Reference
James Gouker
6 – 12 Art
Pittsburgh SciTech
Spirited Away is a very lively movie that is just as accessible for small children, middle school students, high school students and even adults. There is most definitely something for everyone. The movie subtly and skillfully mixes religious symbolism, artfulness and amazing storytelling in animation into a package that excites the mind and inspires thought.
The religious symbolism that is expressed in Spirited Away is through the native Japanese spirituality of Shintoism. Shintoism is basically a religious type of philosophy that gives spirits, or godlike qualities to animals, and many natural — yet abstract — elements. The setting of the movie is a Shinto bathhouse, which looks like a shrine, in a spirit world. It is here that very early into the film, Chihiro watches her parents become pig spirits, leading her to slavery. Chihiro meets many other spirits, a River Spirit, a boy who is really a white dragon, twin witches, a frog, a stink spirit, one with no-face, three dis-embodied heads, etc. These allegorical features give the film a feeling of historical and spiritual depth that adds to its allure.
The movie has a definite sense of artfulness, as well. The art style that it most resembles is Surrealism. Surrealism has a number of agreed-upon tenants that attempts to define it. The tenants that appear in the visuals of Spirited Away are: juxtaposition, scale, dislocation, and transformation (and to lesser degrees, levitation and transparency [No-Face]). In the very beginning of the film, the film sets a surrealistic tone by transforming Chihiro’s parents into ugly, gluttonous pigs. There is a heavy use of juxtaposition in such great visuals as witch twins’ Yubaba and Zeniba as birds with female’s heads and much later a light that hops around on a hand. The use of scale is most obviously seen in the witches’ heads throughout, which are gigantic and Boh, an enormous baby. Dislocation is used so perfectly and very humorously in the three disembodied heads that bounce around to attend to Yubaba. The movie definitely creates a surreal atmosphere for which the audience can occupy and enter the spirit world in a very artful, dreamlike sense.
The characters, design and gender selection, allow for more accessibility over a broad range of ages, races and both sexes. It is a well-known idea that the less realistic a face is drawn, the more people will identify with that character. Chihiro does not look particularly realistic or specific, so she looks like everyone. She does not look specifically Asian or American or European, so she looks like them all. One of the most refreshing points is also having a lead character that is not male or a princess. Chihiro is a very accessible character for both boys and girls not only because of how she relates to the surreal environment around her, but because of how she is drawn.
Spirited Away is a story that is dense and difficult in ideas and visual motifs, but easy to digest through character design and familiar, yet unique characters. There is an allure to this movie that transcends a lot of the animation genre and can be invigorating for a wide range of people. It comes with an incredibly high level of recommendation.
