Tag: Princess Mononoke

Miyazaki’s Swan Song ‘The Wind Rises’

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most renowned animators alive. He brought us visually arresting, pro-woman, environmentalist tales like ‘Princess Mononoke’ and ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.’ He brought us lush tales of magic and mythology, like ‘Spirited Away’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle,’ with young women as protagonists and other women as focal, powerful characters throughout. Miyazaki now insists that his latest animated film, ‘The Wind Rises’ (‘Kaze Tachinu’), will be his last.

"The Wind Rises" poster
“The Wind Rises” poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Spoiler Alert

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most renowned animators alive. He brought us visually arresting, pro-woman, environmentalist tales like Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. He brought us lush tales of magic and mythology, like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, with young women as protagonists and other women as focal, powerful characters throughout. Miyazaki now insists that his latest animated film, The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu), will be his last.

The film felt like a goodbye with its insistence that artists can only be creative and productive for 10 years, its somber outlook, and the way in which it concluded at the end of a major era in Japanese history (Japan’s defeat in World War II). The Wind Rises also features one of Miyazaki’s rare male protagonists, Jirô Horikoshi (a fictionalized version of the eponymous historical aeronautical engineer who designed Japan’s model “Zero” fighter plane); I suspect this is because Miyazaki identifies with Jirô and his dreams that are too big and too pure for this world.

Jiro Dream Pilot
“Airplanes are beautiful, cursed dreams, waiting for the sky to swallow them up.”

 

Considering Miyazaki’s focus on the centrality of female characters throughout his career, The Wind Rises is disappointing in its lack of developed female characters. There’s really only Jirô’s loud and pushy but soft-hearted little sister, Kayo, who grows up to be a doctor. Jirô’s encouragement of her medical school dreams and the achievement of a peripheral female character’s big dreams in the 1940’s are a bit too subtle to consider feminist, but it’s a welcome nod nonetheless. Nahoko is Jirô’s tragic love interest who has loved him completely and selflessly since he rescued her as a girl from the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. Though we know Nahoko loves painting, French poetry, and Jirô, there is little else that we know about her beyond that. She exists solely to love and support Jirô and to humanize him in a way that none of his other relationships do.

Nahoko and Jirô meet by a picturesque spring
Nahoko and Jirô meet by a picturesque spring

 

Though The Wind Rises is (as to be expected) beautiful, it is overly sentimental. Jirô’s reunion with a woman who he helped many years ago only to fall in love with her only to have her be tragically ill was a bit too neat of an unrealistic package designed to give magic and wonder to the external life of a young man who mainly lived within his own head. Not only that, but the ethereal quality of dreams is the heart of the film, insisting that we must make our beautiful dreams a reality no matter what the consequences, no matter how the world may pervert those dreams. This is particularly true of Jirô’s innocent desire to design planes that is warped and manipulated to serve his country’s wartime needs. As a member of the country who heinously dropped two atomic bombs on Japan during World War II, I find this particular theme questionable. Though I valued a glimpse of history from Japan’s perspective, which the US rarely sees, I would have been extremely uncomfortable had I been watching a tale about the creation of the atom bomb and how it was a beautiful dream that life distorted, a dream with deadly real life applications for which the dreamer takes little responsibility. We only know that Jiro and his dreamland mentor, the Italian Caproni, would prefer to design planes that weren’t used for war, but they do so anyway and without question.

Building a war plane
Building a war plane

 

This leads me to my final critique of the film. The war and the purpose of the planes that Jirô builds are, strangely, non-issues. The Wind Rises is an oddly apolitical nationalistic film that laments Japan’s poverty, inability to innovate due to economic challenges, and the pain of pride for being a country technologically left behind. The motivations for the war are never discussed. No one is pro-war or anti-war. The film seems to be asserting that Japan’s involvement in World War II was due to a sense of honor rather than conviction or even political profit. Japan, like Jirô, is, instead a little country with a big dream. Miyazaki’s blasé approach to the war does not measure up to the clear-cut environmentalist stance he takes in many of his other films.

