Spirited Away Refutation

Herein I am refuting Ryan's claim that Spirited Away spirits away $10 and 2 hours of one's life. I have set out to argue that the film is neither plotless drivel nor unintelligent, despite some problems with structure. I have not covered elements that Kerry explained – those bouncing heads were a folklore character, not an acid trip, etc. – and instead, I have aimed for an intelligent critique of the film.

Since this is such a long entry, you'll have to click on the link below to read the rest.

I should like to say here that the first 20 minutes of Spirited Away are really awesome. The rest of the film is mediocre, or, if you're Japanese, you could appreciate it more. The film was a run-away hit in Japan about the same time Harry Potter was playing there. I heard an NPR report where Japanese kids testified to liking Spirited Away much more than Harry Potter, mostly because it was more "Japanese," but they also liked that Chihiro doesn't use magic to solve her problems (even while trapped in a magical world). I'll get back to this later.

Spirited Away is far from plotless. In fact, it hits upon a few elements of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, as outlined in Hero with a Thousand Faces. The most well-known hero's journey, in our culture, is Star Wars. It is well known that Campbell worked closely with George Lucas in developing the story.

DISCLAIMER: Don't think I'm comparing Spirited Away to Star Wars in quality, because I'm not. I'm just saying it has elements of the hero's journey.

In part of any hero's quest there is a call to adventure, and the subsequent rejection of that call. Good heroes are often reluctant heroes. Luke Skywalker was all, "I can't leave home, it's almost the harvest, Uncle Owen needs me blah blah whine whine." In Spirited Away, Chihiro's parents are like, "Let's explore this abandoned amusement park," as if it will be an adventure. Chihiro whines and would rather stay in the car, but goes along anyway. Then, much for the same reasons that Luke is left with no other options when he finds that Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru are on fire, Chihiro also "loses" her parents, and is now locked into her adventure.

In a typical hero's journey the character then meets someone older and wiser who can help them (Luke, meet Obiwan, Chihiro, meet Haku,) and given items to aid them in their quest (a light saber, a magic bean-thing)… and so forth.

Where Spirited Away fails to stay true to the hero's journey is in the last third of the film. According to Campbell, in order for a hero to complete his journey and truly become a hero, he (or she) must lose everything and face death. As Luke Skywalker dangles over the abyss with his one remaining hand, he must face that the grim-reaper-esque Darth Vader is also his father. Luke has to look into the face of death, and also face death himself.

Another terrific example of a hero in their darkest hour is in the book "Watership Down." In one of the folktales the rabbits tell each other, their rabbit-hero must go to the moon, and face the rabbit of death (I've forgotten all the names, I apologize). The hero-rabbit begs the rabbit of death to save his people from the famine and plagues they are suffering through back on earth. The death-rabbit takes the hero's ears, tale, and finally his nose in exchange. The hero must face the loss of his rabbit-ness in a dark, cold cave far from his people, his companions on his quest long since dead. The story scares the crap out of the rabbits, but it is a great story.

The real problem with Spirited Away is not that it is unintelligent, or unintelligible, but rather that Chihiro is not challenged enough. She does face losing her "self" by forgetting her name and her humanity, and she must complete many difficult tasks and be brave, but never once does she face down death, by herself in her darkest hour. Instead, as the film progresses she gains friends and companions to help her. The witch's kindly older sister helps her out at a moment in the film when Chihiro should be in the most trouble. When the final challenge comes, the solution is waaaay too easy.

Even without knowing anything about Joseph Campbell, this kind of thing can be very disconcerting for American audiences, who are used to seeing classically structured three-act films (for more on this, read Robert McKee). Any deviation from the widely used classical format just feels weird. In a normal movie, Chihiro would have a hell of a time saving her parents, and then she would have to fight Yubaba.

Speaking of Yubaba… Although Yubaba is the obvious antagonist in the film, in my reading of it, I don't think she was the main source of conflict. I think the real story of the film is not Chihiro vs. Yubaba, but rather, Chihiro versus herself. Chihiro has a wonderful character arc - this is something I think both you and Kerry missed. In the end, I think the film is about a child's struggle to be independent. As your chat-room-buddy said, it is a coming of age film.

To back up this proposal, I will argue that there are at least three major parts of the film that point in this direction:

1. Chihiro immediately loses her parents and must begin fending for herself. Haku, the sorcerer's apprentice, is able to help her out at first, but as the film goes on he becomes he becomes less helpful and more injured. Chihiro moves from being cared for by, to taking care of Haku.

2. Chihiro must get a job. Just like a young adult going out into the world, Chihiro must work to survive. (More on work later).

3. When the film ought to be climaxing (as I covered above) Chihiro is riding a creepy train by herself (with a mouse and bird, but they hardly count). I don't know how old kids are in Japan before their parents let them take public transportation by themselves, but this seems like a big step for Chihiro. She is not just riding a train by herself at this point, she is also solving her own problem(s). It may also be of great significance that Chihiro begins the film in the back of her parents' car (totally dependant), but in the end is on a train (independently). She goes from being driven somewhere to finding her own way to get there.

Overall, Chihiro goes from being an overly whiny and screaming little kid to being a non-whiny, hard-working, unafraid kid. That's her arc.

You expressed disappointment that Chihiro did not free all of Yubaba's slaves. This is a legitimate concern, and I worried about that myself, but I think that the internal logic of the film can justify it in two ways. First, when Chihiro enters the magical world, everyone complains that she stinks like the living. This implies that everyone there is dead, and is further confirmed in that most of them are mythological in nature, or take the forms of traditional Japanese ghost (for example, all those chicks with the weird eyebrows should remind you of the ghost in Roshomon - unless you recall a different version of that film than I do). Second, we know that everyone else stuck in that world are not unsuccessful little girls because Chihiro, being there by mistake, has not, like her parents, taken on a new appearance.

