Saturday, March 15, 2008

Candy colour
In my last post I mentioned or more so question what would be the result of people unlearning the illusionary differences between man and women ect, well I have just finished watching ‘Paprika’ Satoshi Kon’s last film. The entire film was centred around this childlike dream that was slowing consuming and corrupting people as a result of a device created where buy people could view and enter each others dreams. The character that created this particular device was constantly described as child like genius throughout the entire film. His purpose in creating this device was so that friends could share each other’s dreams a very innocent reasoning. Although this entire theme of the childlike genius got me thinking about the way in a lot of anime there is this character that even though being an adult of extreme intelligence they possess a child’s innocence and curiosity. These characters are able to view the world through this somewhat candy coloured perception everything they do is merely a way to satisfy their curiosity or to have fun.
Ok this may just be me viewing the film the way I want it to be viewed but at the point in the film where other adult characters are entrapped by this dream that is fundamentally a parade of childhood fascinations they are ultimately sent insane and try to kill themselves. Could it be that once we reach our adulthood our minds are no longer capable of withstanding that childlike innocence and curiosity? We have responsibility we have experienced the real world we are no longer able to view everything candy coloured the way a child would and buy being forcibly exposed to this reverted state of mind our already conditioned minds can not handle this innocent escape from reality and we would be sent insane? But with these childlike geniuses they are able to maintain a mental state of a child by ignoring the conditioning of reality and therefore live a carefree existence were they may not be considered functioning members of adult society but they are admired buy the conditioned/ adjusted adult surrounding them.

Trust it to be Salinger to help me regain my train of thought. I was reading ‘Teddy’ one of my absolute favourite Salinger pieces; yes it actually rivals ‘Zooey’ and ‘Catcher in the Rye’. In the story Teddy talks about how when Adam ate the apple in the Garden of Eden that apple contained logic. Because of that humans have to label everything especially adults. But if you were able to get children before they were conditioned by society and actually have them spew up every piece of the apple they would no longer possess this logic that they use to forcibly label everything. I think this is what I was trying to say. These childlike adults that possess defying intelligence have been able to stop themselves from consuming any more logic then the initial amount they were born with. Therefore as adults they were able to look at the world without the distinguishing boundaries. And this is where the key of innocence comes into it all they don’t recognise what is viewed as right or wrong and that is why they are able to defy the adult society and reach an all-new higher level of intelligence or skill. Its very much like I mentioned once before in the ‘Cowboy Bebop’ episode ‘Perrie Le Fou’ Tongpu is the perfect killing machine because of his innocence he does not understand the meaning of death or pain that’s why his is able to be the ultimate assassin or as Jet describes him ‘Like a child pulling the wings off a fly’.

Ok so basically as adults educated with logic inturn possess this determination to label and define everything in the world it becomes impossible for them to view the world outside a given definition without jeopardising their level of sanity. As occurred within the film when adults were exposed to the dream it corrupted their minds. But these adults that have chosen to defy the adult conversion and therefore not swallow anymore pieces of the apple of logic are able to view the world in a boundless manner therefore gives them a level of intelligence that defies normal adult thinking they are able to truly think outside the box.


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