Jiro stands before his failed plane prototype
Jirô stands before his failed plane prototype

 

While Miyazaki continues to deliver breathtaking animated scenes and a sense of wonder and magic, The Wind Rises disappoints on a thematic level with its lack of engagement or curiosity about Japan’s involvement in World War II or an artist’s responsibility for their creations. The borderline cloying saccharine sentimentality along with the lack of strong female characters we’ve come to expect from Miyazaki leave me hoping The Wind Rises is not his swan song, that he will make just one more film that rivals, if not surpasses, the masterpieces he has already given us.

Read also Howl’s Moving Castle and Male Adaptations of Female Work, Princess Mononoke Has No Desire to Marry A Prince, Miyazaki Month: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Miyazaki Month: Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki Month: Spirited Away, Miyazaki Month: Princess Mononoke, Animated Children’s Films: Spirited Away

Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists Theme Week here.

Almost 20 years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.

Are You There, Hollywood? It’s Me, the Average Girl by Carrie Gambino

The expectations for girls in film and television are incredibly mixed. It is naïve to say that girls nowadays are just expected to be a sexy sidekick or afterthought. With more strong female roles popping up in bigger budget films such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, there is the expectation that girls should also be intelligent and incredibly clever (while also being visually pleasing)… There isn’t really a place for the all-around average girl. The first two examples of strong female protagonists that I could think of are in fantasy franchises. Are real female characters really that difficult to come up with? Real female characters are often created with good intentions but tend not to work on a larger scale.

Six Lessons Lisa Simpson Taught Me by Lady T

…Lisa takes a stand against the sexism spouting from the mouth of the new talking Malibu Stacy doll. Frustrated with the doll’s collection of sexist catchphrases that include “Let’s bake some cookies for the boys,” “Thinking too much gives you wrinkles,” and “My name’s Stacy, but you can call me *wolf whistle*,” Lisa collaborates with the creator of Malibu Stacy to create their own talking doll, Lisa Lionheart. When Malibu Stacy outsells Lisa Lionheart, our creator feels temporarily dejected, until she hears her own voice speaking behind her: “Trust in yourself and you can achieve anything.” She turns to see a girl her age hold a Lisa Lionheart doll in her hand and smile.
Delightful Tina. Shy, painfully weird, butt-obsessed, quietly dorky, intensely daydreamy Tina. Tina is a little bit like all of us (and–cough–a lot like some of us) at that most graceless, transitional, intrinsically unhappy stage of life that is early adolescence. She is also a wonderfully rich and well-developed character, both in her interactions with her family and in her own right, and she’s arguably the emotional core of the whole show.

It’s common wisdom that maintaining relationships requires constant work, but there’s often an assumption (in TV, movies, and real life) that this only applies to romantic relationships. Platonic relationships are rarely the focus of a story, and when a storyline deals with issues in these relationships, they’re often easily dealt with, and the friendship goes back to being simple. Exceptions to this are problems that are caused by romantic relationships. Veronica Mars is an exception to this; for its first two seasons, it depicts many platonic relationships, and explores the many issues involved in navigating them (some of these problems are related to romance, but many are not, showing platonic relationships have their own complexities, separate from romance).

My Sister’s Keeper is a story about growing up, identify, family, death, and life (how can we truly tell any story about life when death isn’t the costar?), but its uniqueness is that it is told primarily through two young girls.

So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”

Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.

The 80s were quite possibly a nightmare.

 

My main issue with the film is that it is speckled with meaningless platitudes and clichés about girl empowerment when the film simply isn’t empowering. The women in the film are portrayed as oversexualized, helpless, damaged goods. Though there are metaphors at work that symbolize abuse or objectification of women, nowhere does the film stress an injustice or seek to dismantle its source. It is just like any other formulaic action movie complete with boobs, guns, and explosions, but it has a shiny, artificial veneer of girl empowerment. The false veneer is the aspect of the film that truly infuriates me, along with the side of artsy pretentious bullshit.

