(A Toxic Text) Spirited Away (2001)

One could possibly go with any of Hayao Miyazaki's movies, because all of them deal with environmentalist themes and ecocentric ideologies. The most obvious choice, I think, would have been Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), a movie about the struggle to detoxify a post-apocalyptic world, but unfortunately I have yet to see that film. So, now let me tell you something about one of my favorite animated motion pictures of all time.

In short, Spirited Away tells the story of Chihiro Ogino, a young girl who has to work in a witch's bathhouse (designed for exhausted spirits and gods) to break the spell that turned her parents into pigs.

Where Captain Planet and the Planeteers had its shortcomings--meaning on every conceivable level--Spirited Away succeeds, and does a brilliant job of forwarding its messages to the target audience (Spirited Away was rated PG). Not only does it take a serious approach to deal with topics such as pollution, greed or the interrelation of good&evil, it also does it subtly and rather shows than tells.

For instance, there is one scene where a being enters the bathhouse which everyone believes to be a stink-spirit, but by helping it with its bath Chihiro unintentionally finds out that it is actually a spirit living in a polluted river, carrying all the sludge, wreckage and waste with it. Another spirit is without home, because its river had to be paved over to make room for an appartment complex.

These troubled anthropomorphic representations of nature are, of course, used to stress human impact on the environment (pollution/expansionism), but the viewer does also come across a creature called “the No-Face”, which seems to have access to an unlimited amount of gold and to be afflicted by insatiable hunger. This entity could be seen as the embodiment of (human) greed and over-consumption.

If you haven't seen this movie, do so and you will not regret it.

Posted by Christopher O'Sullivan