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Speaking of movies, because you talked about the movies you recently watched. Funny enough,
I also watched a movie recently, but this is not a new movie I watched. It was like a rerun at a
theater near the mall. No, at the mall near the museum I work at. Anyway. Prepositions are hard.
Prepositions are hard. Like, we should make a t-shirt on that. Do you want to make a t-shirt?
Are we starting this episode with the idea of creating merch? That's a harsh startup.
No, no. Prepositions are hard, but it says it in Japanese and it switches around the like,
you know, ni and he. Save that idea for when we have like thousands of followers.
All right, listeners, share this around because I want a t-shirt that does something silly.
Yeah, I don't know, 5,000 followers and we will make a t-shirt that says prepositions are hard.
It'll be some sort of jokey thing. It'll be on there.
Anyway. So you went to a mall and watched a movie. I went to a mall, I watched a movie.
It's a movie titled Paprika. It's a Nihon no anime nandakedo, 2006 nen ka na. Kon Takashi
tte iu hito no darekita. Who did Ghost in the Shell and stuff like that. He's the same one who
did Ghost in the Shell. Ghost in the Shell is the other. Yeah. Yeah. He might be more
famous for doing that. But I think I know him from Paprika. And I like this movie when I watched it
for the first time, I want to say a few years ago, but I watched it on a laptop. And this was
the first time watching this in a theater. And I highly recommend the theatric experience because
the movie in this film is so good. All right. Nice. But that aside, and there's like this movie,
this you can probably teach like a solid two hour film studies lecture on this movie,
on all its symbolism, and all of its like, everything that's been underscored in that movie.
Okay, really excellent layered, layered movie. Highly recommend. But in conjunction to
scientists, because there is a scientist like a good sci fi movie, it's not sci fi movie,
but it is like set in this kind of parallel universe of, I would say, like 2000 odds in
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Japan, where certain things are a little weird, but otherwise normal. But there's a scientist
symbol, main character is a scientist, and there are like several other scientists that appear in
the film. And I want to focus on the scientist dynamic, because that's like a very small part
of the movie, I feel like it's manageable. And how many so there are four sort of main
scientist characters in this movie. One is a main character. She is portrayed as cool, calm,
collected, always, like, always know her shit. Never wrong. That type of like, oh, yeah. And
also beautiful, like, really, everybody seems to find her hot. Yeah. And, and, and so that's,
that's character one, and Atsuko. And character two is Dr. Osanai. Okay, is her colleague,
is like good looking, you know, very, like handsome in a conventional way. And he's also like,
you know, part of this project. And the third one is portrayed as morbidly obese. Okay.
Like morbidly obese, like to the point that he would get stuck in an elevator, which to be honest,
some of the Zakyo-biru elevator in Japan is pretty tiny. Like it fit, it feels like if it's
like two people. Have you been to the Zakyo-biru? I don't know if I've been to because I'm not sure
I know what that word is the Zakyo-biru. It's like it's like any old ish building where like
different stories have completely different business going on. Oh, first floor might be a
cafe. Second floor is like a mahjong house. And third floor. Yeah, it's like some like,
I have a perfect picture of what this is in my head. I've been to two of them that I know where
they are. Okay. And those elevators are tiny, tiny, right? So I feel like one could get stuck
in there. But, you know, in this in this film Paprika, Tokita, who is the third character
is portrayed as morbidly obese, but also insanely, truly genius, and geeky. But also
one of the characteristics that he has is that he speaks in like this very childish way.
He has like a mind like in a curiosity of a child is how it's been portrayed. Okay. And,
and he's sort of like the brain behind this technology. That's like a core sort of dramatic
tool in this film called DC mini that lets you enter into dream, like your dream or somebody
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else's. And it records your dream in like a video format. You can watch it later on as like a part
of a therapy, but you can also be in that in that like, okay, yeah, yeah. And so those like
four characters, sorry, that's third. And then the fourth one is just referred to as Shocho. So
like a director of this research, I guess. And he is this very short, wisecracking old man with
lots of humor. And he is always comical, like kind of like a comic relief. And I just think
it's really interesting, this four person team dynamic of scientists. I'm not like I'm finding
interested aside from the whole like wokeness politics. Like I'm not mad that the leader of
this team is an old dude. Like, that's not surprising. Like, like that, that's fine.
