Audition

“Only when you feel pain can you know the shape of your heart.” I don’t really know what I’ve just seen. Leaning towards the ending being just a nightmare, a representation of his own guilt. He talks with his friend about finding the right woman. She must be obedient and subservient. The man in the bag, an obedient, subservient creature, essentially a pet, holds a mirror up to his own ideals and treatment of women. It could be real, I genuinely don’t know. If it is real, it takes me down a different route. Asami’s backstory is filled with abuse, her actions following are direct results of this. Any man she feels represents the trauma she experienced, she feels the need to correct the balance, and take control from them. Either way, real or not, it functions as both a commentary on the individual’s treatment of women and misogyny throughout society as a whole. The auditions, an exploitative, objectifying arrangement, where the women are denied their individuality, seen essentially as commodities to be judged for the enjoyment of two men, represents the individual’s mistreatment of women. Misogyny throughout society as a whole, I feel, is represented through the repeated pattern of trauma and abuse that Asami endured. The tonal shift from the first two thirds to the final third is abrupt, for me it’s representative of him being forced to suddenly confront his own worldview, it can no longer be masked in normalcy, he must see it for what it is.