Flatness, depth and Kon Satoshi's ethics

Abstract

This article offers an exploratory reading of two works by Kon Satoshi: his debut Perfect Blue (1998c) and the television series Mōsō Dairinin/Paranoia Agent (2004b). The goal of this article is to work through the relationship between social ontology and ethics embedded in these two examples. To do this the article develops a concept of ontological flatness, both as a description of the specific late modern phenomenon of the levelling of value distinctions between previously differentiated and privileged sources of social identity, and a method of representation Kon uses in order to both portray and critique this condition by pushing it to its logical conclusions. It is argued that rather than a gleeful celebration of this postmodern flat condition, there is a distinct modernist humanism in Kon's work: whereas the effect is ontological flatness, the goal is always to regain a sense of rooted perspective, or depth. This Archimedean point is anchored to a concept of the responsible human actor, who works through existential suffering as a matter of ethical obligations outside of historical and technological determination. Thus, while representing the postmodern experience of the self, in this aspect we can situate Kon's critique within a modernist tradition in Japanese political thought.