Fishy marxism

Mermaid Legend (1984) (d. Ikeda Toshiharu)

An amazing female revenge fantasy marred by sexploitation and horror tropes. There’s absolutely no reason for the extended sadistic sex scenes and scenes of (blurred) nudity except as box office titillation, which doesn’t make much sense since it’s an art film (ATG-branded) with a quasi Marxist agenda. Wait maybe it does: the only way to make the heroine palatable is to have her be explicitly sexually violated and covered with blood (blood as semen). Otherwise, such a figure is unimaginable. I think that the film has to move beyond a rigid heterosexual definition of gender for it to be successful. A remake should find her as a queer heroine. Meanwhile, the film itself gushes with blood. Literally as the heroine, calm and determined at first only to turn hysterical and later elemental (she embodies nature), stalks and kills each person who wronged her. It’s cathartic to watch as the movie checklists every murderous desire from this viewer. For instance, fine, the big time capitalist must be eliminated but the film shows the cadre of men who will continue his exploitation and accumulation. Guess what? She manages to get even with them too with a crude driving spear. Wow! How about the politicians who enabled the capitalists? Speared. The police who come to the defense of the capitalists and politicians? Some speared (note she does all the killings singlehandedly) and some washed away by the storm she calls forth. Wow, wow, wow! (Japanese X-Men Storm?) Each guy she spears results in an exaggerated gushing of blood which drenches her, inexplicably at odd angles. So it’s not really blood but semen. Not sure if the filmmakers did this intentionally but it seems the case since the lone woman who gets mindlessly stabbed doesn’t get the same special effect. Blood as semen as vitality that is drained from the men in a film where water, ocean, liquid is dominated by the heroine. It’s a wonder the film was made in 1984 when Japan was still enjoying an explosion of wealth. The movie imagines the county as being underwater. How did they see that coming, the filmmakers? It’s also somewhat of an ethnographic film as it is set in a countryside largely unaffected by the rise in the standard of living. The rich guy lives in a Westernized home with a big pool that could be set anywhere in upper middle class Cali. Meanwhile the country folks live meagerly like old woman and her husband who are there to evoke a disappearing Japan but they too aren’t spared/speared of criticism. The only recourse or hope left is for the woman to live and I didn’t think the film would allow that. She survives as a non-human, a mermaid, a mythical creature, a force of nature, on the other side of the world where nature is abundant. But here’s the thing, the water around Japan is presently radiated with poison and geopolitical stalemate so that despite that seemingly upbeat ending is trumped by reality. Now that’s one thing the filmmakers didn’t see coming. The idea of the other side, liberation, is foreclosed. Ariel is dead by radiation.

#2018 #September