‘Ludic music’ in mind-game film Paprika (2006)?
Paprika, a japanese anime from 2006, is an animated science fiction and psychological thriller directed by Satashi Kon, based on the novelle of Yasutaka Tsutsui from 1993. The story is about a psycho-analytical company that developed the ‘DC-mini’ to improve their treatments. This is a device which allows you to share your dreams with someone or lets you enter someone else’s dream. Under guidance of doctor Atsuko Chiba and her alter-ego from the dreamworld, Paprika, the robbery of three DC-mini’s need to be solved. There are certain planned restrictions that weren’t installed on the device, due to the childish mindset of the inventor, doctor Kosaku Tokita. Because of this unrestricted access the thieves are able to tune into any possible network of dreams; which creates the situation of people daydreaming while unintentionally acting in a self-harming way. Detective Toshimi Konakawa is in the meantime being treated by Paprika for his recurring dreams about an unresolved murder which involves a friend from his youth. This, actually illegal, treatment makes Paprika realize that multiple dreams of different people are merging into one big collective dream. The intended perpetrator, Tokita’s assistant Himuro, seems to be a victim himself and even became an empty vessel; he was sucked out of his body into someone else’s dream. Eventually it turns out be the director, called ‘the Chairman’, who believes that technology doesn’t belong in the world of the unconsciousness. Due to a series of dreams and actions the reality and dreamworld merge into a big surreal parade. It then shows that every citizen in Tokyo recognizes the parade from their (or the Chairman’s) dream which leads to everybody being sucked into the ‘dreamparade’. Paprika then becomes her own person due to the merging of worlds. When it turns out that, through all chaos, Chiba is dreaming, as she gives in into her feelings for Tokita, she gets the possibility to come together with Paprika and saves the world.
What’s special about this movie is the way it presents different realities and worlds. The introduction of the movie starts in Konakawa’s dream, when suddenly Paprika and Konakawa wake up in a hotel room. Paprika leaves this room and gives her card, after which the title song starts. The twist is that Paprika is an alter-ego in the dreamworld of Chiba, so it turns out that the place that they wake up is still situated in a dream. You’ll only realize this after knowing who Paprika is.[1] The line between the dreamworld and reality in the movie is constantly stretched, while the viewers and characters are confused about in which world they are in. Answers about what it is exactly that you are watching, for instance the dream sequence of detective Konakawa, are given later on in the movie. Most of the scenario’s are repeated with a new gained perspective which slowly creates an understanding of where the pieces of the puzzle go.
Music does play an important role in this movie. By the means of repetition the tension of merging the reality and dreamworld is emphasized and the guideless feeling is being highlighted by combining distracting music with unclear images. For this reason my main question is: In which way does the music function as a ludic traffic sign in the mind-game movie Paprika (2006)? To answer this question I’ll define what a mind-game movie is and how Paprika checks the boxes. Then I’ll describe the basic theories surround music in films and make clear what a ludic traffic sign is based on Isabella van Elferen’s ¡Un Forastero! Issues of Virtuality and Diegesis in Videogame Music from 2011. In this, she suggests the term ‘ludic music’ for videogames, but I want to find out if this term is also appliable for mind-game films. After which I, by the means of a textual analysis of the music in this movie, will highlight how the composer played around with leitmotivs. A leitmotiv is a characterizing motive based on Wagners leitmotif; usually consisting of a few bars linked to a character, feeling, place or situation that, during the plot, gets repeated, variated and developed. Eventually I’ll hope to connect these three questions onto a conclusion to find an answer to my main question.[2]
Thomas Elsaessers separates in “The Mind-Game Film” two types of mind-game films. The first one concerns a movie in which a game is played with the main characters and the second one concerns a movie that plays a game with the audience. The emphasizes is often put on the mind by presenting an image or worldview that’s different than the one of the audience, but is presented as normal In the movie. This is the case in Paprika by having no doubts about the fact that there is a technological device that lets you share your dreams with others, after which people are being robbed of their mind. The situation in which Konakawa from his work computer through the site “radioclub.jpg” logs into the dreamworld, is one of these unimaginable possibilities of the movie. Due to these normalized unrealities, epistemological and ontological problems are raised in a philosophical manner regarding the different realities and worlds. The viewer is not able to, all the time, identify what’s happening in the movie due to these different realities and has to string certain events and sayings together themselves. Elsaesser points towards six characteristics that are distinctive of the most mind-game movies that can possibly mark Paprika as such a movie as well.[3]
First of all, the protagonist of a story asks: what exactly is happening? The causes and effects aren’t clear and thereby, the linear progression of the story can be turned around. In Paprika, the cause of the merging worlds isn’t made clear. People experience dreams while they are awake, which causes dangerous situations. The protagonist researches how this is possible. The movie has a linear storyline, but constantly switches between the reality and dreamworld. This creates an unclear difference between the two. Which is the second point of Elsaessers’ characteristics. When we consider Paprika this mixing is shown when Chiba (0:17:00-0:18:36) goes out to research in the apartment of Himuro. She follows a doll from the bedroom, into a closet, which contains a staircase to a hallway. This hallway then leads to an amusement park where she tries to jump over a fence. The moment she jumps it turns out that she is daydreaming and she is, in reality, jumping over the balustrade of a balcony. Just before she goes down the stairs, Paprika and her have a moment of words, in the form of a (brain) fog: “This is dangerous””This isn’t your cue”.[4] This marks the third point; which is a friend, mentor or acquaintance that is imaginary. In Paprika, this ‘friend’ is the alter-ego of Chiba, living in the dreamworld, called Paprika.[5]
