1. Spirited Away incorporates many elements from classical Western literature and
folklore: people who magically turn into pigs (the Odyssey); the hero’s quest;
the prohibition against eating the food of the Faerie (Irish folkore); a girl
who goes to Grandma’s house (“Red Riding Hood”); the need to solve riddles. Do
these familiar elements make the story easier to understand, or does their appearance
in a Japanese film make them too alien to be helpful?
I
do think these elements make the story easier to understand because there is in
fact a sort of familiarity to it. Because we see these elements in so many different
forms, books, movies, our everyday lives, we become accustomed to the fact that
they are trying to get a point across and that they represent something
specific. Through this familiarity we are able to make that text to self or
text to text connection that we are taught to do early on in our lives,
something that says “oh yeah, this is like when this happened in this other
book”. Then when something is familiar then we can also start to expand our
knowledge on it; for example trying to solve a math question when looking at it
for the first time. If I knew nothing about math I would be very confused, but
if I have a prior knowledge of math I can look at the question, say “okay, here’s
what I know” and then work from there. Because I have a prior knowledge of
these elements I am able to have a better understanding of the message the
creator is trying to communicate. I don’t think it’s alien to see these elements
in a Japanese film because they have already been integrated into many other
different types of stories and media. These days it seems very common to find
these elements when telling a story.
5. Does it make sense to think of bodies of water as possessing spirit? Have you ever had a relationship with a river, a pond, an ocean, or the rain that prompted you to speak to water? Have you ever been rescued by a body of water? Have you ever cleaned a body of water?
I believe it does make sense to think of bodies of water as possessing spirit. “Spirit” is defined as the principal of conscious life and water does in fact have a great association with life. It creates life, saves life, endangers life, ends life, houses life; if we didn’t have water then we wouldn’t be here. I’ve never had a relationship with water where I’ve talked to it but I do love the rain; to me, it has a calming element to it. I grew up sitting on the porch with my mom, listening to and watching the rain fall. She never wanted me to be afraid of the rain and I think it’s because of being close to the rain that I find it so soothing, as if perhaps it is a spirit saying there is nothing to be afraid of. I have tried cleaning a body of water before. During the summers my mom and I would go along the trail that goes by the river and we’d pick up any garbage we could find. We did this in honor of my friend who was a big environmentalist who passed away at the age of 12.