On Milk-Bones, Toothed Vaginas, and Adolescence: Teeth As Cautionary Tale by Colleen Clemens

Early in the film, Dawn is a nymph-like virgin committed to “saving herself” until marriage. She is the poster child for the “good” girl: a loving daughter who obeys the doctrines of the church and spends her time spreading the gospel of virginity. Everything Dawn knows about the world and herself changes when her falsely pious boyfriend Tobey takes her to a far off swimming hole and tries to rape her. A confused and terrified Dawn reacts by screaming and then—much to everyone’s surprise—cutting off his penis to interrupt the rape. Little does Dawn know that her lessons about Darwin in her biology classes are taking hold in her own body.

The Horror of Female Sexual Awakening: Black Swan by Rebecca Willoughby

What disappointed me most, I think, was that Black Swan could easily have been a progressive film with a positive, young woman-centered journey out of repression at its center. It could have recouped that gender-centric childhood ballerina dream of so many little girls into a message about determination, hard work, personal strength, and emotional growth. Instead, Darren Aronofsy has produced an Oscar-winning horror film. That’s right: I said HORROR. While that might seem like a stretch, it seems clear to me that the horror I refer to is the possibility of changing an age-old story. The horror of Black Swan is the absolutely terrifying idea that a young woman might make it through the difficult process of maturation, develop a healthy, multi-faceted sexuality, and be successful at her chosen career at the same time.

While most teen movies revolve around coming-of-age stories, gang movies reveal the extreme side to adolescence—the misfit, criminal, and violent side. Gang movies are rather simple, either focusing on episodes of gang debauchery, or revolving around rivalry and jealousy. Usually the viewpoint is that of the ring leader, or the “new girl,” who is initiated into the gang but is still an outsider. Yet, among the plethora of girl gang movies, every decade has produced stories involving specific issues and specific types of teenage girls.

Kiki’s Delivery Service carefully constructs a world where a girl’s agency is expected, accepted and supported, while Disney movies typically present a girl’s agency as unusual, forbidden, and denied. The difference between these two messages is that Kiki’s world anticipates and encourages her independence, while the women of Disney are typically punished for this.

For example, in The Little Mermaid Ariel wants to “live out of these waters,” but her father forbids her exploration of the human world and punishes this dream. Sea witch Ursula exploits Ariel’s desire to discover another world beyond her own as well. This is hardly an isolated incident.

The Book Thief: Stealing Hearts and Minds by Natalie Wilson

Liesel, unlike so many young heroines, resists romance—from her friend Rudy’s early problematic insistence and then throughout the remainder of the movie. Instead of being positioned in relationship to romantic partners, she has three male best friends—Rudy, Max and Hans (Papa)—as well as two females of great importance to her life, Rosa (Mama) and Ilsa Hermann (the mayor’s wife who, transgressively, supplyies Liesel with books). As for Liesel, like her futuristic counterpart, Katniss Everdeen, she is a life-saving heroine and inspirational rebel.

Terri sets out to explore the luxury of male privilege disguised as a young man. Just One of the Guys smacked us straight in the face with the unspoken universal knowledge that sexism was real, it existed and the film gave us tangible proof. Terri decides to use her parents’ trip out of town to switch things around for herself by getting another shot at the newspaper internship with another article, an expose of sorts. She switches high schools and uses her brain, and as much as she can, is herself.

Troop Beverly Hills: What A Thrill by Phaydra Babinchock

Initially the girls of Troop Beverly Hills are portrayed as clueless and privileged, but they are allowed to grow and transform themselves over the course of the movie. The film writers don’t do it unrealistically by turning them into tomboys overnight or at all. The girls retain their femininity, which they are made fun of for by the Red Feathers, throughout the film.
Immortality is not what makes a world better. Hope, friendship, and love do, and love is not limited by sex, gender, ethnicity, or race. Women like Homura and Kyoko can fall in love with other women like Madoka and Sayaka respectively. We have the responsibility to stand up with people like them. This series is part of the reason I try to do that and more. I hope that many others to do the same.
Is Wanda a girl/teenage female protagonist? Technically she is not “young” as she is 1,000 years old and seemingly immortal, but she is new to Earth so that makes her young in some sense. Also, why would the Souls even have genders that mirror that of humans or have genders at all? The Souls look like beams of light and they probably aren’t even a carbon based species and yet somehow Wanda is a female? So. Frustrating. Nonetheless she is controlling a person’s body who identifies as a teenage girl and is thus somewhat restricted to her occupied body’s feelings, emotions, and categorizations.

