Hidden Meaning in Spirited Away (Miyazaki) – Earthling Cinema

Greetings and welcome to Earthling Cinema. I'm your host, Garyx Wormuloid. This week's artifact is Spirited Away, the award-winning masterpiece from legendary animator and confirmed silver fox Ha-yowza Miyazaki. The story begins with a ten-year-old human girl named Chihiro and her parents while they get lost in the forest. And if a human gets lost in the woods and no one is around to hear them, does that register as a sentient life form? The point is that these idiots accidentally make their way to a magical land full of delicious food where you can buy nothing and get a million for free.

Parents start shoving it down their throats and they lose their kosher status faster than you can say ew. Yuck. AH. OH G- Chihiro does what any child would do in this situation and abandons her pig parents to improve her resume. "Could you please give me a job? I'm not leaving until you give me a job! Please, I just want to work!" After much haranguing, a wizened old cronut named Yubaba hires Chihiro to work in her bathhouse, but changes her name to Sen out of bad faith. "Answer me Sen!" This dreamy Haku warns Sen not to forget his real name like he did, or he may cause a real headache at the DMV. "Don't you remember your name?" "No." A stinking spirit arrives at the bathhouse in the middle of the afternoon, the same time it usually arrives at me.

Sen successfully cleans it, and to thank him, the spirit grants him the greatest gift of all: a small excrement infused with ipecac. Elsewhere, a guy called No-Face pays for a bunch of food with gold, which is the very basis of a transactional ecosystem, so it doesn't really seem like a big deal. Why is everyone screaming? Soon Haku is poisoned and, by the way, now sometimes he is a dragon too. Sen gives him some of that shit to chew on, causing him to vomit up a shiny little Egg MacGuffin. While he's at it, he gives the rest of the shit to No-Face just to see how much vomit is allowed in a R-rated movie.

Turns out it's a metric load. Next, Sen visits Zeniba, Yubaba's twin sister, to repay her for stealing MacGuffin Haku during breakfast. Zeniba informs Sen that it was her love for Haku that broke some curse, which is gross because Sen is 10 and Haku must be at least 18. Back off, gross, there are a lot of other fish in the sea monster. Later, without being prompted, Sen remembers a time he fell into the Kohaku River, which they arbitrarily decide means that Haku is short for Kohaku and that he is a river spirit. So he is like a thousand and their relationship is even more inappropriate!

What a shame, Japan. Yubaba gives Sen one last surprise test in which she has to identify his parents, but Sen was not born yesterday. I mean, technically yes, Sen was born yesterday. But Chihiro wasn't. "None of these pigs are my mom or dad." "Oh, you got it!" And now that he's Chihiro again, it's time to grab his rehumanized parents and blow up this popsicle store. Spirited Away is a coming-of-age story in the tradition of classics like Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and James Franco's The Wizard of Oz, which similarly portray a young girl transported to a strange place. where you have to do a lot of things.

At the beginning of the film, Chihiro is naive and inexperienced, with a touch of shy and whiny thrown in for good measure. "Look Chihiro, there's your new school." "It's going to suck." Only by solving problems and helping those in need does Chihiro gain the self-sufficiency and empathy necessary to terrorize a giant baby. Beneath this story of renovation and vomiting lies a warning about greed and overconsumption, particularly as it relates to postwar Japan. After the, shall we say, messy end of World War II, Japan experienced an economic boom (no offense, no offense) that correlated with a cultural shift toward capitalism and a move

away

from traditional values.

Spirit Realm takes the form of an old amusement park in the style of the Meiji period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two of my all-time favorite centuries. Discarded shrines adorn the hillside, symbolizing the relegation of cultural history in favor of more modern activities such as leisure and interdimensional slipstreams. In this economy-driven environment, overconsumption has dire consequences, much like those found in a prenuptial agreement. Chihiro's parents devour food from the spirit realm despite its obvious and suspicious lack of vegetables. "Don't worry, you have dad here, he has credit cards and cash." In exchange, they are transformed into pigs, which were commonly used on Earth as a critical symbol of capitalist cultures that would bring about the eradication of humanity.

The bathhouse's oven is also shaped like a pig and constantly devours resources just to provide guests with a slightly warmer bubble bath. When No-Face appears brimming with gold, Yubaba and her workers milk that proverbial horse for every last ounce of liquid. But while the staff excessively bathes No-Face, he can't help but bathe them in stomach acid. The film expresses the hope that modern Japan can find a balance between economic prosperity and spiritual heritage. A lot of emphasis is placed on remembering one's name. "If you forget your name, you will never find your way home." And the identity of the parents. "Look carefully, it's up to you to remember what they are." And although I forget both of these things every day, Mom, they are important in forging a connection to one's ancestry.

The message deepens when we consider the context of the film. Before making Spirited Away, director Hayao Miyazaki was considering passing the torch to the next wave of artists at Studio Ghibli, although he reconsidered when he remembered that he was the damn man. Furthermore, at a time when many animated films were viewed using computers, Spirited Away was drawn using an elaborate system of levers and pulleys. And his story conveys the hope that future generations will prosper and progress, while respecting the history of the art form, whatever it may be. For Earthling Cinema, I'm Garyx Wormuloid. Arigato.