Spirited Away: A Story about Prostitution?

[banananonana]

Demons and/in a whore house? OH MY! But what do I care, I didn't see any of the workers sell off their bodies for money nor did I see anyone of the guest pay for using someone as a whore (except you; No Face! But that was different...)

[TuckyX]

Christopher Shotgun

You know that Totoro is a story about a child that was murdered, google it, it's more strange then the spirit away prostitution connection.

If Mei and Satsuki did die then how do explain Mei and the Kittenbus the 14minute short that's a followup to the main movie. It's fun watching the movie again after reading about the death theory, but I don't believe Ghibli intentionally made it that way.

[Christopher Shotgun]

TuckyX

Christopher Shotgun

You know that Totoro is a story about a child that was murdered, google it, it's more strange then the spirit away prostitution connection.

If Mei and Satsuki did die then how do explain Mei and the Kittenbus the 14minute short that's a followup to the main movie. It's fun watching the movie again after reading about the death theory, but I don't believe Ghibli intentionally made it that way.

No, I agree with you that there probably is no knowledgeable connection, probably one of those weird thing where two completely random things just seem to sync up and people draw conclusions, I just mentioned it for the nature of the original post, and I would admit that the things that do match up are eerie.

[Tama_Mantic]

...

my...my childhood... emotion_0A0

[Kirsi-hime]

well... it is still a good movie and though the theme is about prostitution(yeah right prostitution)...

overall reaction...... wtf

[nitori kohai]

This makes me wish I had DVR when Cartoon Network was doing a Studio Ghibli marathon for an entire week.
; _;

I only caught about half an hour of My Neighbor Totoro and I was DYING to see it.

[So As I Pray]

I know guys

let's take anything an animator says and blow it out of proportion!

surely we can't go wrong with that

[woodasheswoodashes]

Nothing unexpected. The sex industry is pretty much all over Japan like infested rats with increasingly young kids doing it for the money and has been a nice neon red sign in the background for a long while.

But while I agree that prostitution may have been involved in the coming about of Spirited Away I do not agree that Spirited Away is a story about prostitution. The theme of the environment that Sen is in and the background story does seem to have certain influences, and perhaps the way Sen is thrown into work to save her parents and stripped of her identity to be anonymous, just another girl working in a bathhouse with uncaring supervisors and all that jazz, to me it reflects 'prostitution' without the prostitution in it. The story still stands on its own about a little girl with her parents taken away because of a 'debt' and working in an unknown place all alone with mythical-fantasy spirits and monsters following her every step, and while its all pretty and dreamy and all that the influences provide a darker undercurrent to the show that lends it a more realistic allure.

So its sort of like, while prostitution is prominent and blaring red signs in a culture and a country, its simply a backdrop and not all and everything of it, just like Sen is part of something else coming into contact with a background that has prostitution as one of its influences but whereby it is not centerstage and she does not come into contact with it, and nor does the bathhouse that she works in itself. Well, in the same way you won't say a schoolgirl in Japan is necessarily a prostitute that works for the industry when she's not in school even though we know a lot of them do.

Hope you understand what I'm trying to put across.

[fairy-phoenix]

This is actually quite deep... I never realized that one of my favorite studio Ghibli movies had elements that revolved around prostitution before.

[Miss-dark8607]

So As I Pray

I know guys

let's take anything an animator says and blow it out of proportion!

surely we can't go wrong with that

Actually we aren't even sure he really said it as the "articles" don't source anything and aren't reliable. It's sad how stupid anime fans still are. emotion_facepalm Can't even tell a ******** blog post from an actual article.

[crazywuzhere]

This is all becuase of differences between Eastern and Western culture.
It's reminding me of comparing geisha to prostitutes. Geisha are NOT prostitutes, by the way.
It also reminds me of how Lion King is based off of Osamu Tezuka's Kimba, the White Lion. Disney, of course, denies that claim.

[Duragraha]

Miss-dark8607

Crepe Aux Fraises

Excuse me, but I am not new. I am merely just a mule account.

Also, I'm sorry, but what does critical thinking have to do with any of this? I have just about a decent critical thinking skill as anyone else, or else I wouldn't have gotten As on my university English papers. Thanks for assuming I don't have any critical thinking skills at all when I do.

I did not write any of those articles. I don't even run those sites nor do I even know how to operate a blog in the first place. Once again, thanks for assuming. :/

Furthermore, even if it's not true that the movie is about prostitution, the word yuna IS used in the Japanese version of the movie if you've also watched that and not just the English dub, and written with the kanji 湯女, it means "a woman who services men at bath houses, which includes washing and sexual favors". Now why would the women workers in the bathhouses in Spirited Away be called 湯女 if they're not giving the male deities any "sexual favors?"

And I wasn't giving attitude. :/ I was just merely correcting you that the first article was written by a Japanese film critic because you clearly assumed that both articles were "western over conceptualization" of the movie. You're the one who just perceived me to be.

