Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Spirited Away Project

So, my original project idea was to analyze Miyazaki movies, but now I'm thinking of narrowing that down to just Spirited away, mainly because it's my favorite movie of his, and also because I just really adore the art in Spirited Away.
Miyazaki's movies have been analyzed by many, so I'm not sure if I can really interject much of anything completely new, but I'd still like to be able to learn a bit myself, and share that with the class.

I was thinking of focusing on how Miyazaki is appealing against current norms in Japan, in terms of his feminism, and animosity towards technology and modern culture, and supporting this with other contemporary issues he addresses in the movie.

Some sources I found were:
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc51.2009/SpiritedAway/index.html (although I don't agree with all of its points, it does bring up some interesting topics)
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_japanese_studies/v032/32.2napier.pdf
http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No2/boydShinto.htm/CREDITS/CREDITS/Notes/vol8no2.htm


Source

8 comments:

  1. Your topic seems really interesting. Spirited Away is one of the most favorite movie, and I can't wait to hear how you analyze this movie.

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    1. Thank you, I think I'm going to have a lot of fun analyzing it. :)

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  2. Hey, I've heard over the years random fascination with this movie (I've never seen it) but I'm definitely very interested to see what it's all about and why it's such a popular movie in that genre!

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    1. Thanks, I'll try to go into it as best I can. You should definitely watch it at some point.

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  3. So, whenever people ask me what my (personal) favorite movie is, I usually say Spirited Away. Well, that, or American Beauty.

    There's definitely a lot to talk about. One aspect that I've always found fascinating is the movies re-evaluation of class portrayal. For instance, why are some spirits, (like the one's boarding the train), translucent and grey while others (who attend the bath house) colorful? The movie is so fascinating because Chihiro acts as a 3rd party amongst all these different ranks of spirit. I have no idea if that makes any sense. But, yeah, it's an awesome movie. :)

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    1. Wow, that's definitely a good point that I hadn't looked into too much before, every interesting. I'll be sure to keep that in mind as I go through the film! Thanks

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  4. Short-san, be sure to listen to Eli, who made similar comments in Japanese Film. His comments on this film were among the best in the class. In general, a lot of questions came up in class with regard to some of the published criticism about the film, which turned out to be extraordinarily rich and deep. I know it sounds like I may be trying to scare you, but although I wouldn't rank the film quite as high as Eli does, I did develop a deeper appreciation of the film as a result of our analysis of it in the course, and I'm sure that a lot of us will be looking forward to seeing your commentary. I guess I should shut up now!

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    1. Thanks Mizenko Sensei, I'll definitely have to look into those areas. :)

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