The question: “who am I and what is my reality?”[6] shows the fourth mark. One of the steps towards the solution of the crisis in Paprika is Chiba surrendering herself to her feelings for Tokita. Because of this surrender she creates inner peace in the midst of chaos and gains the possibility to separate reality and dreams from each other. Despite of not putting the issue at the center of the story, it turns out to be a crucial question for the protagonist to solve the conflict of the story.[7]
In Paprika, a problem comes to the front when the distinction between worlds within the dreamworld, but also between the reality and dreamworlds, start to fade. Which shows us that point five; the protagonist can hardly make a distinction between different worlds, is used as a central element for the plot. The viewer experiences the same confusion as the characters due to the mixing of the worlds including the question which reality you’re watching. The actual feeling of relieve of finding the answer to this is combined with the answer of who exactly stole the DC mini and misused it. Mark six then contains the conviction of the protagonist that he or she is confused him or herself in stead of receiving the confirmation of his or her experience. The Chairman, for instance, states that Paprika is the terrorist who stole the device, while he himself is the one who is the perpetrator. He also prohibits the usage of the device, which creates the question if the invention, and with that Paprika, are even justified to exist.[8]
Music in films should always constrain itself to easy listening, as it places itself within the hierarchy beneath image, spoken word and sound. The music is, ideally, semiotically anchored, so that the meaning of the notes can be processed unconsciously into a message which creates a bonding with the images. Thereby, the music can be seen as a language due to the system of internal logic and expression: besides the images, the sound and the text in a movie, the music is also able to tell us something.[9] Music plays a crucial role in achieving a virtual reality through its semiotic anchoring and film-musical functions.[10] The virtual reality is a dimension of reality that shoves the actuality aside. By using the psychological mindset “flow” of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, when you’re completely absorbed in the activity of doing with your body and mind, Huizinga’s toovercirkel can be achieved. “Csíkszentmihályi argues that listening to or playing music creates a highly immersive form of flow, which is characterized by a sense of timelessness and complete absorption in the propulsive force of the music[,]”[11] This can be marked as the game experience as a closed-off space of experience with its own rules that are cut off from the normal world.[12] Flow and the toovercirkel eventually take care of covering the real physical world with a virtual reality so that immersion can be achieved.[13]
In van Elferens article ¡Un Forastero! Issues of Virtuality and Diegesis in Videogame Music a game’s virtual reality is taken as a base. The sound in this case is of such an importance that the games are impossible to play without it, due to the vital clues given through the ear. The vital musical clues can be considered as ‘ludic sound’ or ‘ludic music’. The musical motifs are of importance for establishing a virtual space of play, but also as a means to navigate through this space. A requirement for ludic music in games are the dynamics as a result of which it is composed in a non-linear way; it should be adaptable to the unpredictabilities of the player. Or in other words, the exigency of lacking musical chronology and a changeability in musical parameters to assist unpredictable temporary structures. Through this dynamic variety of music, which is contrasting to the audiovisual synchronization in movies, the audiovisual meaning isn’t fixed, but personal and bound to time and place. To translate this concept to a fixated cinematic place of play, I’ll approach the story of a mind-game film as a place of play told through the means of the pieces of a puzzle that you can put together using vital clues from the music, while preserving the difference of the fixated audiovisual synchronization. The music is, as expected, composed linearly, but constructed in a non-linear way into the storyline. This is due to Paprika being a mind-game movie with a non-linear comprehension of the story with the public.[14]
The first motive is the same as the intro of the song “The Girl From Byakkoya” from the album White Tiger Field (2006) by artist Susumu Hirasawa. The electronic instrumentation creates the perfect timbre for technological mixing of worlds of the movie and Vocaloid Lola represents the nature of Paprika; namely the technological gadget that united the dreamworld into one and Paprika onto an individual. It answers the question: who is Paprika? The first time this motive is heard, is during the title song of the movie.[15] It contains a soundtrack of approximately one and a half minutes accompanied by a sequence of playfully animated images of Paprika. The images are playful due to the approach of film editing that led to successive matching scene transitions. Matching scene transitions are transitions whereby the image of the final mise-en-scene, is the image of the next scene as well. An example is Paprika who is to be seen on a computer screen after which she suddenly shows up from behind that same computer screen, to put a coat over someone who fell asleep, to then change into a projection on the wall and skip away through the hallway to avoid a guard. These kind of transitions combined with the music conceal the plot of Paprika navigating through a world of dream as the viewer just started watching the movie and may conceive it as an amusing videoclip made for the title song. In the meantime, the context of the transitions and music give away a piece of the puzzle to solve the plot when Paprika changes into Chiba by using a matching transition at the end of the song.