(I'm hesitating to say what happened to Chihiro's parents in case someone is reading this concerned about spoilers.)

Kerry is right in saying that Spirited Away is like a fairy tale. I once took a class on Russian Folklore, so I can safely say that it is by no small coincidence that Yubaba is reminiscent of Baba Yaga, the old wicked witch of Russian folklore. Baba Yaga lives on a house build on chicken legs, deep in the forest, and often lures little girls into her hut to use as kitchen slaves, or to eat their bones. She's rather unpredictable. Sometimes she even gives kids items that help them out.

My point here is that fairy tales are deviant from traditional film structure - the bad guys, as Kerry says, go unpunished and a kid learns a lesson. In (perhaps) the most famous Russian fairy tale, "Vasilisa the Beautiful," orphan Vasilisa is kind to a dog, and later decorates a tree with ribbons, making the tree happy. Then she gets captured by Baba Yaga. The dog helps to free her by attacking Baba Yaga, and the tree magically puts its branches in Baba Yaga's path, aiding Vasilisa's escape. That's the way it is in most fairy tales. Kindness to animals (and even plants or inanimate objects) is rewarded. Baba Yaga is sometimes punished, sometimes not. The antagonist takes a back seat to the moral of the story.

However, unlike Kerry, I think Spirited Away goes beyond simply being a children's tale. Miyazaki is saying something extremely intelligent about work, economy, and employment over the course of the film. Unfortunately, I cannot grasp 100% of what this theme is, because I simply don't know enough about Japanese economics. I know, however, that there is a point, and that point is intelligent.

The minute Chihiro's parents walk through the gate, the film is concerned with the Japanese economy. "Must be an abandoned theme park," Chihiro's parents speculate. They go on the conclude that it was built in the '90's, when a lot of theme parks were built, and then closed down because [I assume] the economy couldn't support them.

Why is Chihiro's family moving, anyway? Has her dad gotten a new job? I don't remember, anymore.

Without her parents around to support her, Chihiro must get a job. She has to beg and grovel for work, from adults who say none is available. That SUCKS. I hate job interviews...

Chihiro is shouted at by her managers, forced to sign a shady contract, and scared of her boss. These are not children's issues at all.

When Chihiro is in the steam room where tiny dust-mites are hauling coal towards the furnace, one of the dustmites is crushed under his particularly heavy piece of coal. Chihiro picks it up, and carries the coal to the furnace for the creature, completing the job. The other dustmites IMMEDIATELY collapse, hoping Chihiro will also do their work for them. I think that this scene is some kind of metaphor for Communism. From each according to his abilities... or however it goes. The dustmites come off looking like jerks who don't want to do their share of the work.

Later on, Chihiro shows good customer service skills by being kind to No Face, who everybody else shuns. That is, the other workers ignored him until he started sprouting gold from his palms, then they were all over him in some kind of customer service orgy. We, as viewers, know their actions are foolish. If gold can be magically produced, and becomes plentiful, then it's not worth anything anymore. Chihiro is a good person because she cannot be bribed with gold like the others.

Miyazaki is clearly saying something about gluttony in the film. When No Face eats the greedy frog, he becomes a horrible glutton. And look what happened when Chihiro's parents started chowing down on food someone happened to leave out...

Unfortunately, one of the films failings lies within this (intelligent) economic theme. I don't know what I'm supposed to get out of it. I have a clue about who the dustmites are parodying, but who is No Face a metaphor for? (I hope its not Americans.) What is Miyazaki trying to say? Perhaps I would understand more of it if I were Japanese.

There is one other, more clearly stated, message in the film. When the Stink God comes in to the bathhouse, all the other employees let Chihiro deal with him. Like pulling a thorn from a lion's paw, Chihiro grabs onto the rusted bicycle that is lodged in the stink god. The important part about this scene is that Chihiro can't pull it out by herself. The entire bathhouse must all pull together before the Stink God can be free of the garbage and once again become a beautiful River God.

The environmental message in this scene is painfully obvious, yet remarkable well done. It is, in short, "If we all work together, we can clean up pollution." This struggle between the mystically clean state of nature and the unnaturally polluted world of man is further explored in some of Miyazaki's other films, most notably Princess Monoke and Pom Poko, the ladder of which is about raccoons stopping bulldozers, from what I've heard. I'm quite grateful that Miyazaki doesn't hit us over the head with environmentalism in Spirited Away and instead gives us a cool-looking Stink God and lets us infer the message ourselves.

In the end, environmental and economic messages aside, I found Spirited Away to be an enjoyable film with an awesome opening act. If Chihiro had suffered more, the film could have been much more of the masterpiece that critics, hipsters, and Japanese children seem to think it is. On a final note, I ask whoever reads this to keep in mind that Miyazaki directed the best animated film of all time, My Neighbor Totoro, which is mark to live up to.

Comments Individual Archive Index

November 13, 2002 11:28 PM, Agnieszka said:

I can't say too much, not having seen this movie, but this is a really great refutation. It's almost like an academic paper, only not boring.

Also, I like the new blog skin.

November 17, 2002 07:45 PM, Kerry said:

AK is on crack or academic paper standards in her field are abominably low. Not to say that your refutation isn't good, but
'Why is Chihiro's family moving, anyway? Has her dad gotten a new job? I don't remember, anymore.'
or
'Unfortunately, I cannot grasp 100% of what this theme is, because I simply don't know enough about Japanese economics. '
wouldn't really cut it an academic paper.

November 18, 2002 12:23 AM, Erin said:

Well, of course not. This is a blog.

You don't have to be such a jerk.

Post a comment

Name:


Email Address:


Comments:


Remember info?