My Neighbor Totoro – Bitch Flicks

Sisterhood Week: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Sisterhood Theme Week here.

Sisters in Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl by Tessa Racked

The core of Fat Girl is these two girls, who contrast each other in some very essential ways, but are inexorably bound together by shared experiences. Both are adolescents grappling with the early throes of sexuality, but their divergent appearances and ages leave them in different positions socially, affecting their worldviews.

Black Sisterhood in Television Sitcoms by Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman

While many Black sitcoms revolve around a family, it’s rare that specific interactions between sisters are depicted. While “sisterhood” here often refers to the strong bond between friends, biological sisterhood is sometimes forgotten. Sisters with strong relationships on television display some of the deepest and truest kinds of family love out there.

“A Truth Universally Acknowledged”: The Importance of the Bennet Sisters Now by Maddie Webb

But more and more it seems you can judge the quality of modern adaptations on how the filmmakers view Lizzie in relation to her sisters. Even though the representation of women has greatly expanded since Austen’s time, a story that revolves mostly around sisterly relationships remains rare, which makes it even more vital. And while it is true that Austen’s romance has a timeless quality that makes it popular, the narrative of sisterly love remains transcendent.

The Repercussions of Repressing Teenage Girls in The Virgin Suicides and Mustang by Lee Jutton

Both are critically acclaimed dramas directed by women documenting the coming-of-age of five teenage sisters under close scrutiny for their behavior — especially when it comes to their sexuality. And in both films, the girls’ response to this repression is to resort to desperate measures to regain control, resulting in tragedy that could have been averted if they were given the freedom for which they hungered.

The Scary Truth About Sisters in Horror Films by Laura Power

So what makes sisters such fascinating subject matter for horror films? What makes them both scary and powerful, yet the most vulnerable, both to outside forces as well as to each other when they are threatened? … Sisters can behave as a single entity and fight for the same things, but there are two bodies — two physical forces — to reckon with.

Our Little Sister: Making Enough Room for the Half-Sister by Katherine Parker-Hay

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister is a mature and subtle exploration of the place of the half-sister within family life; how she fits in and how she transforms what we think the family means. … The camera lingers on Suzu’s face in a moment of indecision: will she go on as before, having no feelings for what are essentially strangers anyway, or will she take a leap of faith that will mean her identity will be forever tangled with theirs?

A League of their Own: The Joy and Complexity of Sisterhood on a Baseball Field by Jessica Quiroli

The bond between the sisters is at the heart of the wartime baseball movie, directed by Penny Marshall… Their competitive nature is a motivation to be the best… It’s obvious that Dottie always seems to have one up on Kit, which sets up the relentless struggle of the spirited Kit who wants, finally, to be better than Dottie. … Kit and Dottie are the embodiment not just of sisterhood, but of the true nature of a teammate relationship.

Second Mom Syndrome: Sisterhood in My Neighbor Totoro by Clara Mae

The film shows how Satsuki struggles with this dual role of acting as the most present parent while still being only a child herself. … While Satsuki fulfills the role of mom to Mei, it’s her status as sister and child that ends up saving the day. … My Neighbor Totoro is one of Miyazaki’s best odes to sisterhood, portraying both the struggles but also the benefits of having a sibling at your side.

Little Women: Learning to Love All of the March Sisters by Allyson Johnson

However, the clearest, most poignant development that comes through growing with the films is how ultimately, the love story between Jo and Bhaer and the unrequited love story between Jo and Teddy mean little juxtaposed to the love shared between the four sisters. They are one another’s hearts and souls, evident as Jo writes her novel at the end of the film.

Grey’s Anatomy and Assertive Sisters by Siobhan Denton

Meredith doesn’t feel obligated to form relationships with Maggie and Amelia due to her sibling connections with them. She doesn’t deem it necessary to acquaint herself with Maggie simply because they share a mother, nor does she try to force a friendly relationship between herself and Amelia simply because she’s the sister of the man she loves. This means then, that when these close relationships are formed, they are all the more powerful. They are formed through choice, not responsibility.

