Week 6
What are the underlying thematics of Princess Mononoke? How does it ‘defamiliarise’ its historical setting, according to Napier (2005)?
Princess Mononoke described a story that a tribe developed their technology without protecting nature environment, then they got natural retaliation. When we observe the depth of the thematic, this narrative related to many themes which are all thought-provoking. First of all, this film reveals human’s selfishness and avarice. For example, there are leprosy patients and prostitutes who are the bottom people living in the iron town village. They believe that if they work hard and generate more iron product, they could have their own happy life. Only because of their wish of “living happily”, they kill mercilessly the lives from the forests and destroy the lands.
On the other hand, the forest spirit Shishigami loves every life and protects the whole forest with its love instead of any violence. Furthermore, it uses its sanctified death to provoke people to cherish all of the nature, because every one is the one part of the nature. This vital comparison evokes strong repercussions.
Therefore, “ It[this film] is a wake-up call to human being in a time of environmental and spiritual crisis that attempts to provoke its audience into realizing how much they have already lost and how much more they stand to lose.”(Napier, 2005, p.236)
Napier also points out that the film Princess Mononoke not only “defamiliarize two important icons in Japanese culture: the myth of the feminine as long suffering and supportive and the myth of the Japanese as living in harmony with nature” (2005, p. 233), but also defamiliarize its historical setting. For example, the 14th century in which the time this story has been set, it is commonly about the aristocracy life in the city or other high cultural theme such as samurai literature. However, this story takes place in mythical forest instead of city and the main characters are few samurai peasants and feudal lords who do not usually appear on the stage of history. Thus, Napier states that this film is “the story of the marginals of history.”
Napier, S. (2005). Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hi Elle
ReplyDeleteI have also posted on this same question as you have chosen. I however didn't get the chance to watch the screening of Princess Mononoke so your post has detailed parts of the story which I was not aware of. I would agree with you that Princess Mononoke's themes are very thought-provoking. Especially as you have mentioned the people of the iron village continuing their work which involves destroying the forests but they feel powerless to do otherwise and hope that all the slogging away that they do there will be some positive result in the end. However this is not the case in real life and this film clearly shows this. This film has been affective with using its choice of 'marginals' in history to bring this message across more effectively which is a 'wake-up call' to everyone.
What I love about Princess Monokoke is that the themes are universal. We see the pull of consumerism and its negative effect on the planet. Then we see the equality and happiness that is possible by living with nature, instead of against it. It shows us that by moving away from our natural state i.e with nature, we bring about our own problems of class and gender, for example the prostitute and the leper working and suffering forever in the hope of reaching the same level as everyone else. Perhaps if we all stepped back from the onslaught of westernization and focused instead on what ties all of us instead of what divides us (eg. race, sex) we would see that these problems no longer exist. Definately we have lost more then we care to count, and this is scary, but what there is yet to lose is terrifying.
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