207 The Pornographers

[Mr Sausage]

On an Imamura kick (he's quickly becoming my favourite Japanese director) and finally got around to this one.

It's one to rewatch as I found it rather elliptical and obscure, but something that stuck out is how Imamura avoids the cliche of the moral decline of the younger generation. The two kids sure seem like they're heading for degradation, with the older kid running off, stealing from his family, and engaging in an odd, pseudo-incestuous relationship with his mom, and the younger one descending into some standard delinquency as well as sexual deviance. With Subuya scrambling to keep everything together financially, it'd be easy to see this as an ironical family drama, with the immoral pornographer actually being the moral centre and the moralistic kids the immoral rot; or see it as a straightforward morality play, with the pornographer's immoral career destroying the family and contributing to the moral decline of the children by osmosis.

But the film is neither of those things, because the kids are actually fine. Cut to four-to-five years later, and the kids are responsible adults. Koichi is smartly dressed and business savvy, bringing Subuya opportunities to make money on his doll. Keiko runs the family business with far more success than her parents ever managed. A client mentions rumours of Keiko's wild behaviour, and Keiko brushes it off as youthful folly. Despite thefts, orgies, and getting involved with gangsters, both children become skilled, responsible adults even as Subuya, unable to handle his lack of control over them, descends into obsession and irresponsibility. So the kids are just fine, and the movie never moralizes their earlier behaviour by using it as an impediment to a happy, productive adulthood. In Imamura, a girl can flirt with gangsters, be arrested, be loose, engage in orgies, and still live a decent, happy life untroubled by those things. Imamura never punishes his women for their sexual behaviour.

You can see this, too, in The Insect Woman, where Tome's daughter seems on her way towards the same abuse and exploitation as her mother, only for her to become an exploiter (stealing the pimp's money) in a fraction of the time it'd taken her mother to arrive there. Insects begetting insects in a worsening cycle of degradation, one would think. Except we next see her happy, productive, and pregnant on her farm, having stolen the money to avoid the ugly, hard-scrabble existence of her mother. She's combined her mother's survival instincts and practicality with better opportunities and more clear-sighted goals. She'll be just fine, and the movie does not moralize her earlier theft and prostitution. It's her mother who remains caught in a difficult, insect-like existence as she scrambles towards the farm with one shoe.

[Michael Kerpan]

Glad to see you have jumped on the Imamura bandwagon, Mr. S.