Tag: Nature

Miyazaki Month: Princess Mononoke

Written by Myrna Waldron.

You will find few well-known directors as overtly feminist as Hayao Miyazaki. Of the 10 films he has directed, only two, The Castle of Cagliostro & Porco Rosso, have male protagonists. The others have dual male and female protagonists (Castle In The Sky, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo) or female protagonists (Nausicaa, My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Spirited Away). And not only are many of the main characters in his films female, they are also well rounded, realistically flawed, and given a great deal of agency in their stories. When I think of the Strong Female Character feminist media critics are always hoping for, I think of Miyazaki’s characters first.

For the month of May, I will be writing about 4 films directed by Hayao Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The first three are my personal favourites of his work, and it will be my first time watching Nausicaa. It is my plan not only to discuss feminist aspects of the films, but also to discuss other themes/messages present in Miyazaki’s work (environmentalism and pacifism most commonly) and to compare the Disney/Miramax English dubs of the films to the original Japanese dialogue.

The Deer God gives life and takes life away

Princess Mononoke was the first Hayao Miyazaki film I watched. It came out a couple of years after Sailor Moon had introduced me to anime, and all of my nerdy peers were excited about the film because it was by this great, talented animator, and in Japan the film was even more popular than Titanic. It was refreshing for me to watch an animated film with complex themes, moral ambiguities and some decidedly un-kid friendly violence. I was already fascinated by animation, and Princess Mononoke showed me just how broad a medium it could be.

This is why I found the comparisons of Hayao Miyazaki to American films & filmmakers particularly frustrating. He’s been called “The Walt Disney of Japan,” which, frankly, reeks of a statement by someone who doesn’t really understand or respect animation that much. About all the two have in common is that they directed critically acclaimed animated films. Miyazaki’s films are steeped in Japanese culture and mythology, Disney’s films are distinctly American (even when they’re adapting other cultures’ stories). One particularly annoying thing is on the original Princess Mononoke DVD release, they’ve got the usual banal blurbs from film reviewers that marketers insist on ruining their DVD art with. But the quote they chose baffles me. “The Star Wars of animated features!” says The New York Post. I know the Post is a goddamn travesty of a newspaper, but what does that even mean? What does a film about Japanese mythology, environmentalism and industrial progress have to do with giant spaceships and lightsabers? (Best that I can come up with is that they’re both films popular with nerds.)

Sigh. Anyway, here are my observations about Princess Mononoke:

The first glimpse of San
  • I was able to simultaneously compare the English dub script (written by Neil Gaiman, a name that should be familiar to any fantasy literature fan) with the Japanese script by having the audio be in English and the subtitles be a literal translation of the Japanese script. For the most part, Gaiman’s adaptation was very accurate (which is what Disney promised Studio Ghibli upon offering to distribute their work in North America), and he was able to convey the general meaning of most of the dialogue. There were some parts I was disappointed with, however. There was a lot more exposition in the English dialogue, especially in the opening narration, which makes me feel like the people in charge of the English adaptation didn’t trust their audience. Ashitaka’s dialogue kind of had a Captain Obvious element to it, as well. In one scene, he wakes up, sees his demon scar is still on his hand, and says “The scar’s still there,” as if we can’t tell. In the Japanese script, he said nothing, just sighed. The biggest loss in this adaptation was that a great deal of Japanese culture – geography, history and mythology – was removed from the English script (especially from Jiko’s dialogue). I imagine this was done to help localize the setting for a Western audience, but it seemed a bit disrespectful, considering how distinctly Japanese Miyazaki’s films are. Gaiman also made the inexplicable choice of changing the Deer God’s name to “Forest Spirit.” I suppose Forest Spirit sounds a bit more poetic and more-or-less describes the Deer God’s role, but considering the other large animals are referred to as Gods, and the Deer God is a DEER, why the change?
  • The marketing for the initial DVD release sucks. I have mentioned the bizarre “Star Wars of animated features!” reviewer blurb. Another problem is that they gave the film the world’s most cliched and inaccurate tagline. “The fate of the world rests on the courage of one warrior.” First off, it’s not the world, it’s just that particular area of Japan. Second, the fate of the “world” doesn’t just rest on Ashitaka’s shoulders, it is equally San’s burden too, AND the people of both the forest and Irontown. Don’t give Ashitaka all the credit. The DVD artwork is pretty boring too – a picture of Ashitaka in a sword fight, which paints the film as more action-oriented than it actually is. And note that the title character, Princess Mononoke/San, doesn’t even appear on the cover. She’s just given a small section of the back cover that she shares with Eboshi, and her mouth is wide open in it! She does appear on the cover artwork for DVD releases for other markets, which, unfortunately, yet again shows how little female characters matter to North American marketers.
  • Ashitaka as a protagonist isn’t nearly as interesting as the other characters. I get that he’s meant to be both the audience surrogate and a neutral party between the endless war between the beings of the forest and the residents of Irontown. But he doesn’t seem to have any of the fascinating flaws that the other characters have. His mission is to see the truth with eyes unclouded by hatred, which he tries to stick to, but his cursed scar has other ideas. The scar’s super strength forcing him to dismember his attackers seems to be the only flaw Ashitaka has, and it’s not even a natural flaw. He seems to exist mostly as a mouthpiece for pacifism – he continually asks the forest dwellers and the people why they can’t live in peace, and refuses to accept their cynical answers. His complete goodness in a story full of moral ambiguities makes him seem like he doesn’t even belong in his own tale.
  • San, on the other hand, fascinates me. As the adopted human child of a Wolf God mother, she is both human and animal, and neither human nor animal at the same time. She has grown up hating humans, as her mother Moro has witnessed them acting as selfish and disrespectful beings that continuously defile her forest. The first time Ashitaka sees her, she is sucking the blood out of a wound Moro has suffered in an attempt to get at the iron bullet within her. She is wild, defiant, and free. She continually tries to reject her own humanity – her war mask is grotesque, and when she is at war, she considers herself an animal. A female protagonist with complete agency, she makes several difficult moral choices throughout the film and drives her own story forward. Like many of the other characters, her morals are in shades of grey. We can sympathize with her fervent desire to save the forest which has been the only home she has ever known. Less sympathetic is her tendency to blame all humans for the actions of a few, and her obsession with executing Lady Eboshi.
  • Unlike how other films present love stories, San and Ashitaka’s relationship subverts all the cliches. Notably, he does not get the girl, because she is a being in control of her own life, and not a prize to be won. They agree to part as friends, because she cannot forgive humans for what they have done to her forest. He accepts this, and tells her that he will help the people rebuild Irontown, and also promises to visit her whenever he can. This is the best possible outcome for their relationship, for if San were to be with him, she would be rejecting the animal side of her, and it is so ingrained in her, body and soul, that she would be giving up a part of herself. Another important aspect of their bittersweet love story is that, rather than San’s actions being influenced by her relationship with Ashitaka, it is HIS actions that are influenced by his knowing her. That reversal of gender roles is itself remarkable.