My Sister’s Keeper: When Sisterhood Sours in Horror Films by Jamie Righetti

But there’s also a darker side to sisterhood, where rivalries take violent turns and where bonds are almost too strong, superseding everything else including reality. When sisters are pushed to the extremes, when women don’t meet society’s expectations, what does this tell us about the constraints on women to conform to idealized versions of femininity and sisterhood? Are bad sisters just failures or are they simply women with complicated narratives that a patriarchal society doesn’t allow room for?

The Virgin Suicides: Striking Similarities Between the Lisbon and Romanov Sisters by Isabella Garcia

Two sets of sisters, different in circumstance but alike in experience: the four Romanov Grand Duchesses of Russia and the four Lisbon sisters from 1970s Michigan in The Virgin Suicides. … Clear links between the two sets can be drawn, but ultimately reveal that in both situations, living in a gilded cage only leaves behind a haunting memory.

The Sister as Revenant in Brian De Palma’s Sisters by Stefan Sereda

‘Sisters’ displays an early concern with women’s liberation in mainstream American film (De Palma’s collaborator on the screenplay was Louisa Rose). Many of the film’s social complaints remain liberal talking points today: that police can be motivated by racism, that the legal institution can subject women to excessive scrutiny, and that the medical-psychiatric institution remains patriarchal and sexist in its diagnosing and treatment of women. Yet the film’s intersections with disability are more complicated.

Sisterhood with a Capital “S” in The Triplets of Belleville by Laura Shamas

Sisterhood is powerful, magical, and resilient: that’s the sororal message in the celebrated 2003 animated film… Character distinction between the sisters as individuals is not a major focus for writer/director Sylvain Chomet, although each Triplet has different functions/feelings at specific times. The bond of the sisters as a more monolithic force is depicted instead: Chomet presents the unity of sisterhood. … The agency of older women, including the eponymous trio, is vital to The Triplets of Belleville.

Sisters in Downton Abbey and Fiddler on the Roof and the Slow March Toward Equality by Adina Bernstein

The narratives surrounding the television series Downton Abbey and the musical film Fiddler on the Roof are about change and more specifically, how the daughters within both families represent the small, but important contributions that these characters make to modern feminist narratives. … In both Downton Abbey and Fiddler on the Roof, each trio of sisters takes a step in determining her own fate. While the decisions these girls make may seem innocuous, these steps represent the larger cultural and societal fate that will impact future generations of women.

Sisterhood and Salvation in A League of Their Own by Katie Barnett

Though the simmering sibling rivalry between Kit and Dottie is a thread that runs through the entire film, the importance of sisterhood goes far beyond this. For both women, sisterhood becomes a ticket to another world: a ticket out, but also a ticket in; to friendship, to competition, and to independence. As such, sisterhood exists as a source of empowerment. It is only as sisters that Dottie and Kit ever make it out of Oregon and to the baseball diamonds of the Midwest.

Sense and Sensibility: Sister Saviors in Ang Lee’s Adaptation by Melissa-Kelly Franklin

On first glance, it may well appear that the film follows the usual trappings of the romance genre, in which the young women eventually marry the men that they love, who fortuitously possess more than ample funds to elevate them and their families from poverty, thereby “saving” them. I would argue however, that if we delve a little deeper into Lee’s adaptation it becomes clear that the sisters are not saved by the men they marry, but rather by each other, and multiple times throughout the story.

Second Mom Syndrome: Sisterhood in ‘My Neighbor Totoro’

The film shows how Satsuki struggles with this dual role of acting as the most present parent while still being only a child herself. … While Satsuki fulfills the role of mom to Mei, it’s her status as sister and child that ends up saving the day. … ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ is one of Miyazaki’s best odes to sisterhood, portraying both the struggles but also the benefits of having a sibling at your side.

This guest post written by Clara Mae appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. | Spoilers ahead.

Anybody who has a sister knows that sisterhood is the source of both endless support and frustration, of happiness and anger and sorrow. Sisters often have a turbulent relationship with each other, and a sister’s opinion can lift us up or just as easily shatter us. When there’s a large age gap between the sisters, the relationship becomes even more complicated, as the older sister often takes on the role of third parent — or second, or even first — to the younger sibling, while still playing the role of confidant and best friend. Suffice to say, the bond of sisterhood is a complex one, and it’s one that’s thoroughly explored in Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 animated film My Neighbor Totoro.

