Spirited Away
Having been so long since I last saw this movie, I had not only forgotten a good amount of the story, but I also had not appreciated it as much as I do now when I first saw it. I remember much about the fantastical world that this film brings to life, like Haku the dragon, No-Face, the train that treks along the surface of the water, but it’s nice to now understand at least some of the intent behind the creation of this world.
Obviously, capitalism and industrialized society is a big theme in this film. It has become so prevalent that it seems to even have permeated the spiritual realm. There is a nice shot of the bath house when Chihiro first sees it while her parents scarf down food, with a beautiful, bright green tree on the right of the building, and a tall, dark gray smokestack on the left. This shot exemplifies the nature of not only this spiritual world, but the real world as well. Haku, the spirit of the Kohaku river, is being controlled by a black slug to serve Yubaba’s capitalist endeavors. The other river spirit that we see comes in extremely polluted by modern industrial society. Bikes, fishing lines, metal debris, etc. can all be seen coming out of him when Chihiro is helping him. The people in the bathhouse assume him to be some sort of stink spirit and ignore that his existence as this sludge monster is a direct consequence of their own lifestyle. No one would have helped him like Chihiro did, and in fact they try to turn him away at the door, purposefully trying to ignore the problem that they created. This is especially ironic given that it is a bathhouse, a place where people are meant to become clean and refresh themselves, but the bathhouse itself is run by Kamaji, Lin, and the soot sprites, beings all enslaved to the system to work in horrible conditions with little to no hope of escape. This is also a nice commentary on the nature of working conditions in a hyper-industrialized society and how those at the bottom work endlessly in cruel conditions, e.g. having to walk right up to the fire to throw a piece of coal in, so that those at the top, Yubaba, can live in luxury.
Another important aspect of this critique is the transformative nature of the bathhouse, or capitalist society. Because the name of the game is money and wealth at the expensive of nature and of others, those inside the bathhouse are changed for the worst in this pursuit. Most obviously, No-Face, who changes from a silent, distant figure, to an insatiable monster who literally consumes other people, much like the exploitation of others in pursuit of personal wealth in a capitalist society, and also continues to attempt to satiate his hunger with more and more gold. In the end however, he truly wants Sen, and when he cannot buy her with gold, tries to consume her instead. Sen/Chihiro in this film has the power to exorcise this “demon” of capitalism, first healing the river spirit, and then using the ball given to her by the spirit to force No-Face and Haku to throw up the things causing them to feed into the system.
In this film, there is no one “bad guy”. While it is true that Yubaba would be considered thus, there is a reason that she has a twin sister. Chihiro referring to both of them as Granny shows that she knows that they are truly two sides of the same person – Yubaba being the embodiment of capitalist greed, not realizing that her own child has been replaced, and Zeniba as the kindhearted, mother figure that truly cares for her children. In reality, good people can become corrupted by this system and become completely different people, like we see with Yubaba and also No-Face, who at the end of the film reveals his skill with sewing and his timid, kindhearted nature. Even Haku, who Lin is extremely opposed to fundamentally, carried out the “dirty work” of Yubaba as a result of being plagued by Yubaba’s system and in reality, was a kind river spirit that saved Chihiro as a young girl. No one character is bad, and every character has a complex relationship with life, existing in between the worlds of the industrial and the natural.
Okay wow idk why I was so hesitant to call this a capitalism film in my post, you point out a lot of shit I did not notice at all that just totally confirm my suspicions. Yubaba controlling Haku with that black slime thing, the sludge monster, no face's wild consumption rampage, the literal physical hierarchal structure of the bathhouse, etc are all things that totally went over my head but make total sense framed this way. Also holy shit, that last paragraph is really good. I can't even comment on it, it's just really well-written and inciteful. Fantastic post!!