San vs. Lady Eboshi
  • Lady Eboshi is another well-rounded female character who is just as fascinating as San. On the positive side, she is a genius tactician, a revered leader to the people of Irontown, and a compassionate and generous benefactor to those most vulnerable. And yet she is also realistically flawed, as she is greedy, overconfident, and sometimes smug. To have won the respect and deference of everyone in Irontown, men included, already makes her unusual, and she is an interesting example of a capable woman in a position of leadership. It is initially implied that Eboshi is an antagonist, for it was she who killed the God Nago, and it was because Nago became a demon that Ashitaka was cursed in the first place. Yet as we meet her, she very quickly becomes just as sympathetic and just as morally ambiguous as San. As the men in the village tell Ashitaka, she has bought up the contract of every brothel girl she can find, which has incredible feminist implications. Whatever your personal opinions are of sex workers, Eboshi has saved these women from a very hard life, and granted them more agency than they ever would have had normally. She was also the only person to treat lepers with kindness and compassion, as she washed them, cleaned their wounds, and gave them employment and a purpose for living. And yet, on the other hand, she ambitiously wants to clear the entire forest so that she can transform it into one of the richest lands in Japan. She also knows full well of the destructive capabilities of the guns and flares that the lepers design for her, and uses them ruthlessly against both the forest animals and invading samurai warriors.
  • Irontown seems to have developed an almost matriarchal society as a result of Lady Eboshi’s influence. Not only is she the undisputed leader of the people, it is the women of the town that drive the economy. The men do the trading, mining and warring, and the women pump the bellows of the ironworks and defend the village from attackers. Together, they have made Irontown incredibly prosperous. Eboshi fears humans (particularly men) far more than she fears Gods, so she specifically requests that the lepers design guns light enough for the women to wield. Eboshi has more than enough reason to fear men in this case, as Lord Asano’s samurai continuously attack the village, and she specifically rescues brothel girls to prevent them from having to submit to the worst kind of men. She has given these former brothel girls a tremendous amount of freedom and agency. They have a great purpose and pride in their work, choose their own husbands, do not have to conceal their sexualities, and have as much input on how Irontown is run as anyone else does. Here, under Lady Eboshi, the women are equal.
  • The most important theme in the film, by far, is its message of environmentalism. Because the film takes place hundreds of years in the past, we feel the modern tragedy that what the Gods feared most did come to pass – the forests and their spirits have all but disappeared because of the onslaught of consumerism, industrialism, and capitalism. It emphasizes that there must be a balance – each side has to be willing to give something to survive, and that living together in peace is the best solution for everyone.
  • There are a lot of fascinating dichotomies at play in this story – animal vs. human, nature vs. industry, spiritual vs. secular, life vs. death, war vs. peace, men vs. women, etc. Most interestingly, we are not meant to pick a “side” in any of these dichotomies, but are meant to understand that there are reasons for everything in the world. Morality is not black and white. Even the most pressing dichotomy, nature vs. industry, doesn’t have a clear “side” expressed in the film. Letting the forest thrive and not destroying it is preferable, but the people of Irontown have to eat, and have to sustain their economy somehow. It’s a difficult choice, and the film respects its audience enough not to make it for them.
Princess Mononoke is a fascinating film with many layers of dichotomies, moral ambiguities, and complex themes. In the eternal battle of men vs. women, this film posits a strong message of equality, and of both men and women working together. Notably, in the climax of the film, it is both San and Ashitaka who return the Deer God’s head – they are equals working together, and without each other, they could not have saved everyone. And out of the death that the headless Night Stalker caused, it granted life instead. Life and death are as natural as everything else. The film also explicitly argues that there should be a balance between economic industry and preservation of nature. Human beings have to survive, but animal beings must survive as well. Princess Mononoke is a masterpiece of animation, and an overtly feminist themed media. Its strong female characters are given agency, dignity, independence from men, and realistic flaws. Everything that a feminist media critic hopes for.