My Neighbor Totoro focuses on two sisters, ten-year-old Satsuki and four-year-old Mei Kusakabe, who befriend a giant furry forest spirit in 1950s Japan. The sisters and their father move to an old rundown house in the countryside to be closer to their mom, convalescing in a nearby hospital. (The novelization of Totoro confirms that the mom is suffering from tuberculosis.) The film opens with the girls sharing candies and playing as young siblings often do, with the younger sister clearly emulating the older one. They laugh and explore their new home together, with Mei repeatedly mimicking the body language of Satsuki and echoing her words: “Wow, it’s creepy.” “CREEPY!” “A camphor tree.” “CAMPHOR TREE!” “Hey dad, acorns are falling from the ceiling.” “FALLING FROM THE CEILING!”

While the two clearly make wonderful playmates — with Satsuki especially showing a tremendous degree of patience and love for her rambunctious sibling — the film also goes to great lengths to show how much slack Satsuki picks up because of her mother’s absence and her father’s inattentiveness (which is not malicious but rather stems from him working as a university professor). At ten years old, Satsuki wakes up early to make everyone breakfast and box lunches. Halfway through her preparation, her father wanders in, sleep-tousled, and admits he forgot about doing that. Satsuki puts Mei’s hair into her signature pigtails every day, and she rebukes Mei that she can never sit still. When Satsuki starts school, Mei runs off, falls down a hole, and meets Totoro for the first time. Her father never even notices she’s gone, and he only realizes something is amiss when Satsuki comes home and immediately asks for Mei. “You and I are a lot alike,” their mother says tellingly to Satsuki. One can only wonder the trouble that Mei would get into if Satsuki wasn’t there to be a stand-in guardian.

We also see the ways in which Mei accepts Satsuki as a surrogate parent, despite Satsuki being barely into her tweens. When Satsuki leaves Mei with their neighbor Granny in order to go to school, Mei throws a fit. But it’s Satsuki, not her father, that Mei drags Granny to: “She said she wouldn’t stop crying unless I brought her to you,” Granny tells Satsuki. Mei then runs to Satsuki and buries her face in her skirt. Satsuki ends up negotiating with the teacher to let Mei stay with her, a mimicry of what a young mom would likely have to do with a daughter. Later, when the two walk home together and Mei falls, Satsuki immediately picks her up and wipes her face. “I didn’t even cry. That’s good huh,” Mei asks her sister, again seeking approval as a child would with her parent. As for their real parents, it’s implied that they never learn about this episode.

The film shows how Satsuki struggles with this dual role of acting as the most present parent while still being only a child herself. On one hand, Satsuki is able to see spirits like Totoro and the soot sprites as well as Mei — something that Granny notes only children are able to do. On the other hand, everyone expects Satsuki to act more mature, which clearly starts to wear on her as the film goes on. When Mei throws a tantrum because their mom is too sick to come home for the weekend, Satsuki explodes at Mei, “You want her to die, is that it? You’re such a baby. Just grow up.” She then runs off, leaving Mei sobbing. It’s implied that Mei then runs away after seeing Satsuki breaking down to Granny; the illusion of Satsuki as her mother breaks, and she runs toward the comfort of her real mother.

In the end, Satsuki is still just Mei’s sibling. While Satsuki fulfills the role of mom to Mei, it’s her status as sister and child that ends up saving the day. When Mei runs away, all the adults in the village try in vain to find her. Despite her best efforts, Satsuki is unable to find her either. It isn’t until Satsuki calls on Totoro — the creature she wouldn’t even be able to see if not for her youth — that she’s finally able to find her. The film ends with the siblings reunited and laughing together in the catbus, their status as sisters, rather than mother and child, reaffirmed.

My Neighbor Totoro is one of Miyazaki’s best odes to sisterhood, portraying both the struggles but also the benefits of having a sibling at your side. Compare Satsuki to characters like Chihiro in Spirited Away or Kiki in Kiki’s Delivery Service — both an only child who spend their respective films struggling to just take care of themselves, and who are lost and miserable until they find sisterhood and support in older female characters like Lin, Ursula, and Osono. Chihiro especially is the same age as Satsuki, yet it’s difficult to imagine the sullen and moody Chihiro — at least at the beginning of her film — patiently taking care of a younger child like Mei. Similarly we can look at how Satsuki and Mei often function as a supportive unit in their film (with most of their scenes framed to include both siblings), versus in Howl’s Moving Castle, where Sophie’s sister is ultimately absent from the film and when Sophie needs help the most.