The next time the Paprika motif is heard (0:24:20), is when Chiba talks to her own reflection: “Women of dreams are busy these days,” which functions as a reference to Paprika. Subsequently the reflection changes in Paprika who answers: “You look tired. Want me to look in on your dreams?” as if Chiba is the one who is busy. Chiba stops walking and watches her own reflection, while a reduced instrumental Paprika motif starts playing of only the vocals of the first two measures of the title song. All the hustle and bustle surrounding this motif is taken away; which shows us that Chiba is the more serious and adult side of Paprika. Paprika is, in turn, more playful, enthusiastic and more emotional. The rhythmically doubled percussion from the title song; characterizing for Paprika’s energetic stance and enthusiasm, is for example, absent. The viewer is able to identify Paprika as being Chiba through the audiovisual codes and clues. To confirm this musical motif, Chiba’s final answer is: “I haven’t been seeing any of my own lately”, referring to Paprika’s work with Konakawa. The short duration of the motif can be characteristic for the pure reflection of Chiba’s inner-self: Paprika. Besides, “I haven’t been seeing any of my own lately” implicates the plot of the movie; of everyone dreaming Chairman’s dream instead of their own dreams. The plot of the movie is thus, just like the music, reduced to one sentence.[16]
On the 31st minute the motif is heard one more time, but then repeated and ornamented. In this scene detective Konakawa meets Chiba for the first time, while being in treatment with Paprika. The moment that Chiba and Konakawa have eye-contact, is the moment the motif gets played, as heard on minute twenty-four, including repetition. Konakawa has a feeling of recognition that is represented by the addition of a melody. This melody is the minimal version of Konakawa’s dream sequence music. Like Paprika’s motif being reduced to show Chiba’s more serious side, Konakawa's motif is also reduced, as he investigates the theft of the DC Mini. When Tokito starts narrating his monologue about the idealistic idea of his invention; which started with the longing to share his dreams with his best friend, the voice of Vocaloid Lola from the title song is softly being added to the music. The vocals from the Paprika motif show the childness and unlimitedness of Tokita which he has in common with Paprika. It also functions as a reference to Paprika with whom Konakawa shared his dream with. Chiba, however, doesn’t allow Paprika (and her character and feelings) to manifest in reality which is presented by an abrupt stop of the music.
When Chiba dives into the merged dream to save Himuro and Tokita, the complete Paprika motif, as heard in the title song, is played once again.[17] This is complemented by Paprika standing on a cloud in de air, while maintaining a motivational conversation with Shima through a computer screen. The delighted music represents the courage and positivism of Paprika, against the attitude of crisis of Chiba. It also functions as a reference to the ‘sequence of escape’ with which the dream will end, which holds the same editing style as the title song. When Tokita, at the end of the movie, gets stuck in a building as a robot (1:17:45), it turns out that Chiba, at the same time, is dreaming about a foregoing scene where Tokita was stuck in an elevator. During this dream we hear the minimalistic Paprika motif to indicate that Chiba is dreaming. To represent Chiba allowing her emotional side, or Paprika, you’ll hear Vocaloid Lola, while the choir from the title song represents her accepting Paprika as a part of her.
