1. Introduction
The works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are known worldwide and loved by fans, critics, and film makers alike. They have an enormous influence on American films, particularly the animated films of Disney and Pixar – in fact, Disney produces the English dubs of Studio Ghibli's films for release in the United States. The studio has been praised for its feminist characters, rather than criticized for furthering stereotypes and traditional gender roles as Disney has. The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which the prominent female characters in Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's animated films Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away – two of the studio's most popular and iconic films – promote feminist ideals, and whether or not they provide valuable examples of feminist films for other film makers to mimic.
For the purpose of this paper, I will be adopting Merriam-Webster's definitions of feminism, which is the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, and feminist, which is someone who believes in feminism (2018).
1.1 Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke
Asking this question has serious implications for the future of female representation in cinema. Analyzing these two films in particular is especially illuminating as they were created with female representation in mind (Miyazaki, 2001).
Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001) – "Sen and Chihiro's Spiriting Away" is the direct translation – is a 2001 film written and directed by famed animator Hayao Miyazaki and produced by the Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli. It was released in Japan on July 20, 2001, and since then has remained the most successful film in Japanese history, grossing over $30 million domestically and $289 million worldwide. It has received widespread critical acclaim – it is frequently ranked among the greatest animated films and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards. In 2016, it was voted the fourth best film of the 21st century as picked by 177 film critics from around the world and was named the second "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far" in 2017 by the New York Times. With such extensive critical and public acclaim, it is evident that Spirited Away is one of the most important films in Japanese history.
Spirited Away follows ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino as she and her parents are traveling to their new home when her father takes a wrong turn and they find themselves in an abandoned amusement park. They go to explore it, and unknowingly enter a magical spirit world. Chihiro's parents are transformed into gluttonous pigs, and Chihiro is approached by a young boy named Haku. He promises to help return her to her world, then leads her to an exquisite bathhouse where she finds a job working for the witch who could send her home.
Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997) was released in Japan on July 12, 1997 and was also written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It won Best Japanese Movie, Best Animation, and Japanese Movie Fans' Choice at the 52nd Mainichi Film Awards, and Best Picture at the 21st Japan Academy Awards. It was the highest grossing film in Japan in 1997 and held the box-office record in Japan until the release of Spirited Away. Though not quite as well-known as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke is a cult favorite and has inspired its share of American films, such as James Cameron's Avatar (2009).
Princess Mononoke is set in Japan in the late Muromachi Period (from 1392 to 1573) (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002). It follows an Emishi prince named Ashitaka as he travels west to find a cure for the demonic corruption that has infiltrated his village. There he finds an ironworks run by a woman called Lady Eboshi and worked by women she had saved from brothels. Ashitaka then meets San, a human girl who had been raised by the forest's wolf gods, and who was in conflict with the neighboring ironworks.
2. Literature Review
Although women have represented the majority (53%) of moviegoers since 2009 and are 52% of the US population (MPAA, 2016), they do not get a chance to see other women on the screen as much as their male counterparts. Even the women they do see are often defined by men, or as Dr. Martha Lauzen, the executive director of The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University puts it, "they're the girlfriend, the mother or the wife. Their value is determined in relation to the people they bed, marry or birth" (2014).
The center found that women comprised just 12% of protagonists in the top-grossing films of 2014, and it's been getting worse, not better. Over the past decade, there has been a drop of three percentage points from 2013 and a fall of four percentage points from 2002 (Lauzen, 2014).
2.1 Disney
There are even fewer female leads in animation than live-action, and even those are problematic (Murphy 2015). Looking at Disney's films is especially illuminating as it is arguably the world's most prominent media conglomerate, and it is reasonable to assume that nearly anyone who watches American films will have been exposed to Disney. There has been plenty of criticism on Disney princesses' "damsel" stereotypes, and though it seems that princesses have slowly become more feminist, Nicole Sawyer of James Madison University argues Disney is only "updating its narrative of femininity in response to social changes" (Sawyer, 2011).
Four anti-feminist themes emerge from Disney's animated films in a study done by Towbin, Haddock, Zimmerman, Lund, and Tanner, three related to what it means to be a woman: "(a) A woman's appearance is valued more than her intellect; (b) Women are helpless and in need of protection; (c) Women are domestic and likely to marry" (2011). These themes are harmful to the self-worth of the women presented with them and need to be replaced in future films.
2.2 Social Cognitive Theory
When studying television and films it is imperative to consider their impact on viewers. According to market research firm Childwise, children aged six to eighteen spend an average of six hours in front of a screen each day, and much of that watching TV or movies (The Connected Kids Report, 2014).
