Spirited+Away

Last night my roommate and I watched the Miyazaki film Spirited Away. The film has a ton of moral implications that are incorporated to teach the film's young watchers. One of the strong motifs of the film has to do with environmentalism--this is a common theme among many Miyazaki films, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is one of my favorites.

Throughout the film, the main character Chihiro is helped by a stranger she meets called Haku. Later it is revealed that in this place, people have their names taken from them. Chihiro becomes Sen and Haku explains that he cannot remember what his name used to be. At the end of the film, Chihiro helps Haku remember that he is actually a river spirit, one that saved her when she almost drowned as a child. The river that Haku was once was paved over to make room for an apartment building, and because of that Haku lost his home and forgot who he was.

When a Stink Spirit comes to the bath house, all of the employees are disgusted by his scent and pungent presence, but later Chihiro realizes that he is not a stink spirit, but he has actually just been polluted. Once she is able to remove the pollution from the spirit, they realize he is actually a majestic river spirit.

Miyazaki constantly focusses on the relationship between the developing world and the natural wilderness, and his main characters, embodied in young and innocent children, often find the beauty and value of the natural world throughout the plots of his films.

We can teach kids about environmentalism and show them documentaries and articles with hard evidence of the facts, but a film like this provides and artistic perspective in a way that strongly communicates with its viewers of all ages, but supplies the audience with a young main character that our youth can easily relate to. I think showing a film like Spirited Away or Nausicaa can have an equally powerful effect on students when it comes to environmentalism.