The daydream motif is firstly heard around minute ten during Chiba’s explanation: “It means that the person who stole the DC Mini can connect to a psychotherapy machine at any time, from any place and use it to intrude into the minds connected to that machine.”[18] The music starts with a crescendo of a continuing tone and builds in intensity by adding a vocal choir and a continuous repetition of the motif. When Shima answers, a whispering is added and the volume is turned up. This whispering can be a hint to Shima becoming a victim of such an invasion one minute and half later. The music implies what’s coming; as she even walks into the perpetrator of this invasion, the Chaiman.
The motif is then variated in repetition through an acceleration of tempo, shorter notes and increasement in volume. When Chiba notices the music in an amusement park, the whispering of before is replaced by the sound of playing children. And in addition to the variation, we’ll hear the laughter of a little girl, from a doll symbolizing the nightmary parade.[19] An important clue to find the meaning of the music, are the lines “…even when she wasn’t connected tot the DC Mini, nor was she asleep.”[20] It tells us that anyone can fall a victim of a daydream invasion and that the music linked to this situation signal danger. Later on, when Chiba and Tokita walk through the same amusement parc, but then in the real world, the music is brought to a climax for the first time. The distortion is intensified, the timespan of repetition shorter and the sound louder. The crescendo of one tone is then inserted, which overrules the cacophony until a complete silence follows, when Paprika shouts: “Watch out!”[21] Himuro falls down from the air, right above Chiba for which she jumps out of the frame. Subsequently we see the DC Mini crawling under the scalp of Himuro, while the music restarts and develops into the same distorted climax as before within a few bars, while showing the face of the doll they found.
When Paprika and Konakawa are having a conversation in a cinema hall and elements from the nightmare parade slowly start dripping in from the projection room, the motif return through a build-up in volume until a frog, that leads the parade, slams his drum and the music is played at full volume. When Paprika notes that the dreams are merging, the motif takes over. It then gets repeated as Paprika notices Tokita being a part of the parade, until he runs off and the motif, just like the dream, merges with the parade and its accompanying music. Paprika then shouts to Konakawa: “Wake up!”[22]
The final development of the motif is audible when Paprika walks into the deepest, literally animated, alley of Himuro’s mind slash dream to do some research. The motif builds in tension until she finds an alighted space, the distortion is added to the score and she flies back into space with a fast repetition, cacophonic and even higher volume. When she finds out that she is situated in an empty vessel of Himuro, covered up in vegetation, she calls his name. This is a clue for the distortion to, synchronized with the roots being pulled from Himuro, change into the sound of this pulling movement and then into the motif of the Chairman. This motif if fiercer due to the percussion that reminds us of a war drum or marching band, the doubled tempo and smaller notes. This motif is then used as a sign for the Chairman, merging worlds and during a manhunt of Paprika by Chairmans accomplice Osanai featuring the same matching transitions as shown in the title song.[23]
The two motifs, thus, give answer to the questions ‘who is Paprika’ and ‘who is the perpetrator and what is his intent?’. First of all, the Paprika motif show the characteristics and relationship between Paprika and Chiba. By using the same tones, but with a different dynamics, the music shows us that they are both a side of one coin. The reduction of Konakawa’s motif, as seen with ‘serious Chiba’, emphasizes the relation between Konakawa and Paprika as purely business related, while the expansion of the Paprika motif during Tokita’s monologue contains the sensitive side of Chiba’s inner-self and her love for Tokita. This musical implication is confirmed during Chiba’s dream at the end of the movie, partly by using of the same musical guidance expanded with a choir.
Secondly, the daydream motif is being used when characters explain what the devices are unintendedly used for and when someone falls a victim of such an invasion. Besides that, the introduction of the motif, which is heard a second before the abrupt meeting with the Chairman, predicts the musical outcome of developing the motif equal to the revelation of the Chairman being the perpetrator and making it his motif. The increasing intensity is thus a sign that the researcher is coming closer to the source of merging worlds. Abrupt stops, in their turn, present the dead-ending research on certain trails, while the girly laughter combined with the doll present us the true identity of the Chairman; someone who can’t walk with a mask.
The music eventually offers us a solution by being a predicting feature. The Paprika motif shows us the personal relations of Chiba between Paprika, Konakawa and Tokita and creates a way for us to predict how the story, proportionally, will envelop. The daydream motif offers us more insight in unclear and tensed moments by preparing the viewer for what’s coming, as long as the musical semiotic is captured. The question then arises if this forecasting factor is enough to mark the music as ‘ludic’. The virtual space of play is established by the repeating aspects that call for a feeling of ‘flow’ and immersion. ‘Ludic sound’ is, according to van Elferen, essential to play the game and despite of having a different watching experience of the movie without the music, the music is not necessary to find the answers to the questions. The music does navigate you through the story by giving subconsciousness answers to secondary problems in the midst of all the chaos of the reality catastrophe. Eventually I believe that the term won’t be able to be used one on one, as it is an action-based term. Instead of that the term, based on van Elferens theory, could be amended, so that the idea of a ludic traffic sign remains, but fits within the medium of a mind-game film.
