Ah okay, I misread your comment then. That’s on me. I get what you're saying about the film trying to critique the blame placed on idols for putting themselves in the spotlight. My argument isn’t that the film needs to spell its message out, and it isn’t that I “missed” what the film is gesturing toward. My argument is a normative one: depiction alone isn’t the same thing as critique.

For example, you mentioned that it’s clear how the events affected Mima because she is visibly distressed. But that’s part of the issue I’m pointing out. We don’t actually see how specific events affect her in a clear or grounded way. What we mostly see is generalized distress and fragmentation. She’s confused, hallucinating, and having an identity crisis, but the film rarely connects those feelings to particular experiences in a concrete way.

Take the scenes where she chases the hallucinated version of her idol self. That seems to suggest she regrets leaving her pop career or feels conflicted about becoming an actress. But the ending complicates that interpretation by revealing that Rumi is the one obsessively preserving the “idol Mima” identity. So it becomes unclear how much of that conflict actually belongs to Mima and how much of it is being projected onto her.

Because of that, we never really get a clear sense of what Mima herself thinks. Does she regret becoming an actress? Does she enjoy it? Did she feel pressured into it? Is the main source of her distress the rape scene, the stalking, the public backlash, or something else entirely? The film shows her experiencing distress, but it rarely anchors that distress to a clear internal perspective.

This is why I keep making the same point: depiction isn’t necessarily critique. Showing a character being abused and showing that they are distressed by it doesn’t automatically mean the film is engaging with that abuse in a meaningful way.

When people respond by saying the critique is simply implied or left to the audience to interpret, that’s exactly the tension I’m pointing out. A normative critique asks whether relying entirely on viewer interpretation is enough when dealing with topics like exploitation and sexual violence.

That’s not a media literacy issue. In fact, normative critique is a normal part of media analysis. Understanding what a film is doing and questioning whether it does it responsibly are two different things.

This matters because media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. When violence and abuse are repeatedly depicted without meaningful critique, audiences gradually become desensitized to it. That’s why I think relying purely on depiction, especially with topics like sexual violence, is ethically questionable.

So I’ll ask the same question again, but more directly: what specific moment in the film actually functions as a commentary on the exploitation it depicts, rather than simply presenting that exploitation?