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Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Bee Movie

Bee Movie (2007)

This is a guest post from Nicola Mason.

While shopping one day recently, I happened upon and purchased Bee Movie, the 2007 animated film featuring characters voiced by Jerry Seinfeld and Renee Zellweger. I had taken up beekeeping a few months before—had a hive of some 10,000 bees in my backyard—and I’d been educating my four-year-old daughter on how a hive’s vast population of wee six-legged arthropods work together to produce that delightfully sweet amber end-product, honey. I thought Bee Movie would be the perfect mom-daughter flick, and that it would reinforce much of what my little girl had been learning over the course of our bee-centric summer. To my horror, the movie not only presented a slew of factual inaccuracies, it also imposed a decidedly male worldview on the most successful matriarchal society in nature.
The movie begins on the graduation day of young Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld), who, along with the rest of his class (including his best friend, Adam, voiced by Matthew Broderick), must choose a job within New Hive City. A tour guide takes the class—made up of male and female bees—through the bustling inner complex and describes the choices available as we view (largely male) bees hard at work in the Honex industry.
The problem here is that, in actuality, male bees don’t work in the hive. At all. There are only a few drones in any given bee population, and their only “job” is to meet at a designated outdoor spot every afternoon in the hope that a virgin queen will pass by so they can fertilize her in an insect-world version of a gang bang. When the queen returns to the hive, she is so well fertilized that she need never mate again. All the eggs she will lay within the course of her life are already primed with the necessary genetic material to make the burgeoning brood of daughters that is necessary for the group’s survival. I feel compelled to point out that drones are considered so . . . inessential . . . that when winter sets in, they are summarily forced out of the hive and blocked from re-entering. The workers don’t want to waste precious honey on them, since it takes on average 40 lbs of the sweet stuff to sustain a hive through the cold months until nectar flows again. Drones would be an unnecessary drain on resources—and the workers can easily make a new bevy of boy-toys in the spring.
Weirdly, Barry lives in a private residence inside the hive with both a mother and father bee. The mother stereotypically worries over him and scolds him: “Don’t fly in the house!” Later in the film, the fact that the queen is his “real” mother is made clear. The Bensons are his adoptive parents. It seems worth mentioning, however, that this most powerful female force—the queen bee—is never seen and rarely mentioned. In essence, her role, and her significance, are downplayed because the movie is centered on its male hero—Barry—who, unwilling to be simply subsumed by predestined bee duties, dreams of a life of adventure.
In search of this life, he fixates on the “pollen jocks,” an eponym the film pins on forager bees, which in actuality are, of course, female. Here is where the movie takes, to my mind, a flat-out appalling testosterony turn. Its foragers are depicted as a military battalion of super bees—much larger than the workers, uniformly male, their chests puffed out with muscle and, one gathers, masculine pride. They are referred to by their drill sergeant as “monsters” and “sky freaks” as they line up at “J Gate” for their daily mission while a throng of starry-eyed female bees giggle and wave and gasp admiringly nearby. Moreover, these jocks are equipped with “nectar packs” that they carry on their backs. When Barry joins them one day (on a dare), we discover these are collection devices that, held like guns, violently siphon nectar from the flowers without the bees even having to land. Barry looks on in wonder as nature is raped and laments that he was not bred to be a pollen jock. (Insert retching sound.)
As the moviegoer expects, Barry finds a way to make his own mark. He takes the forbidden path and communicates with a human—a ditzy female florist (Renee Zellweger), who then largely drops out of the film as Barry pursues his solo crusade to keep humans from “stealing” the honey that bees work so hard to produce. The scandal goes public, and Barry, interviewed by a bee version of Larry King, becomes famous. A lawsuit ensues (bee world and human world collide), Barry wins, yadda yadda. There is an additional plot twist that brings his florist crush—with her oh-so-feminine love of lots and lots of pretty flowers—back into play, but even my four-year-old had lost interest at this point, so I will not bore you with the details.
Clearly the movie was intended as a star vehicle for Seinfeld. Obviously a male conceived of the movie (David Moses Pimental is listed as Head of Story). The writers of the screenplay—all seven of them, including Seinfeld—are, big surprise, male. What they created was not just a fiction but a male fantasy. The human female is even lured away from her big hunky boyfriend by tiny-but-charming Barry. Sure, you can give the film credit for a cross-species romance, but how difficult would it have been to simply reverse these roles? How about a female bee nonconformist hero? A male florist who adores all things prettily petaled and whose greatest aspiration is to attend the annual flower festival/parade, manning his own float? Humor could still be the heart of the film, but a slant, surprising, and more fulfilling humor that arises from challenging culturally-ingrained gender expectations instead of reinforcing them—emphasis on the forcing. I would give my weight in honey to see a film like that.


Nicola Mason is the managing editor of The Cincinnati Review, a lit mag based at University of Cincinnati. Her fiction has been widely published and anthologized. She is also a visual artist:www.nicolamason.com.