What’s In Your Head

NO IT WASN’T, YOU JACKASSES!

“Totoro’s about dead girls!”

“Spirited Away is about sex!”

You know what I hear?

“Maybe if I make up something that sounds smart, people will think I’m smart, even if it’s a complete fucking lie!”

Hayao Miyazaki is a man of values. He’s a man who believes in the innocence of childhood and has a wonderful imagination. He believes in simplicity, kindness, the beauty of nature, and the old ways. He draws on these beliefs and his personal experiences when he makes movies.

Spirited Away was made for some friends of Miyazaki’s. Specifically, the ten-year-old daughters of some friends he invited to stay at his vacation home. It’s fairly common for Miyazaki to decide that he’s going to make movies targeted at a specific age group. Ponyo is for five-year-olds. Spirited Away is meant for ten-year-old girls, but enjoyed by a much wider audience.

I repeat, SPIRITED AWAY WAS MADE FOR TEN-YEAR-OLD GIRLS.

The bathhouse? Not a brothel. Based on a bathhouse in his home town, which he thought was a place of mystery and wonder when he was a kid. That scene where the bathhouse staff has to clean the polluted river spirit? Based on Miyazaki’s own experiences of a town coming together to clean up a river. This scene? It’s about Chihiro not being greedy, because Chihiro is a positive role-model for ten-year-old girls.

The themes of Spirited Away are courage, strength of character, and individuality. ESPECIALLY individuality. That thing where Yubaba takes away peoples’ names and changes their species? That’s her taking away their individuality. Chihiro’s parents are now pigs, not people. Haku’s name has been shortened so he forgets who he is. When Yubaba changes Chihiro’s name, the only Kanji she leaves spell out “Sen”, the Japanese word for “one thousand”, meaning Chihiro is just another pawn of Yubaba’s, not her own person.

You want to seem cool and intelligent? Talk about the movie’s actual themes. Don’t make up this shock-value bullshit for attention.