Ten questions between filmmaker Morgan Faust and 13-year-old actress Rachel Resheff.

Morgan: The truth is when I was growing up in the 1980s, the child actresses were often given pretty syrupy roles (with the exception of Journey of Natty Gann and Labyrinth). It was the boys who got to have the cool movies–Goonies, Stand by Me, even The NeverEnding Story and E.T., which did have girls, but the boys were the heroes. That is why I write the movies I do–adventures films for girls–because that’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid, go on adventures, be the hero. I still do want that. I mean, who doesn’t?

The Hunger Games, saturated as it is with political meaning (the author admits her inspiration for the trilogy came from flipping channels between reality TV and war footage), is a welcome change from another recent popular YA series, Twilight. As a further bonus, it has disproven the claim that series with female protagonists can’t have massive cross-gender appeal. With the unstoppable Katniss Everdeen at the helm (played in the films by the jaw-droppingly talented Jennifer Lawrence), perhaps the series will be the start of a new trend: politically themed narratives with rebellious female protagonists who have their sights set on revolution more than love, on cultural change more than the latest sparkling hottie.

The CW: Expectations vs. Reality by Nicole Elwell

The CW is a rarity among the many networks of cable television. Its target demographic is women aged 18-34, and as a result has a majority of its original programming centered on the lives of young women. On paper, this sounds like a noteworthy achievement to be celebrated. However, the CW produces content devoid of any sense of the reality of its young audience, and as a result actually harms its most devoted viewers. The CW creates an unattainable archetype for what a teenager should look like and fails to maturely handle issues of murder and rape.

Defending Dawn Summers: From One Kid Sister to Another by Robin Hitchcock

OK, sure, my big sister didn’t have superpowers, and as far as I know she did not save the world even one time, much less “a lot.” But from my perspective as her bratty little sister, I felt like I could never escape her long and intimidating shadow. I could never be as smart as her, as special as her; I couldn’t hope to collect even a fraction the awards and accolades she racked up through high school. And she didn’t even properly counteract her super smarts with social awkwardness: she always had a tight group of friends and the romantic affections of cute boys. She was the pride and joy of my family, and I always felt like an also-ran. Trust me: this makes it very hard to not be at least a little bratty and whiny.

Why Alex Russo Is My Favorite Fictional Female Wizard by Katherine Filaseta

The protagonist of Wizards is a girl who acts like girls really act: she has boyfriends and broken hearts, but isn’t overly boy-crazy or dependent on them; she’s curious and smart enough to ask questions when other people are telling her not to; and throughout the series she faces a lot of the struggles women really do face throughout their lives.

Ja’mie: Mean-Spirited Impression of a Private School Girl by Katherine Murray

Power dynamics mean something in comedy. Making fun of someone less powerful than you is sort of like beating up someone who’s small, or taking advantage of someone naive. It’s not very sporting, and it makes you look mean. The problem is that the same person can be powerful in some contexts and not in others. A rich, white 17-year-old girl, for example, might be very powerful in contexts where she’s bullying her classmates at school, but less powerful in contexts where she’s trying to meet the demands of a sexist culture. If you’re an adult man nearing 40, it’s hard to make fun of the way a teenage girl dresses, flirts, and moons over boys without starting to look kind of petty.