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[1] Manisha Mishra en Maitreyee Mishra, “Animated Worlds of Magical Realism: An Exploration of Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress and Paprika,” in Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal 9 (2014), 307.
[2] Kalinak, Kathryn, Settling the Score : Music and the Classical Hollywood Film (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 15, 16.
[3] Elsaesser, Thomas, “The Mind-Game Film,” in Puzzle Films. Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, ed. door Warren Buckland (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009): 13-17.
[4] Yasutaka Tsutsui en Seishi Minakami, Paprika, gedirigeerd door Satashi Kon (Venice: Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, 2006), 0:16:56.
[5] Elsaesser, “The Mind-Game Film,” 17.
[6] Elsaesser, “The Mind-Game Film,” 17.
[7] Elsaesser, “The Mind-Game Film,” 17.
[8] Elsaesser, “The Mind-Game Film,” 17, 18.
[9] Kalinak, Kathryn, Settling the Score : Music and the Classical Hollywood Film (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 4.
[10] Volgens Aaron Copland bestaan vijf filmmuzikale functies: het creëren of onderstrepen van 1. een overtuigende atmosfeer van tijd en plek, 2. onderliggende psychologische details of onuitgesproken en onzichtbare implicaties, 3. een neutrale achtergrond, 4. een gevoel van continuïteit en 5. een theatrale opbouw of het verlenen van een hoorbare structuur. Copland, Aaron. ”Tip to Moviegoers: Take off Those Ear-Muffs.” In Aaron Coplans: A Reader: Selected Writings 1923-1972. New York: London: Routledge, 2004.
[11] Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention,” in HarperPerennial New York 39 (1997), 8. http://vedpuriswar.org/Book_Review/Leadership_Managerial_Effectiveness/Creativity.pdf
[12] Johan Huizinga en Vincent Mentzel, Homo Ludens : Proeve Eener Bepaling van Het Spel-Element Der Cultuur (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 26.
[13] van Elferen, “¡Un Forastero! Issues of Virtuality and Diegesis in Videogame Music,” 31-33.
[14] van Elferen, “¡Un Forastero! Issues of Virtuality and Diegesis in Videogame Music,” 31-34.
[15] Kon, Paprika, 0:06:00-07:53.
[16] Kon, Paprika, 0:24:11-24:25.
[17] Kon, Paprika, 0:46:52-47:40.
[18] Kon, Paprika, 0:09:53-10:13.
[19] Kon, Paprika, 0:17:00-18:27.
[20] Kon, Paprika, 0:19:18-19:30.
[21] Kon, Paprika, 0:28:45-30:45.
[22] Kon, Paprika, 0:44:40-45:55.
[23] Kon, Paprika, 0:49:30-51:30.
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Used Literature
Copland, Aaron. ”Tip to Moviegoers: Take off Those Ear-Muffs.” In Aaron Coplans: A Reader: Selected Writings 1923-1972. New York: London: Routledge, 2004.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. “Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention.” In HarperPerennial New York 39, 1997. http://vedpuriswar.org/Book_Review/Leadership_Managerial_Effectiveness/Creativity.pdf
Elsaesser, Thomas. “The Mind-Game Film.” In Puzzle Films. Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, ed. door Warren Buckland. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Huizinga, Johan, and Vincent Mentzel. Homo Ludens : Proeve Eener Bepaling van Het Spel-Element Der Cultuur. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010. http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.uu.nl/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=369063&site=ehost-live.
Kalinak, Kathryn. Settling the Score : Music and the Classical Hollywood Film. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.
Mishra, Manisha en Maitreyee Mishra. “Animated Worlds of Magical Realism: An Exploration of Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress and Paprika.” Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal 9 (2014): 299-316.
Van Elferen, Isabella. “¡Un Forastero! Issues of Virtuality and Diegesis in Videogame Music.” In Music and the Moving Image 4, no. 2 (Zomer 2011): 30-39.
Tsutsui, Yasytaka en Seishi Minakami. Paprika. gedirigeerd door Satashi Kon. Venice: Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, 2006.