Even if no physical lights are available, brightness emerges in other ways, most notably from the ghost’s body.
Mima’s identity is thus sheared, caught between two forces--an internal ghost, her self-doubt crystallized--and an external figure, absorbing her subjectivity from the outside and broadcasting ‘her’ thoughts to the world. The result is a disoriented figure unable to tell whether she is the ‘real’ Mima or not. The “real Mima” is, to Mima, a being seemingly with a mind of its own, taunting and mocking her, or a character role-played by someone else. Mima’s identity is defined by her perception in the public eye, and her goal is achieved at the expense of her sanity. Her identity is appropriated by the very audience she reached out to, and their actions become her actions. After all, if ‘Mima’ is no longer her, but the property of someone else, why shouldn’t their actions be her actions too? Following this line of thought, Mima, as well as her audience, suspects herself of a series of murders. In contrast to Betty’s horror, which revolves around the fear of something attacking her from without, Mima’s horror revolves around the fear of something (namely, her own mind) rotting from within.
Mima’s delusions, like Betty’s, do not last, and the endings of both movies deconstruct both. Betty’s dreams of stardom prove to be false, the illusion broken by a knock, probably detectives suspecting her involvement in Camilla’s murder. Mima finds out that the murders were carried out by her manager, Rumi (who is herself deluded, believing herself to be Mima). Both movies culminate in a chase scene (Perfect Blue’s noticeably longer than Mulholland Drive’s) where phantasms from both dreams confront their dreamers. Fittingly for Mima, who loses her sense of self to outside figures, she almost loses her life to Rumi, for whom Mima’s death would leave her the only ‘Mima’. Fittingly, and ironically, for Betty, the figures that launched her career--the older couple, who are likely the judges in her contest--haunt her to the point of suicide.
Both characters thus confront their Hollywood dreams-turned-nightmares, Betty confronting her hopes manifested as their catalysts, and Mima confronting the pop star’s ideal fan--namely, someone who idolizes her to the point of wanting to be like her. Fame, which was once their world, now becomes a prison that they struggle to escape from. Mima’s struggle ends in victory over Rumi.
Her identity is taken back, the last line of the movie a confirmation of this:
Mima’s identity, once appropriated by the audience she appealed to, is wrested back. The same cannot be said for Betty, who deludes herself to avoid the reality of her failure. Fame, or more precisely the desire for it, is Betty’s prison, and unlike Mima, the inevitable return to reality does not liberate her. In fact, it intensifies her suffering, and with her delusions gone, the only escape left for her is the barrel of her revolver.
Photos taken from the films