True Grit: Ambiguous Feminism by Andé Morgan

Mattie wears dark, loose, practical clothing. She climbs trees and carries weapons. She shows utter disdain for male privilege or La Boeuf’s pervy allusions to sexual contact. She has no interest in the older men for romance or protection. She is only concerned with their usefulness to her task, and she uses her will and her reasoning rather than seduction to convince them. Steinfeld’s Mattie emanates competence and confidence.
Not since Megan Follows played Anne of Green Gables in the 1985 adaptation of the novel with the same title have girls had a young protagonist on screen who fights against social conventions that are designed to limit her because of her age and gender. Mattie’s similarity to Anne doesn’t end at their indignation and fearlessness, they both also share a love of long braids, both can be found wearing ill-fitting clothes, both of their stories are set in a similar time period, and finally, both girls are orphans.

Granted, Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup) is an important character. Even so, it is a bit disconcerting when the IMDb blurb about this movie only mentions him, and almost none of the female characters who are equally, if not more, important to the story. Princess Mononoke (voiced by Claire Danes) is the title character, but is only mentioned toward the end of the blurb. This movie is so much more than yet another “save the princess” quest!

In Pretty In Pink, Andi is a self-sufficient, seemingly self-aware teenage girl who lives in a little cottage with her single father. Andi isn’t the type of girl who goes gaga for cocky, linen suit-wearing Steff (James Spader). She’s too busy at home sewing and stitching together her latest wardrobe creations. To her fellow girl students, she’s just a classless, lanky redhead who shouldn’t dare be caught dead at a “richie” party. So, she spends her time at TRAX, a record shop she works at, and a nightclub that showcases hip new wave bands like Ringwald’s real-life fave, The Rave-Ups. Her best friends Duckie (Jon Cryer) and Iona (Annie Potts) admire and envy Andi.
What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19th century. Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.

Temporary Tomboys: Coming of Age in My Girl and Now and Then by Elizabeth Kiy

However, the tomboy was a prominent figure in two well-loved films of the period aimed at young girls, though both presented her as a transitional stage in development. My Girl (1991), is the story of precocious 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) who grew up in a funeral parlor and is obsessed with death, while in Now and Then (1995) four childhood friends reunite as adults and remember (in flashbacks) the summer they were 12.

Basically, Brave isn’t really that brave of a film. It’s traipsing through a well-established trope that, though positive, is stagnant. Don’t get me wrong; I love all the prepubescent female power fantasy tales I’ve listed, and I’m grateful that they exist and that I could grow up with many of them. However, we can’t pretend that Brave is pushing any boundaries. It sends the message that little girls can be powerful as long as they remain little girls. The dearth of representations of postpubescent heroines who are not objectified, whose sexuality does not rule their interactions, and who are the heroes of their own stories is appalling.

Princess Mononoke Has No Desire to Marry a Prince

Granted, Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup) is an important character. Even so, it is a bit disconcerting when the IMDb blurb about this movie only mentions him, and almost none of the female characters who are equally, if not more, important to the story. Princess Mononoke (voiced by Claire Danes) is the title character, but is only mentioned toward the end of the blurb. This movie is so much more than yet another “save the princess” quest!

San
San

 

This guest post by Jen Thorpe appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Often, when an animated movie has the word “Princess” in the title, the storyline focuses on how she found, and married, her Prince. Princess Mononoke, however, doesn’t stick to that old, predictable, scenario at all. Instead, viewers are presented with several very strong female characters and a Princess that has absolutely no desire to marry a Prince.

The English version of Princess Mononoke was released in 1997. It was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who is known for his beautifully animated films that tell detailed, unexpected, stories. It has been said that his films present the world in “shades of gray,” ethically speaking. Important characters can be good, and bad, at the same time. Who is the “bad guy”? That’s up to you to decide.

One of the things I love about Princess Mononoke is that it includes so many very strong female characters. They aren’t sitting on the sidelines, either. Much of the direction of the story is driven by women. This is the main reason why I think that Princess Mononoke is an excellent movie for female teens to watch. Here are animated examples of powerful women who are taking action (instead of waiting for their Prince to come).

Oddly enough, most of the reviews of this film that I have read focus on Ashitaka, a male character who is presented at the beginning of the movie. It is as though people are so used to seeing a male character as the focus that they do not know how to discuss a film that is very female-driven.

Granted, Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup) is an important character. Even so, it is a bit disconcerting when the IMDb blurb about this movie only mentions him, and almost none of the female characters who are equally, if not more, important to the story. Princess Mononoke (voiced by Claire Danes) is the title character, but is only mentioned toward the end of the blurb. This movie is so much more than yet another “save the princess” quest!

Princess Mononoke is a human who was abandoned by her parents when she was an infant. (Note: There are “spoilers” from this point forward.) Moro, a giant, white, wolf (voiced by Gillian Anderson) was angered when these two humans “defiled the forest.” In order to escape from her, Princess Mononoke’s parents threw their baby at the giant wolf and ran away.

Moro chose to adopt this human infant. She named her San, and raised her just like her two male cubs. Over time, San became less human. She still looked like a human, of course, but gained the heightened sense of smell and fighting ability of the wolves. San considered herself to be a wolf, and developed a deep hatred for humans.

The first time San and Ashitaka meet, it is by accident. He is on a quest to find a cure for the curse that was placed upon him after a demon touched him. Ashitaka is the last Prince from his village, and will die if the curse is not removed. San is trying to help her mother to heal from a bullet wound in her chest. She is sucking out the poisoned blood from the wound, spitting it on the ground, and getting her face covered with blood in the process.

San, covered in blood
San, covered in blood

 

Ashitaka tries to talk to San, at first, to see if she could confirm where he thought he was at. San silently stares at him for a while, and then yells “Go away!” She leaves with her mother and “brothers.”

San has good reason to hate the humans. Not too far away is Tatara, which is run by Lady Eboshi (voiced by Minnie Driver). It is a mining colony. Lady Eboshi is intentionally cutting down the forrest, and harvesting iron ore, in order to make a fortune. San, who lives in and loves the forest, wants nothing more than to kill Lady Eboshi.

At the same time, Lady Eboshi is doing some wonderful things. She buys the contracts of female prostitutes and hires them to work in her iron forge. These women are bold, strong, and unafraid. There is a scene where many are openly flirting with Ashitaka. They call him handsome. None of the men dare to harass these women (who are quick to “trash talk” right back at the men).

Lady Eboshi has also set up a very comfortable building for lepers to live in. She provides health care, feeds them, and employs them. They are designing rifles that are light enough for women to comfortably use. She hopes to destroy the forest so the animals will go back to being “small and stupid.” The large, intelligent ones who live there now pose a threat to her town (and all humans).

It is worth noting that Lady Eboshi runs her town by herself. She’s not married to the “mayor,” and is not the daughter of a king or other powerful man. She, herself, is powerful enough to run the town and to do it her way.

San launches an attack while Ashitaka is in town. She is much faster than than the male guards in the town, and easily evades them. Someone warns Lady Eboshi that San is there and intending to kill her. Instead of hiding, Lady Eboshi stands in the middle of the street, and calls a challenge to San. At her side are two women, armed with guns. These women lost their husbands to the wolves in San’s tribe, and are looking for revenge.

Lady Eboshi and San fight
Lady Eboshi and San fight

 

Soon, San and Lady Eboshi get into a fight. San uses a knife, and Lady Eboshi has a sword. Ashitaka doesn’t want them to fight, so he gets in the middle and knocks out both of the women. He calls for someone to take Lady Eboshi from him, and then, basically kidnaps San. He fell in love with her the first time he saw her.

San holds a knife to Ashitaka's throat
San holds a knife to Ashitaka’s throat

 

When San wakes, she immediately tries to kill Ashitaka. She still wants nothing to do with him. This is yet another example of a female character who, when presented with the possibility of starting a relationship with a Prince, chooses not to. San has a life that is quite full without him. She doesn’t need a “boyfriend.” San holds a knife to Ashitaka’s throat. He tells her “You’re beautiful.” She recoils in horror.

Long story short, there is a point where San saves Ashitaka’s life. Moro allows him to stay with them, and heal, and then kicks him out when he is strong enough. The next morning, Ashitaka is escorted out of the forest by one of San’s “brothers.” He gives the wolf his necklace, and asks that the wolf cub bring it to San.

The cub arrives home, necklace in mouth, just as San is about to leave for battle. She learns the necklace is from Ashitaka. San stares at it, says “pretty,” puts it on, and heads off to join the fight.

Later, Moro asks Ashitaka to “save the girl you love.” Without giving too much of the story away, San has jumped into battle to be the eyes of a giant boar who is blind. He gets tricked, and ends up possessed by demons (who curse San in the same way that Ashitaka was cursed). He manages to save her life, but cannot remove the curse.

These two play an important role in… shall we say, saving the forest from complete destruction. It is a dramatic, powerful, moment, that results in knocking both of them out. They awake, later, lying in the forest together.

They awake together
They awake together

 

This could have turned into the “happily ever after” moment that many stories about Princesses do. Instead, San and Ashitaka have become close friends. They aren’t getting married, and they aren’t going to live together. Each continues his or her own life, with a new connection to a good friend.

There is so much more going on in Princess Mononoke that I have left out. The story is complex, and interwoven. I will note some of the other strong female characters, though.

The most powerful person in Ashitaka’s town is a Wise Woman. His little sister tried to defend her friend from a demon, by pulling a knife and blocking the friend with her own body.

Protecting her friend
Protecting her friend

 

Toki (voiced by Jada Pinkett Smith) is basically the “woman in charge” while Lady Eboshi is away. I highly recommend this movie as an alternative to the stereotypical Disney Princess movies. It is rated PG-13, likely because some of the imagery could be too disturbing for younger viewers.

 

Jen Thorpe is a freelance writer who also spends a lot of time podcasting and playing video games.  The majority of her writing work (and video game blogging) can be found at No Market Collective.  http://www.nomarket.org   

 

Older Women Week: Kind Grandmothers and Powerful Witches in Studio Ghibli Films

Studio Ghibli

This is guest post by Eugenia Andino previously appeared at her Web site (in Spanish) and is cross-posted with permission. 

The female protagonists in Studio Ghibli films have often been analysed as examples of feminist work; ranging from young women (like Nausicaa or Princess Mononoke) to little girls like Ponyo. The most popular ones, like Chihiro in Spirited Away, are just on the brink of adolescence. While it is true that there are not many adult women in Studio Ghibli films, there are varied, sympathetic and imaginative portraits of older women, normally in supporting roles.
These older women can be broadly grouped in two types.
The main ones are the wise or nurturing women. The first of them is Obaba in Nausicaa. We first meet her when her family meets Lord Yupa, a visitor, and Obaba interprets for them the local legend of a hero in blue, in a golden field, who will save the Valley. Obaba is brave and strong, if somewhat fatalistic; she dares invaders to kill her, and near the end of the film she seems resigned to the end of the people either by the toxic plants, an attack of giant insects, or foreign invaders. In any case, it is remarkable that for the role of symbolic voice of the Valley culture, the film chooses an old woman rather than a wise man or a warrior.
Princess Mononoke is a film with a similar theme, the conflict created by an industrial city whose prosperity depends on the exploitation of a magical forest. The old, wise woman here is Hii-sama. She tries to placate the possessed boar who bites and curses Ashitaka, without success, and then decides that the protagonist should leave the village and find a cure in the west. Since Ashitaka leaves not to come back, she doesn’t reappear. Again, the character gives richness to the film.