The majority of developmental psychologists have come to view children as "active rather than passive, involved in appropriating information from his/her environment to use in organizing and constructing his/her own interpretations of the world" (Corsaro, 1997). This can be seen through social cognitive theory. Social cognitive theory was developed in 1977 by Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura and suggests that "people develop expectations for real-world situations from observational learning while consuming media" (Hall et al., 2012). It is arguably the most important element in how children learn "gender appropriate behavior" (Papalia, Gross, & Feldman, 2003).
This theory has been tested and has held true. In a study analyzing romantic relationships in top grossing romantic comedies, authors Johnson and Holmes found evidence supporting the theory when they determined that people "look to relationships presented in film to learn what to expect from real-life relationships" (2009, p. 353). Assessing gender through this lens is especially pertinent, as Bussey and Bandura point out that: "Gender development is a fundamental issue because some of the most important aspects of people's lives, such as the talents they cultivate, the conceptions they hold of themselves and others, the socio-structural opportunities and constraints they encounter, and the social life and occupational paths they pursue are heavily prescribed by societal gender-typing" (1999, p. 676).
Through social cognitive theory we can see that the media children watch directly influences their beliefs about the roles of women, and for girls specifically, their self-worth. Films have been described by Nicole Sawyer (YEAR) as:
… holding a powerful role in forming the attitudes, values and behaviors of its viewers. Young people could be persuaded to think a certain way from the things they watch on the television. The representations of race and gender within the media affect the viewers whether through stereotypes or ideals to live up too. This is because the media is seen to play a significant role in offering a socializing influence on the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of its audience. (p. 5).
However, there are limitations with social cognitive theory. It assumes that changes in what is perceived will automatically lead to changes in the persons consuming the media, and while this is most often the case, it is not always what occurs. In addition, it focuses heavily on processes of learning and in doing so disregards biological and societal predispositions that also influence the persons' beliefs. But despite these limitations, it is still a compelling reason to strive for representation in media.
3. Studio Ghibli
Understandably, film makers' gender-based beliefs and attitudes are shown in their films. However while changes have occurred over the years about how people view women's roles in society, this change has not been reflected in contemporary film (Gunter 13). In movies, women are still considered highly emotional individuals. They are less competent than men and dependent on their male counterparts for emotional and financial support (Gunter 15-16). In accordance with social cognitive theory, young men and women see these characters and base their ideas of gender roles off of them.
Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki recognized the lack of strong female role models and decided to address the issue head-on. About Spirited Away he said, "I felt [Japan] only offered such things as crushes and romance to 10-year-old girls … and looking at my young friends, I felt this was not what they held dear in their hearts, not what they wanted … I wanted to make a movie especially for the daughters of my friends" (2001). If Miyazaki has succeeded in creating feminist films, they could provide valuable examples for other directors to mimic. So, to what extent do these films represent strong female characters?
There have been plenty of studies on the lack of feminist films, but few on films that are feminist. While there are articles commending Studio Ghibli for its strong female characters, there have been no studies on how feminist these films truly are. By studying the extent to which Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke represent strong female characters, this paper aims to address the need for female representation in film.
4. Approach
To begin exploring this question, this film analysis combines feminist film theory with social cognitive theory to explore the female characters in these films. Studying animated films is especially revealing, as they can be studied in direct relation to the real world. Animated film 'is concerned with metaphysical reality – not just how things look, but what they mean… [as opposed to] the live action film's job to present physical reality" (Wells, 1998). Animation is the most ideologically dependent of all cinematic forms because everything has to be made from scratch. Everything in animation is intentional; "you literally have to create the grain of the wood" (Keegan).
Unfortunately, because film analysis is a relatively new field, there is no set methodology to analyze it. Film analysis is defined by Jeffrey Geiger and R. L. Rutsky in their book Film Analysis: A Norton Reader as a changing and creative process which aims to explain and understand "how motion pictures are constructed, how they create meanings, how they affect us, and how they are intricately imbedded in the cultural and ideological frameworks we inhabit" in order to "question conventional assumptions, discover new insights into films and into the culture or time that produced them… and reveal problematic aspects of our own thinking and assumptions" (2016).
Any framework provided on conducting film analysis is broad, however additional assumptions are defined by the "three central assumptions of contemporary film studies" outlined by Bill Nichols in his textbook Engaging Cinema: An Introduction to Film Studies:
Firstly, that film's social implications are paramount even though the cinema relies on aesthetic means to convey these implications affectively; secondly, viewers respond to films in direct relation to their actual social and historical situation, and as a result, the perceived significance or greatness of a film will vary with time and place; and thirdly, different viewers and groups of viewers in the same time and place interpret any film, including great films, in different, but understandable ways" (sec. 'To the Instructor').
This research adopts the assumptions above, and will follow the steps for analysis set by SAGE Research Methods in the SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis, which are outlined in the following organizer: