What Spirited Away Tells Us About Capitalism
Director Hayao Miyazaki’s masterful classic Spirited Away explores the personal journey of Chihiro, a childish and easily-scared girl who learns to accept her responsibilities and find courage in the face of magical antagonistic forces. While the film headlines the narrative of a coming-of-age story, Miyazaki has also constructed an intriguing spirit world that parallels our world’s abundance of greed and loss of identity in a capitalistic society.
The loss of identity is most apparent when Chihiro is forced to change her name to “Sen” to enter the spirit world as an employee of the bathhouse. The witch who runs the bathhouse warns Chihiro that once she forgets her original name, symbolic of her true identity and past memories, she will lose access to the outside world forever. All the other employees at the bathhouse have already forgot their original names, leading them to be forever bound to the witch. The witch’s curse and the bathhouse’s work conditions demonstrate the consequences of staying obedient to the wheel of capitalism, turning it everyday and eventually losing all sense of self. Within a Confucian society where I have been led to “follow the herd” and maintain order, I realize that I have not spent enough time reflecting on my life purpose and the long-term direction that I wanted to set myself in. Similar to the employees, I have perhaps been caught in a recursive daily routine that could lead to a forgetfulness of the past and any progress I might have made. Individuality is curtailed by society’s demand for conformity. The clothes that I wear, the music I listen to, and the repetitiveness of my schedule are more reflective of the choices other people made, not my own decisions.
The film’s interactions between characters in the spirit world also demonstrate a prevalence of materialistic desires. Kaonashi — its direct translation meaning “no-face” — is a spirit that wears a white mask with a black misty figure. While Kaonashi is initially a docile creature, he has the power to devour other spirits and absorb their personalities. He devours the bathhouse employees to garner Chihiro’s affection, as he would be similar to the people around her. The accumulation of the employees’ greed leads to the Kaonashi becoming a volatile monster that selfishly wants Chihiro through any means necessary. This transformation reflects upon the employees’ lust for wealth as their source of fulfillment. After their loss of memory, they forgo their humanity in desire of material goods, a mindset cultivated in a strict and hierarchical structure imposed by the witch.
Within a capitalistic economic system, the promotion of selfishness is inevitable. Those who wish to climb the economic ladder in a capitalistic system with rampant inequality could only do so by caring about themselves. Recently, I also saw the Palme d’Or winning, South Korean film Parasite interweaving these themes into the central narrative of the poor family. In a desire to better their situation by being employed by a wealthy family, the poor family resorts to faking university certificates and deceitfully convincing the wealthy family to discharge their current housekeeper and driver. Similar to Spirited Away, the impulses are not inherent to the characters, but rather manifested due to societal pressures. Through these films, I learned the importance of my individuality and gained insight into the larger-scale and applicable consequences of the overtly capitalist structure.