 

Dola and her sons

 

Sometimes the nurturing woman isn’t a “wise woman” type but simply kind, nurturing, and treated with great sympathy by the story. This is the case with Granny in My Neighbour Totoro, and of the many women in the home where Lisa works in Ponyo. In the forced absence of Satsuki and Mei’s mother because of her illness, Granny (who is not their grandmother but a neighbor, and the grandmother of Satsuki’s friend, Okagi), gives much needed love and attention to the little girl. At the same time, the film never implies that only women should take care of children, as can be seen in the initial scenes of the two little girls housekeeping and bathing with their father, in a rare, realistic and positive example of fatherhood. In this film and in Ponyo, these kinds old neighbors form a community that gives much needed emotional support to little children with loving but busy parents.
But older women’s roles as family caretakers aren’t only surrogate, as we can see in My Neighbors the Yamadas, a sweet “slice of life” piece composed of vignettes. Here we find a family with Takashi, the father, Matsuko the mother, Shige the grandmother, Noburu, a teenage boy, and Nonoko, a little girl. At the end of the film, Noburu jokes that the family works because all three adults are crazy: if any one of them were sensible, the balance would be broken. There’s some truth to this, as there are a number of unresolved tensions among the adults that would be unbearable with only two of them (or if they didn’t love one another very much). The conflict between Granny Shige and her son-in-law is stated early on the film: the property is hers, but he built the house himself. Here and elsewhere, Matsuko doesn’t take sides and tries to stop the fight. On their part, Shige and Matsuko both argue about their (unenthusiastic) housekeeping. Although Shige is often witty and very funny, it’s not all rosy; for example, the melancholy caused by the nearness of her death and the sickness of a friend is the theme of one of the Shorts.

 

In Spirited Away, we find an example of each category, so let’s introduce the second one: the ambiguous villain or antagonist.
This film has two twin sisters, Yubaba and Zeniba. Their age is doubtful: they look old, but Yubaba has a baby boy. In a way that reminds me slightly of Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke, she is, first and foremost, a businesswoman. Her biggest flaw is her greed, but she’s not truly evil. She doesn’t want to cause unnecessary harm, and she always keeps her word, even when she complains that it goes against her interests. Her sister Zeniba starts off as another antagonist, who attacks Haku and transforms Yubaba’s baby boy into a mouse, and then turns out to be grandmotherly and friendly and angry only at her sister for ordering Haku to steal from her. This gives complexity and appeal to the character, showing that “nurturing grandmothers” have their own interests and needs too.

 

Hii-Sama dictates Ashitaka’s destiny
In Howl’s Moving Castle there is another couple, if not so well paired up: Sophie, the main character, is transformed into a 90-year-old woman by the Witch of the West. This gets the main adventures of the film started as she searches for a way to break the spell and finds Howl. Just like in Spirited Away or Ponyo, the spell is broken with love, which isn’t very original. The interesting thing about Sophie’s transformation is that a shy, insecure, and practical girl finds a housekeeping job that suits her well, but only after being cursed with old age. This, in the context of Ghibli films as a whole, suggests again the nurturing, caring values of grandmotherly types. Here, they are certainly compensated and kept refreshing and fun rather than repetitive with the Witch of the West, a rare character because she’s mostly (or completely) villainous, with no redeeming features. And finally, Madame Suliman, of uncertain age (her hair is white, but she doesn’t look as old as the other two), is a powerful magician who used to be Howl’s master and teacher.
The Castle in the Sky includes an ambiguous character which is probably the funniest and most groundbreaking of all of Ghibli’s older women: Captain Dola, an air pirate. She initially appears to be a villain, but later she joins forces with the protagonists, Sheeta and Pazu, against Muska. With her sons as henchmen, stealing treasures is her main objective. She shows a great love for her sons, companionship with her husband, and kindness to Sheeta while still fulfilling the role of reckless, greedy pirate. She’s arguably the most memorable element in the whole film.

 

A grandmotherly Zeniba teaches No-Face how to knit

 

Despite the repetition of patterns, with all these witches and grandmothers, the characterisation of older women in Studio Ghibli films is never stereotypical. If Ghibli heroines can show children that little girls can be clever, courageous and admirable, these secondary characters show that their spark and their charm are not lost with age.
Eugenia Andino Lucas is a teacher of English as a Foreign Language in Spain. She’s also working on a PhD on Gender Violence in the novels of Charles Dickens. You can follow her on twitter: @laguiri and on her blog: eugeniaandino.bachpress.org.

 

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.