peach tea latte
(?)Community Member
- Posted: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:10:02 +0000
Before you start downvoting this just because you don't agree, please read the entire post along with the two articles I've linked to first.
Like everyone else, I've always thought Spirited Away was a fun and innocent film about a 10-year-old girl who is forced to work in a bathhouse in the spirit world so that she can save her parents and turn them back into humans. But then I came across these two articles (highly recommended reading). In the first article, it shows that Hayao Miyazaki himself confessed that the film does indeed center around prostitution. Although there are no scenes of prostitution in the movie, the underlying theme of it is still there.
So what do you guys all think?
Like everyone else, I've always thought Spirited Away was a fun and innocent film about a 10-year-old girl who is forced to work in a bathhouse in the spirit world so that she can save her parents and turn them back into humans. But then I came across these two articles (highly recommended reading). In the first article, it shows that Hayao Miyazaki himself confessed that the film does indeed center around prostitution. Although there are no scenes of prostitution in the movie, the underlying theme of it is still there.
article 1
The spa in Sen to Chihiro is decorated by red lanterns, and the interior is color-coordinated in glittering gold and red: there's no doubt this is the super-bad-taste style of a Japanese soapland. Many female workers scrub and massage bodies of the customers (they are all monsters). In this movie, the spa workers are called "Yuna" in Japanese. If you happen to have a Japanese dictionary, please refer the word. Iwanami Dictionary of Japanese defines "Yuna" as "a female spa worker who provides massage, and sex". And Haku tells Chihiro that the only way to survive there and get back her parents is to work there like the other girls.
article 1
In his interview for the Japanese edition of PREMIRE magazine, Miyazaki explained that his wonderland is not just a fantasy, but represents the real world of today's Japan. "The sex industry is everywhere now in Japan," he said. "And the number of young girls who look like whores is growing."
In this interview, Miyazaki worries about the circumstance surrounds today's Japanese girls. Girls who grow up in Japan have to live surrounded by obscenity which is spread by media, no matter how much their parents try to cover their eyes. Furthermore, with the Japanese economy having gone downhill for more than a decade now, the unemployment rate is as high as it's ever beenófor women, getting a decent job is extremely difficult, because of these reasons compounded by sex discrimination. Japanese girl have got to have the guts to do anythingóeven if it's work at a place like Super Loose. They're paying the price of the indulgences of their parents' generation: in the eighties, Chihiro's mom and dad enjoyed the bubble economy's hedonism without conscience like pigs.
In this interview, Miyazaki worries about the circumstance surrounds today's Japanese girls. Girls who grow up in Japan have to live surrounded by obscenity which is spread by media, no matter how much their parents try to cover their eyes. Furthermore, with the Japanese economy having gone downhill for more than a decade now, the unemployment rate is as high as it's ever beenófor women, getting a decent job is extremely difficult, because of these reasons compounded by sex discrimination. Japanese girl have got to have the guts to do anythingóeven if it's work at a place like Super Loose. They're paying the price of the indulgences of their parents' generation: in the eighties, Chihiro's mom and dad enjoyed the bubble economy's hedonism without conscience like pigs.
So what do you guys all think?