And you are assuming what you have read from these blogs are true. Again how do you know the author is really Japanese. I see people on Gaia using Japanese names all the time and most of the time they aren't even any type of Asian. I feel its just common sense not to just readily believe every little thing you see online. None of the article list any credible sources, or anything that makes me believe they are legit. They are just OPINION PIECES! So yeah before you correct make sure you're own facts are correct. Oh and getting A's on paper don't mean anything. I get A's on my ESL tests all the time and I know my English is still bad.

Maybe you shouldn't start threads like this if you aren't open to different opinions. If you want to believe two poorly written blogs be my guest but I for one don't believe either blog. That is all I'm trying to say as its been noted on my creditable places that HM wasn't talking about whores but just trying to create a Heroin young girls could look up too.

Honestly, while I have found little in the way of reliable evidence to suggest that this particular reading has been publicly acknowledged by Miyazaki, it would not have been out of character for Miyazaki to deal with a theme as serious as prostitution in his work. His oeuvre--especially his early films--has always evinced a deep concern with the concept of physical and spiritual corruption. Traditionally, this has been expressed through environmental themes, a preoccupation with the ways in which modern civilization has perpetuated the destruction and contamination of the natural world. (e.g. Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa, the river god in Spirited Away.) However, it would not really be that much of a stretch to think that this motif would eventually extend to a marked anxiety about the ways in which modern civilization was polluting human beings, especially children.

Secondarily, a given interpretation does not necessarily need a statement of authorial intent in order to be valid. It would be impossible to study any form of art--including film and literature--if we had to confine ourselves solely to EXPLICIT statements as to the intentions of the artist, especially since many artists do not comment upon their own work because it would destroy the audience's ability to draw their own conclusions. Art would not be as rich or as meaningful if any given piece could only have ONE interpretation; if a theory can be plausibly supported without doing violence to the text, then there's no reason why it should not be permitted to enrich the body of already existing critiques.

You call other anime fans "stupid", but you not only seem to be very quick to dismiss perspectives that do not agree with your own, you are rude and unnecessarily antagonistic . That seems like more of a detriment to intelligence than anything that the original poster might have done.

[Miss-dark8607]

Duragraha

You call other anime fans "stupid", but you not only seem to be very quick to dismiss perspectives that do not agree with your own, you are rude and unnecessarily antagonistic . .

No I think its stupid to claim fiction as fact and take things at face value like this. The OP, You, nor myself know if the author of the first blog is Japanese or the creditable of either post. It's stupid of the OP and anyone else to claim these blogs to be fact PERIOD! It;s heresy and piss poor over-analyzing at best. As an Asian woman I am ******** sick of western anime fans buying into the whole Asian women=exotic bullshit. Also LOL no I'm not rude you just don't agree with me. Learn the difference. rolleyes

So again I don't ******** agree with this bullshit and yeah you guys don't have to agree with me but I don't really care since once again this is why I ******** hate the majority of anime fans. You guys are too ******** simple minded and miss the big picture. It's like white kids trying too hard to "act black" without understanding how utterly stupid, distasteful, and overall racist they are being.


/end discussing this BS topic.

[Duragraha]

Miss-dark8607

Duragraha

You call other anime fans "stupid", but you not only seem to be very quick to dismiss perspectives that do not agree with your own, you are rude and unnecessarily antagonistic . .

No I think its stupid to claim fiction as fact and take things at face value like this. The OP, You, nor myself know if the author of the first blog is Japanese or the creditable of either post. It's stupid of the OP and anyone else to claim these blogs to be fact PERIOD! It;s heresy and piss poor over-analyzing at best. As an Asian woman I am ******** sick of western anime fans buying into the whole Asian women=exotic bullshit. Also LOL no I'm not rude you just don't agree with me. Learn the difference. rolleyes

So again I don't ******** agree with this bullshit and yeah you guys don't have to agree with me but I don't really care since once again this is why I ******** hate the majority of anime fans. You guys are too ******** simple minded and miss the big picture. It's like white kids trying too hard to "act black" without understanding how utterly stupid, distasteful, and overall racist they are being.


/end discussing this BS topic.

Interestingly enough, I'm an Asian woman too. So you can go ahead and call me simple-minded, if you'd like, but I'm not so sure about racist, at least in this context.

And I still think your personal feelings about the way in which our race is constructed in American culture is interfering with your ability to consider the subject matter in a reasonable fashion. I also hate it when Asian women are exoticized. Calling me "exotic" is the surest and the fastest way to get me to end a date. However, saying that Spirited Away could, conceivably, be about prostitution has nothing to do with exoticizing the Asian female. (Especially since I really don't see how you could sexualize Miyazaki's animation style.) The OP's failure to seek out reliable sources was admittedly sloppy, but your willingness to take this as a personal offense toward Asian women is even more so.

[Lilsaur]

Because Gaia is ********: