May 8, 2020 - Storytelling with Food and Excess: Spirited Away
Just a random post here. Please note that most of what I write down in this post is subjective opinion, however, some of what I state is factual based on interviews of Hayao Miyazaki and canon publications. Since this isn’t some piece of work going out for publication, or a grade, I’ll just state the following disclaimer: I definitely took images and GIFs from places, read posts, articles and interviews, and generally melted my own thoughts in with stuff pulled from the aforementioned sources.
**SPOILERS BELOW**: There’s a substantial amount of spoiler material below so if you haven’t seen the masterpiece Spirited Away (which I very much doubt since it was released in Japan in 2001 and in North America in 2002) then this is your official warning that you should read no further until you have unless you enjoy having great movies spoiled for you.
Tumblr presented my with a random selection of content to view and the first thing that caught my eye was a GIF from Spirited Away. Oh man, if anyone ever got evoking emotion and implied meaning/messages right using food it was surely Hayao Miyazaki and the rest of the team at Studio Ghibli. There are soooooo many scenes in the Miyazaki movies which literally make me drool. I would devour all of that food like No-Face.
There’s a lot to take away from this film; it contains a relatively traditional “Hero’s Journey” plot arc, a coming of age story, and a moral cautionary / commentary tale of greed and excess. However, to a Japanese audience, or any other with kanji literacy, there’s a slightly different connotation to this message surrounding greed and excess which I will go into as well.
An important theme to Spirited Away continually emphasized throughout the film is that of the absurd excess and luxury in the bathhouse, and the damaging effects that the greed associated with these can cause. To English viewers with no knowledge of Japanese kanji, they see all of this excess and luxury aimed towards enriching a vile and morally corrupt CEO whose greed knows no bounds (the witch Yubaba). The first instance of the film showing us this theme is that in which Chihiro’s (the main character) parents come across mounds of delicious food which they devour without making too much of an effort to find the owner of the stall and ensuring they are in fact allowed to eat the food. Chihiro’s father brushes off Chihiro’s reluctance to just take whatever they want without gaining permission with the line (slightly paraphrased as I haven’t seen the movie in quite a while), “Eat up, it’ll be fine! Your daddy has credit cards and cash!” In fact, all will not be fine. Chihiro’s parents are turned into pigs as punishment for behaving as pigs, and Chihiro spends essentially the rest of the movie working to have her parents returned to their former state (though honestly part way through the movie you forget about this for a while, as does Chihiro). Central to nearly all of the important scenes in the film is food or drink of some kind. In the Studio Ghibli style, every dish is lovingly and painstakingly crafted to make theme as appealing and hunger inducing as the real food or drink would in real life. While it’s an obvious symbol of the hunger felt by the greedy for their desires, I honestly feel that it’s a better and more present symbol of the insatiable hunger of the greedy than the gold nugget currency is.
The character No-Face (a character derived from a Japanese “yokai”, or demon, of mythology known as a Noppera-bō; No-Face is not identical to a Noppera-bō in how it operates) is introduced later in the film to show the destructive nature of society whose greed is unchecked by mitigating factors, like morality and virtue. No-Face is not an inherently greedy entity, however, it learns its greed from the attendants and patrons of the bathhouse. It learns what drives each individual, primarily gold, and uses conjured gold to sate its vast hunger (greed), which it learns from those it observes. This all comes to a head in a scene where an essentially endless supply of the luxuriant food of the bathhouse is being churned out to feed No-Face and get his gold in return. As its hunger grows, No-Face is less and less appreciative of the quality and flavour of the dishes given to him. It swells in size and eventually begins to consume other spirits/creatures when rebuffed by Chihiro when it offers gold to her, going on a rampage which causes a lot of destruction. It all culminates with No-Face being healed, taught kindness and compassion, and all’s well that end’s well.
To Japanese audiences, anyone else kanji-literate, or a quick perusal of the internet for symbology in the film, there’s special meaning to the scene in which Yubaba steals characters from Chihiro’s name (which is comprised of the characters which mean “Thousand” and “Search/Seek/Fathom”, so a rough translation of her name is something like “A Thousand Questions”, describing an inquisitive nature) resulting in its change to Sen, which is Japanese for “Thousand”. In traditional Japanese culture, there’s a deep belief that one’s name defines one’s nature. Therefore, aside from changing her name, Yubaba also changes Chihiro’s nature. Aside from this function, this is part of Miyazaki’s commentary on the havoc and damage which Capitalism has, and further could, wreck upon Japanese values and tradition (Miyazaki has previously compared modern society to the sex industry, which has led to some theorists thinking this movie is more a commentary/warning on child prostitution/sexualization).
I know that I skipped a bunch of subplots from the film, but the food compelled me!