But what I do find interesting is that this only female character in this film had to be hot,
had to be very attractive. But in like this, like cool, calm, collected way. Yeah. And the cool,
collected part is like, in contrast to her alter ego that she adopts when she's entering into
somebody's dream. Oh, which is Oh, paprika is a very friendly, how should I call it like very
extroverted, very is another form of attractive person, right? Okay, the paprika is also attractive.
Like, she also is like seductive. And but like, in a more extroverted way, like in a way that is
more sort of obvious. She knows she's hot. And everybody else seemed to find her hot. Okay. But
the real life at school is more just like, cool, calm. Yeah, very reserved, very reserved,
like respected female figure, often very beautiful, but beautiful in like, unapproachable
way. Oh, okay. That makes sense to me in terms of the usage there. Yeah. All right. Okay. Okay. So
like, I but I find it interesting that either way, the only female character that's in there
had to be attractive. And yeah. So that's one. The second thought is Tokita, the morbidly obese one,
who is portrayed as genius with a childlike mind. I also find that interesting, because
there's like a lot of like a part of the movie where he his childlike sort of curiosity,
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his like focus on the science basically started this whole mayhem because he didn't build
like in his devices, he didn't build in like this, like safety measures. And because he just
didn't think it was that important. When, in fact, if you cared anything about research ethics,
you would put some kind of like, abort mission type of feature, right? Where you can force quit
this device, but you can't do that in this. That's why it's a problem. And so he,
he gets away as like, oh, but he's a genius. And sort of the human relationship drama that happens
is because he is portrayed in contrast of Osanai, the second character that I described,
the conventionally handsome one, who clearly is smart enough to be in this research institute,
but not seen as like the genius next to Tokita, because Tokita is just too way above his league.
But so like, I just thought it was interesting how this movie came out in 2006, almost 20 years ago,
which is scary to think about. You didn't have to say the number again. You said it before we started.
Well, but it's, it's also scary. Not because how old we are. Also, in a way of like how little
we have come in terms of portraying scientists in media.
Sure. Yeah. So you're, is this, is this a comparison, sort of to the current issues that
still affect? I feel like it's still a very common for archetypes of scientists that are
portrayed in media. Like look at Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. And, you know, I don't know,
like, like, I bet you there's a ton of examples of doctors, researchers, scientists, female who
like portrayed as like, you're so hot for a scientist type. And yeah, this is the, I don't
really have any conclusions or anything. It just thought it was interesting that, huh, we're still
here. Yeah. Okay. What I'm, yeah, I'm hearing, I'm hearing that when you watched it, right, it
didn't come across as a surprise, even though you'd, you know, you'd kind of seen some of it,
on the small screen or something before, but you're looking at it and going,
this setup of archetypes is not like, old, like, it doesn't feel unfamiliar. Now. It doesn't feel
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in the past, feels still very current. Yeah. And I also want to emphasize that this movie
main idea, what does that mean when you let other people into your dream? What's the ethical issues
around that kind of like invasion of privacy? Like all of that is so much more interesting
than these like archetypical scientist portrayal. Like, I think those, that's like far less important
than the core questions that movie is asking. But in order to, you know, not do a two hour film
studies lectures on this, I wanted to focus on like the relatively small, small, small, small,
small part of the movie, which was scientists dynamic. You're getting this, especially then,
and like you said, you're still seeing these types of, you know, tropes and archetypes. I mean,
archetypes and tropes are around from forever. Yeah, those aren't like, new, but like, they just
have different modifiers as they sort of change through time. This is doing a task that could
have been done a different way. But like, there was a decision, maybe a little unconscious, right? To
like, choose those features for conventional attractiveness for both, right? Like Osanai
and Atsuko, right? To give them some sort of, like, you know, top, top tier physical person,
and then contrast them to this like, grody, fat, like, and to, mind you, everyone, right? What's
happening here is the movie is going, look how fat and funny that idiot. Oh, wait, they're a
brilliant scientist. Isn't that a weird contrast? Ha ha ha ha ha. Like, you know, there's, yeah,
there's some play there. That's yeah. Okay. And also, this was probably necessary, given how
complicated the plot of this movie gets. Fair enough. Just like the core characters. Yeah,
there are other characters that plays a significant role in this film. Okay. And
maybe they resorted to sort of relatively simplified character design to sort of focus
more on telling this story. Fine. Yeah. Yeah. I just thought it was interesting how 20 years
later, we're still stuck in the same place. Yeah, it's things move slower than you'd think,
especially if you don't change the systems around them. That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C.
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See you next time.
