What Is The Theme Of Spirited Away By Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki is not your typical contemporary artist. He doesn’t focus his art in creating paintings nor sculptures, he does something else in a way where he can capture the eye of people from different demographics. Miyazaki is the kind of artist who’s not afraid to speak up his mind when creating his works. He’s certainly known for his boldness when it comes to tackling grave issues in our society. In his movies, he had referred to issues like war, environmental depletion, the inequities of totalitarian regimes, people’s enslavement to commodity fetishism, and many more. Miyazaki believe that the people involved in the animation industry tend to avoid real issues or even masquerade them with fantasies and illusions, they’re just willing …show more content…
Spirited Away is another one of Miyazaki’s various films that touch this theme and other various ones. Set in contemporary Japan, Spirited Away follows the story of Chihiro, a ten-year-old girl who finds herself lost in the Yuya, the center of the spirit world, when she was on her way home with her parents. When Chihiro first got to the spirit world, her parents were transformed into pig after devouring the ceremonial food reserved for the gods. This film demonstrate how cultures are dominated by the material satisfaction (as cited in Cavallaro 2006, pp. 135). According to Noy Thrupkaew, “these so called adults haven’t read their Homer, nor do they pay any heed to the park signs… they start gnashing at the food like tourists at a Las Vegas buffet” (as cited in Cavallaro 2006, pp. 135). After this, Chihiro meets a boy name Haku, which works for Yu-baba, the witch who owns the Yuya and tell her that if she wants to stay in the spirit world, she must get a job. Thus chihiro is forced to give up her name and offer the only thing she can do in order to stay at the Yuya, physical labor. In Spirited Away, Miyazaki wanted to create more than “a simple bifurcation and empty materialist contemporary Japan and an idealized traditional Japan” (Napier 2006, pp. 301). He show this when he illustrates that the human and spirit worlds are separated by an abandoned theme park. This theme park is a …show more content…
He’s an artist who’s not afraid of the repercussions that his actions and choice of themes in his films might bring. As said before, he’s truly known for his boldness when alluding to concurrent issues in society without sentimentalizing nor masquerading them. He states the facts just as they