Spirited Away Film Analysis and Psychoanalysis: The Chi-Hero's Journey

spirited away is one of those films that you just can't help but fall in love with the animation's beautiful the plot's well thought out the characters are all lovable now while the plot of spirited away is wonderfully written it isn't anything actually particularly new this type of story follows the structure and it's known as the hero's journey joseph campbell who was a professor of mythology wrote a book called the hero with a thousand faces and in that book he discusses the hero's journey and how it's a structure that's utilized in all of our folk tales fairy tales and mythologies in fact dan harmon co-founder of rick and morty has mentioned that this is the same structure that he uses whenever he writes plot points for rick and morty the structure of the story is typically as follows we have a hero they start out in the ordinary world our hero is typically incomplete they have some sort of deficit or lack they then have a call to adventure from that point our hero meets a helper or some sort of guide and this is the person that helps them cross the threshold into the new unfamiliar landscape from there our hero faces trials or tasks afterwards they find what they needed all along the hero starts their ascent back to the ordinary world they then cross the threshold from the unfamiliar back into the familiar now they've returned with some sort of enlightenment or they find what they needed all along spirited away follows the structure pretty closely and throughout this video i'm going to show you how chihiro follows the steps of the hero's journey pretty much to a t so our story starts with our protagonist hero we can see that she's moving with her family she isn't exactly thrilled about this she's very negative she makes remarks about her school how she won't like it how it's gonna smell bad she's just overall very negative towards this new chapter in her life this gives us an overall feel for how chihiro's gonna be at the beginning of her journey so the next step in the hero's journey is the call to adventure shahira and her family found themselves to be in an area that they believed to be in an abandoned theme park after they end up crashing their car taking what they believe to be a shortcut wandering through this new area her and her parents discover food stands her parents start to eat and chihiro gets worried about them eating the food her dad reassures her that it's okay that he has plenty of money and that he'll be able to pay for all the food that they can eat not wanting to eat the food that her parents are eating chihiro decides to explore she runs into a young boy and this boy tells her that she has to get out of there immediately running back to her pants to try to get them she discovers this [Music] this is where we see tree heroes called to adventure as she's now discovered that her parents are pigs and she is lost in this new mysterious place without anyone else this is the point that shahiro reunites with her guide and this god will help her cross over the threshold into the area of adventure the young boy that shahira ran into earlier his name is hanku and he serves as the god for her for basically the rest of the movie the crossing of the threshold for chihiro is the moment that she crosses over the bridge with haku now that she heroes crossed the threshold of adventure she's at the next stage in the hero's journey at this point in the hero's journey chahira has three trials that she needs to face the very first trial is getting a job at the bath house second trial is rejecting the goal from no face the third trial is getting out of the baby's room whenever she's locked in there having passed the trials jahiro is now at the part of the journey where she finds what she originally lacked to me this moment comes whenever chihiro is rotting on the back of haku after she's leaving zaniba's house the moment that chihiro tells haku that she thinks that his name is kohaku and that he's a river spirit i believe that this is the moment that chihiro finds which he originally lacked with this new revelation chihiro can start her ascent back up to the threshold crossing the last thing that stands in her way is yubaba and she has one last task for her she has to recognize her parents out of a pack of pigs that you baba has placed in front of her chihira is confused and says this there must be a mistake none of these pigs are my mom or dad at this point she's won the right to go back home and join her family she's crossed the threshold and is back in the ordinary world except this time she has this revelation it is a bit scary now that we've discussed jihiro and her hero's journey let's take a deep dive into some of the details and significant characters events and themes in spirited away and how they relate to the hero's journey when we get introduced to you baba haku says that she's the witch that runs the bath house chihiro has to convince you baba to give her a job and when she relents she gives her the name sin this type of character or archetype is a familiar one it's the trope of the terrible mother this trope is also seen in characters like the evil stepmother from cinderella the other mother and coraline and maleficent in sleeping beauty according to joseph campbell the bad mother is one the absent unattainable mother against whom aggressive fantasies are directed and from whom a counteraggression is feared two the hampering forbidding punishing mother and three the mother who would hold to herself the growing child trying to push away we can see a motherly act in the renaming of chihiro to sin we also can see how chihiro's relationship to you baba is one based on fear and punishment as she's the one who will transform chihiro into an animal if she doesn't work for her we can also see you baba as the bad mother in relation to her own baby her baby says this you'll get sick if you go outside so stay here and play with me you won't get sick yes you will that's why i've never left this room this reveals to the viewer that you baba is overbearing and doesn't want her baby to escape his room or grow up and venture out into the world let's compare this trope to another