Perhaps Miyazaki’s strongest message about the strength of sisterhood can be found in the fact that Satsuki and Mei were first conceived as a single character. Seen in original cover photos, My Neighbor Totoro was originally going to focus on just one six-year-old girl. Before production started, Miyazaki decided to split that one character into two, and thus we got one older and one younger sister. This duality carried over into their names: “Satsuki” is an old Japanese term for the month of May, and “Mei” is the way the Japanese would pronounce the English word May. And maybe that’s what sisterhood is: having both a sidekick and mirror of who you really are.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Magical Girlhoods in the Films of Studio Ghibli

Clara Mae is a twenty-something English major grad from UC Berkeley. Works somewhere in the San Francisco financial district. If not at work, is probably off eating ramen, petting dogs, or attempting yoga. Blogs too little at https://claramae.contently.com/ and tweets too much @ubeempress.

Foreign Film Week: Magical Girlhoods in the Films of Studio Ghibli

Guest post written by Rosalind Kemp, previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on November 30, 2011.

“For the people who used to be ten years old, and the people who are going to be ten years old.”

— Director Hayao Miyazaki on Spirited Away

The films of Studio Ghibli provide their viewers with a rich variety of female characters from warrior princesses to love-struck adolescents, curious toddlers to powerful witches. These characters owe a great deal to the prototypes of European fairy tales and Japanese folklore and in many ways are traditional versions and depictions of femininities, but there’s an underlying sense of joy for feminist viewers in that these girls and women are active, subjective and thoroughly engaging. I’m focusing here on young girls in the lighter end of Ghibli’s production including sisters Mei and Satsuke in My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki in Kiki’s Delivery Service and Chihiro in Spirited Away.


Spirited Away

Ghibli films tend to blend fantasy and reality so that magic and flight are acceptable parts of the worlds the characters inhabit. Girls especially tend to possess magic powers or particular appreciation of them and this is shown in an unexceptional manner. While Kiki raises some eyebrows in her new town, it’s because the townsfolk don’t see many witches, not because they don’t believe in their existence. Similarly, although Kiki is an outsider, there is a distinct lack of threat to her for being so. In Ghibli worlds girls are fully entitled to fly on broomsticks, as long as they don’t congest traffic, and 13 year olds are allowed to pursue their cultural practices of living alone. In My Neighbour Totoro when Mei tells Satsuke and their father about her encounter with Totoro, after initial disbelief they embrace the truth that there are friendly nature spirits in the area, even leading to father taking the girls to pay their respects to the forest’s deities.

This acceptance of magic is refreshing and marks a clear difference to American cartoons where ironic references are embedded in children’s fantasy to appeal to parents. In this way parents are encouraged to indulge, but secretly laugh at their children’s engagement with fantasy. There’s no knowing irony in Ghibli films, instead they are focussed on telling children’s stories for children and the lack of distinct boundaries between the magic and the mundane are part of this child-centred view. That the protagonists are predominantly female makes for a collection of films focussed on girls’ adventures and triumphs where girls’ experiences are trusted and valued.

Children, like women, are often depicted as having a close connection to the supernatural; that they can see things the rest of us cannot. Indeed Mei and Satsuke seem privileged more than anything to be invited to join the Totoros’ night-time nature ritual. Dancing and flying with creatures the rest of the world (the Ghibli world at least) would revere but aren’t lucky enough to encounter. Chihiro doesn’t have a natural affinity for magic but she’s gifted in the solving of magical problems like how to clean a dirty river spirit.

Mei, Satsuke, Kiki and Chihiro all work within the magical world as part of their quest narratives. Mei and Satsuke are dealing with the illness and potential death of their mother and a move to a new home. Kiki has moved away from her parents according to witch culture and Chihiro seeks the return of her parents from the spiritual realm where she’s been trapped and they’ve been turned into pigs.

