I have always found the idea of insanity appealing. The legal definition of insane is the inability to tell right from wrong. That's a very broad interpretation; to me, insane is being so far removed the norm so as to be nonsense. That is, how you view the world is so skewed from how everyone else sees it that you appear nonsensical to others. Insanity requires a framework from which one departs, and it's this throwing away of the normal that I find so attractive. Reality is filled with obligations, responsibility, struggle, pain, uncertainty, and stress. Insanity is leaving these behind for a world free of care, a world of whim and fancy. Not to say that being actually insane is all fun and games, but rather insanity offers the chance to create your own rules and own life. The world you create revolves around you, and being the center of a universe you control is much more appealing than a universe controlled by outsiders. Observing interpretations of this idea of insanity is morbidly fascinating. Peering into the mind of an insane person offers a frightening glimpse of an unharnessed world, and the more it differs from our reality, the more it chills. So when I want to peer over the edge, I turn to...
The Japanese.
Japanese culture is so far removed from my own view of reality it very well fits my definition of insane. Finding Japanese people who create their own interpretation of insanity is doubly twisted. In 2006 (or 2008?), a movie about dreams called Paprika was released. Essentially, a research team creates a device that allows you to enter someone's dreams. The device is stolen and used to terrorize others, and eventually the dream world and reality merge. The details get a little weird (oh, Japan) but the way in which the dream-device is used to terrorize people is by driving them insane. Dreams, by their nature, fit the very description of insanity I've been using. So in the movie, an insane person's dream is stolen and then implanted in another person's consciousness. They begin spouting nonsensical phrases and march around in a state of crazed mania, smiling and laughing with a sick ecstasy.
I watched it first with English subtitles. The spoken Japanese is nonsense to me, so relying on the translation at the bottom of the screen helps settle the foreign feeling of the speakers. My skin began to crawl however as the translation betrayed me when the first victim succumbed to madness. The spoken noise sounded the same, but instead of dialog I read with increasingly horror as the character on screen became more and more frenzied, happily reciting random sentences and describing a glorious world only he could see before running, laughing joyously, out of a high-rise window.
The juxtaposition is frightening. Several other people are rendered insane, excitedly bearing witness to their vision while jumping to their deaths. They drop all attachment to the world we know and embrace fully the insane dream. And the dream may be the most frightening thing of all. The bouncing, bubbly, hypnotic marching music fades in, and with a crescendo of cymbals we are thrust into the dream itself: a parade of everything. Everything in the world, from mailboxes to refrigerators to instrument-playing frogs are marching forward, steadily, unstoppable in their insane rally.
The parade appears throughout the moving, marching finally into the real world in the climax. It's grotesque yet I'm drawn to it again and again. It presents itself as a celebration of the insane. In our normal world, death or suicide is treated with the gravity and drama. In the parade of everything, in the insane dream world, death is just something else to do. I've seen the movie three or four times now, and every time the entrance of the parade chills me. A view into another reality - could we make it our own?
It's important to note that there is a difference between chaos and insanity. Insanity is reconstructing an entirely new way of seeing the world, while chaos is pure disorder. The parade of everything is insane, as it follows its own path. Chaos would be pure gibberish, sounds instead of sentences, amorphous colors instead of forms. Insanity is more appealing than chaos because it does offer a framework to see through, different as it may be. This strange appeal is what accounts for the success of some Adult Swim programming, in my opinion. The prime example is the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a show that is built around making no sense. Other programming on the channel has tried this out to varying degrees of insanity: 12 oz. Mouse, a short-lived minimalist show, offered next to nothing in terms of a viewpoint and was a total failure. Squidbillies offers insanity but within a frame.
There is music that toys with the idea of insanity as well. One of my favorite examples is a song called "Insane Lullaby". The lyrics drift along in a sing-songy voice over a distortion background, offering dream-like images of floating fish and floods. The song asks if you'd like to go back in time, when having a good life was enough. The "insane lullaby" is repeated at the end of the song, a crooning "A good life will never be enough". Imagine a parent singing this softly to a young child, telling them they will never be happy with a good life. Insane, right? What makes this a powerful example is that it's easy to see it unfolding around us, in people who need more property, more money, more power, and never have enough. Would it be so wrong, to have enough? It seems sane, but the realization that many cannot ever have enough strikes close to reality and the insanity there becomes increasingly disturbing.
So, while these examples are unsettling, it shouldn't rule out insanity has an exercise in shifting perspective. Taking a moment to upend your reality and realign the world offers insight. It allows us to see the folly of taking things too seriously, or ignoring the pleasures in life. Do I wish to be insane? No. But would I like to visit?