the good mother this good mother character comes in the form of zaniba yubaba's twin zeniba is caring and loving to chihiro and even allows shahira to call her granny when it's time for chihiro to return to the bath house and leave zaniba's home she's free to go off and continue her journey this is a stark contrast to you baba and it's very telling that they're twins the fact that they are twins gives the audience a clue that they're actually one in the same the perfect example of how this is in other mythologies is the figure of the indian goddess kali the image of kali in indian mythology brings about terror but also trust she has four arms the upper left hand has a bloody sword the lower hand is gripping a severed human head the upper right has a gesture signaling fear not in the lower right is held out to bestow boons campbell says this she is the totality of the universe the harmonization of all the pairs of opposites combining wonderfully the terror of absolute destruction with an impersonal yet motherly reassurance yubaba and zenive are two sides of the same coin and chihiro realizes this also when she returns and calls yupa granny just like she did to zuniba hey granny granny there are four overall tests that chihuahua must pass while she's on her adventure in the spirit world the first is acquiring a job the second is rejecting the gold from no face the third is escaping the baby's room and the last is the identification of her parents first trial that she faces is one of persistence and is really one that gets her situated and allows her to confront yubaba the next trial seems to have a bigger impact on she hero and her character development the next test the chihiro faces is from no face no face is a representation of what psychoanalysts sigmund freud and carl jung would call jihiro's shadow this is the darker part of her psyche and it's associated with her bad or immoral self as chihiro first makes her way over the bridge and across the threshold we can see that the only spirit that can siege a hero is no face no face is also a glutton and consumes a massive amount of food just like your hero's parents which causes them to turn into pigs and sends her on this adventure in the first place no face temptre here with the same type of greed and gluttony that her parents succumb to when he offers her gold chair is able to resist this temptation and rejects the gluttony that is offered to her by her shadow ware looked at yubaba and her role as a mother figuration hero and that directly ties into this next trial symbolically chihiro is the baby that's locked in the playroom she is resistant to change and doesn't want to grow up and start the next chapter in her life we see this from her remarks in the beginning of the movie this trial is the point in her character development where she literally escapes from her infantile self getting herself and the baby out of the playroom is her shrugging off that part of herself that refuses to grow up and move on with their life both of the symbols that represent shahiro's character development yubaba's baby and no face accompanied her on her way to geneva's house otto ronk a student of freud details myths of different cultural heroes in his book the myth of the birth of the hero one of the common themes in these hero stories is the infantile hero being placed in some sort of vessel and sent down a river and being adopted by new parents ronk's thoughts on this is that the meaning behind this motif is that this represents the unconscious desire to get rid of your current parents and be received by parents that are more desirable when chihiro along with the heads you baba's baby and no face set off to geneva's home they take a train that's riding on tracks that are in the ocean we've already discussed how zaniba and yubaba represent a motherly figurative hero and with this theme of a vessel carrying our hero through a body of water we can make the connection that in this scene it's your hero's desire for a new set of parents that are more desirable than her last when shahira leaves nebus she's riding on the back of haku having just met zaniba and realizing that zaniba and yuba are two sides of the same coin jihara has a new realization to freeze her and haku from yubaba shahir remembers that when she was younger she was saved by a water spirit in the kohaku river at this point in the story chihiro recognizes and accepts her parents which is symbolized by her remembering the name of the river that she was lost and then rescued in just like the train that brought chihiro to zaneba haku is the original vessel that brought shihiro back to her parents now that your hero has developed her character rejecting the parts of her that refused to grow up and give into greed she has one last task until she can rescue her parents and leave this last task is essential to the development of chihiro and it reaffirms that chihiro has accepted the humanity of her parents through the acceptance of yubaba zaniba and remembering haku's name even though yubaba's own child protests this last test yubaba says that a deal is a deal and she must test your hero one last time this last test is making sure that your hero accepts her parents and their humanity as she has to be able to discern them from a pack of other pigs earlier in the movie chihiro is unable to tell which pigs are her parents but now after her acceptance she can easily tell the none of these pigs or her parents and even suggest that this must be some sort of mistake having correctly identified that her parents weren't any of the pigs chihiro is allowed to return home with her parents they seem to have no memory of any of the events that transpired but chihiro comes back to the other side confident ready to grow up and accepting of her parents i hope you enjoyed the video did you pick up on something i missed or have different ideas on the symbolism in the film leave a comment below and let me know hit the subscribe button and let me know if there are any other films or tv shows that you'd like me to cover

Channel: CrispyAirplane

Views: 19,997

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Id: DmUlKxfFog4

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020