My Neighbor Totoro

In all three stories there’s also the seeking of identity for the girls, especially and most literally for Chihiro for she has her very name stolen by a witch. In their quests for self-hood and identity all four characters go through similar trials and experiences: the absence of parental influence, the access to magical powers, the physical manifestations of anxieties such as the dust bunnies that feature in both My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away.

The absence of parents is a common way to allow independence to young females from fairy tales to Jane Austen and unlike for orphaned boys in fiction it can also represent a removal of patriarchal influence in general. It’s not just that these girls don’t have parents guiding them or checking up on them; they are also free to create their own rules of engagement with the world.

One way that all four girls find meaning and self is through work. Satsuke in school and house work, Mei despite being very young does gardening, Kiki sets up her delivery service and Chihiro works in the bath house. All of them do a lot of cleaning. There’s an interesting mix of public and private here and certainly the suggestion that domestic labour can be especially rewarding (for example Kiki’s paid work can provide anxieties and problems). But is the culturally feminine nature of this work an issue? In Chihiro’s case cleaning is linked to subservience and being a captive to the domestic but for the others (and eventually for her) it’s a tool of empowerment and liberation. Does such labour inevitably have negative associations of female drudgery?

Another way that selfhood and identity is achieved by these girls is by flight. Most obviously for Kiki where her broomstick is literally the means of earning a living and saving a friend’s life but also in how Totoro and Cat Bus fly Mei and Satsuke away from their worries and later to their mother. Chihiro’s flight is more anxious, as her encounters with magic are generally, but still serves to move her closer to self discovery by being the time she gives Haku his name so leading her to the rediscovery of her own.

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Work as empowerment isn’t the only moral message in these films, with ecological messages also being played out. In My Neighbour Totoro there’s the idyllic agricultural setting as well as the Totoros and other spirits of the forest. In Spirited Away rivers like Haku’s have been filled in because of the greed of humans. The messages of conservation, respect of nature (and blaming of humans as nature’s destroyers) are not as forcefully applied as in, for example, Princess Mononoke but neither are they subtle. While this preaching could be tiresome in other films, because of their earnestness and how the protagonists are fully on message it’s actually pleasant. Although nurturing the planet back to health is presented as an ungendered activity the films together can be viewed as showing the next generation of empowered young women actively making progress and solutions to the problems inflicted on the world by older generations. This also applies economically where Kiki and Chihiro’s enterprising labours lead to success for both. Chihiro especially is placed at the beginning of the film in the context of a Japan after economic downturn and reckless financial behaviour by her elders (as reported by her father) damaging Japan as a whole and its youth implicitly.

Not everybody believes that Ghibli heroines represent empowered femininities. I’ve been rather selective in the choice of films to cover but even if I’d widened the selection I stand by my view. Ponyo for example wasn’t included as its heroine isn’t really a girl but although it’s a variation on the disempowering The Little Mermaid the core message is rather different. Ponyo accepts a loss of powers because they were never entirely hers and the sea’s power remains with the feminine; Ponyo’s sea-goddess mother.

There’s been significant note of the glimpses of knickers we get in Ghibli films like when Kiki is flying and generally when there’s any rough and tumble. There’s merit in the argument that this could be voyeuristic representations of young girls but it can also be seen as further expressing their freedom and activity. These girls don’t worry about skirts riding up because they totally lack vanity and are preoccupied with altogether more important missions. We’re not given alluring peeps at nubile bodies but girls in action which female bodies so rarely are; that gaze is usually reserved for male bodies. If female passivity is alluring then the kinetic energy of these girls places them beyond that.

What’s pleasurable about these films from a feminist perspective is their alliance with joyful, engaged and active girlhoods. These girls don’t wait for princes and don’t focus on their appearances but determinedly pursue their missions, however difficult.

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Rosalind Kemp is a film studies graduate living in Brighton, UK. She’s particularly interested in female coming of age stories, film noir and European films where people talk a lot but not much happens.

Animated Children’s Films: Magical Girlhoods in the Films of Studio Ghibli

“For the people who used to be ten years old, and the people who are going to be ten years old.”

— Director Hayao Miyazaki on Spirited Away


Spirited Away

My Neighbor Totoro

Kiki’s Delivery Service

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Rosalind Kemp is a film studies graduate living in Brighton, UK. She’s particularly interested in female coming of age stories, film noir and European films where people talk a lot but not much happens.