Spirited Away: The intersection of Marxism and Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre that concentrates on imaginary elements like magic, the supernatural, alternate worlds, monsters, magical creatures—essentially, anything that can be imagined outside of reality. With fantasy, the magical or supernatural elements serve as the foundation of the plot, setting, characterization, or storyline in general. Marxism, on the other hand, represents a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx. It examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of communism. Spirited Away is a movie that best fits the intersection of Fantasy and Marxism.

The bathhouse (a metaphor of capitalist society)

SYNOPSIS

Spirited Away, is written and directed by anime giant Hayao Miyazaki. The 2001 animated film featuring a disaffected 10-year-old girl named Chihiro who is moving to her new house. Chihiro and her parents accidentally entered the spirit world as they got lost and end up in a forest outside a tunnel. Chihiro was forced to follow her parents in exploring the tunnel, they ended up in an abandoned amusement park and uninhabited village. While her parents were unreservedly eating the food at an eatery, Chihiro wandered around and found the bathhouse. A boy named Haku appears before her eyes and told her to return across the river before nightfall. Unfortunately, Chihiro discovered her parents have transformed into pigs, and irreversible, she was trapped in the spirit world after sunset. As the nightfall comes, Chihiro realized that this village is filled with Japanese spirit and supernatural beings. Haku helps Chihiro get a job with the bathhouse runs by the tyrannical witch, Yubaba. Chihiro has to work to avoid punishment and to regain her freedom. Free at last, the matured Chihiro found her parents and departed from this spirit world.

SETTINGS

The bathhouse in Spirited Away repeatedly presents the capitalist hierarchy of society that Miyazaki heavily criticized. Considering the structure of the bathhouse, which gives a sense of class structure within, that Chihiro initially wanted to get a job with the basement of the bathhouse, with Yubaba lives on the highest floor. Chihiro represents the lowest class in both patriarchal and capitalist structures as she is employed as a cleaner. Everyone in the bathhouse must perform labor to be recognized as valuable, this cogitated the fact that those who don’t perform will be turned into animals and lower forms of life. This punishment greatly reflects the Marxist film theory which constantly criticized the idea of capitalism which is any individual without institutional or heritage wealth must work harder to survive and gain any kind of respect.

Besides, the design of No-Face also indicates Miyazaki’s socialist beliefs in capitalism, which is built on greed and excess. No-Face gained his voice and capitalist attitude through swallowing a male frog, gaining both of its traits, he begins to commit a cruel act within the bathhouse can cause great damage. This character is the allegory of how ideology (capitalism) influences an innocent individual to commit cruel acts, eventually, they will surrender to greed and excess. The act of Chihiro successfully turns No-Face back to his original status by giving him medicine and lure him out from the bathhouse can be studied differently from a Marxist perspective. Miyazaki portrays Chihiro as someone from a lower societal position showing the injustice of the capitalist system (bathhouse), and successfully cleansing No-Face from greed and evil (lured him from the bathhouse). This allegorical reading reflects well the Marxists’ film theory.

MOOD

The use of colors is one of the prominent aspects in setting the mood of Spirited Away. Miyazaki emphasized the use of color matching in creating meaning. In the film Spirited Away, the warm, charming colors are often associated with innocent and childlike colors, however, bright, aggressive colors are used in almost every scene within the bathhouse (capitalism). Spirited Away successfully uses different hues and saturations of colors to introduce the mood in different scenes. The transition from warm colors to bright, aggressive colors generated a sense of capitalism (chaos and greed) versus nature (calmness, innocent). The use of bright, aggressive, fluorescent color suggested something bad (adult-like) is about to happen.

Bright, Aggressive use of color (up) vs Warm, calming use of color (down)

AUDIENCES

Miyazaki can convey the idea of Japanese Shinto to all generations through the fantasy genre of Spirited Away. Shinto, in short, can be defined as a religion without scripture or a religious hierarchy. Shinto is everything in nature whether it is us humans, trees, rivers, or animals that are full of kami (divine spirit). Only individuals with a pure heart can experience kami, the spirit coming to cleanse (bath) at the bathhouse introduces the idea of cleansing ourselves both mentally and physically. Shinto’s core belief is kami exists in almost everything in nature, animate and inanimate. This brings us to ponder upon Haku’s dual identity, a river spirit who has human and dragon forms. This identity not only enhances the fantasy genre, but also allows an inanimate object (river spirit) to direct communication with the protagonist (human to human form), and also conveys the meaning that nature is to be respected and cherished. The genre of fantasy was successfully used in the film to promote the slowly eroded and forgotten Shinto perspective to the world, especially younger generations in modern Japan.

FORMAT

Spirited Away made it into the top ten highest-grossing worldwide and won an Oscar award for best-animated movies back in 2001. The film was recognized worldwide despite the unusual Marxist storytelling and film approach. Hayao Miyazaki was elected as the head of Japan Animator’s Union back in 1964, he aligned himself with the proletariat as well as the socialist beliefs. To demonstrate against Western Capitalism in Hollywood, the film uses an unusual narrative progression instead of Hollywood’s three-act structure, the film also reduced the use of techniques in maintaining continuity. The notable demonstration is that the film includes Japanese beliefs and imagery that are not explained to the dominant Western audience.

Spirited Away is the masterpiece of Marxist and Fantasy storytelling, the film is appreciated for its beautiful, detailed, bizarre imaginative world building. Each character in the film also comes with a different metaphor and meaning. Spirited Away is the monument of 2D animation and the beautiful intersection of Marxist film theory and Fantasy genre.

(1027 words)

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Editor-in-chief: Sean Lim 1002058524

Managing Director: Shun Qi 1002059855

Managing Director: Shuhan 1002059734

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