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Apologies / Princess Mononoke
O hai LJ. Sorry I've been away so long. I've even failed in my stated intention to mirror the things I post up on mhuzzell.wordpress.com. I'll catch up on that at some point soon (though I'll probably back-date them, so I don't know whether that would put them in your feeds or not).
In the meantime, here's a half-formed set of musings about a film I watched a month ago, pulled from the clutter of half-formed writings that are currently languishing all over my desktop:
I have finally (finally!) watched 'Mononoke Hime', and I have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings about it.
One, the most surface-level, is simply "OMG THIS IS SO GOOD WHY HAVE I NOT WATCHED IT BEFORE? WHY DID NO ONE MAKE ME??" Or rather, why did I not take their recommendations sooner? I have a lot of friends who are really into Studio Ghibli as a thing, and at their urging I've been starting to explore them, though 'Mononoke Hime' is only the second I've seen. The first, 'The Grave of the Fireflies', was also impressively beautiful, though I was amused to see that the writer, when questioned, was all, "What? No, this isn't an anti-war film. It's about how young'uns in Japan need to respect their elders, who lived through it!" -- and fair play; it's not an anti-war film. It's a film depicting an anti-war reality.
Similarly, I was impressed by the implicit gender politics of 'Mononoke Hime', although I don't think it could be called 'feminist' by any reckoning. It's just that it was so refreshing to see women in so many prominent roles. The two main human adversaries, the industrialist and the forest-dweller, are both women -- as is Moro -- while the male protagonist is relegated to the role of Strong Female Character. One result of which, besides it just being nice to have female characters who are neither Totally Super Awesome nor Totally Super Evil, is that in the nature vs. industry dichotomy, neither side gets gendered. I'm not sure if the whole "nature=women, industry=men" trope is a thing in Japan, but I think if Eboshi had been a man, western audiences would almost certainly have read that into it.
That was what struck me most while I was watching it, but in retrospect, I've been thinking more about the actual subject matter. I can feel the reactions of two selves, thinking about it. 'Mononoke Hime' was first released in English in 1999, when I'd have been eleven or twelve. Had I seen it then, I'd have identified very strongly with San, even though now my perspective is more like Ashitaka's. I hated humans, then. I thought we as a species were bullshit. And I don't really blame myself. I grew up in an area that was heavily forested, but with human settlements expanding all the time -- another prominent memory from that year is of encountering three men and a large machine felling trees in the woods behind my school, and having an, um, altercation. Now there are no woods behind that school. The population quintupled between my birth and my majority, and it's still growing -- and still, as far as I know, with almost no urban planning, no infrastructure for the expanding population, just more and more and more suburban developments, pustulous little clusters of cul-de-sacs with insultingly ironic names. One built right next to where I used to live drained so much silt into the wetlands downhill from it that ecologists said they'd take about a century to recover; it was named "Harmony".
I'm writing this from a train, heading north up the east coast of Great Britain. Somewhere between London and Peterborough, I saw a forest out the window. Not a large one, but still, a proper forest, not just one of these constricted little copses that are more often granted that name here. I got so excited that I had to text someone to tell them about it. Then, I got terribly sad that the mere fact of seeing a forest in England was remarkable enough to warrant excitment. That most of what I see out the window are fields, with little stands of trees here and there among the hedgerows, and every now and again, straight rows of poplars, planted for windbreaks. Windbreaks! In a country that used to be nearly 100% forested! Now, the largest expanses of trees you'll see all in one place are nearly all in plantations. Which, please remember, are not forests. They are monocultures. They are as ecologically empty as cornfields. (Although I'd still rather have cornfields than highways and strip malls.)
In the meantime, here's a half-formed set of musings about a film I watched a month ago, pulled from the clutter of half-formed writings that are currently languishing all over my desktop:
I have finally (finally!) watched 'Mononoke Hime', and I have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings about it.
One, the most surface-level, is simply "OMG THIS IS SO GOOD WHY HAVE I NOT WATCHED IT BEFORE? WHY DID NO ONE MAKE ME??" Or rather, why did I not take their recommendations sooner? I have a lot of friends who are really into Studio Ghibli as a thing, and at their urging I've been starting to explore them, though 'Mononoke Hime' is only the second I've seen. The first, 'The Grave of the Fireflies', was also impressively beautiful, though I was amused to see that the writer, when questioned, was all, "What? No, this isn't an anti-war film. It's about how young'uns in Japan need to respect their elders, who lived through it!" -- and fair play; it's not an anti-war film. It's a film depicting an anti-war reality.
Similarly, I was impressed by the implicit gender politics of 'Mononoke Hime', although I don't think it could be called 'feminist' by any reckoning. It's just that it was so refreshing to see women in so many prominent roles. The two main human adversaries, the industrialist and the forest-dweller, are both women -- as is Moro -- while the male protagonist is relegated to the role of Strong Female Character. One result of which, besides it just being nice to have female characters who are neither Totally Super Awesome nor Totally Super Evil, is that in the nature vs. industry dichotomy, neither side gets gendered. I'm not sure if the whole "nature=women, industry=men" trope is a thing in Japan, but I think if Eboshi had been a man, western audiences would almost certainly have read that into it.
That was what struck me most while I was watching it, but in retrospect, I've been thinking more about the actual subject matter. I can feel the reactions of two selves, thinking about it. 'Mononoke Hime' was first released in English in 1999, when I'd have been eleven or twelve. Had I seen it then, I'd have identified very strongly with San, even though now my perspective is more like Ashitaka's. I hated humans, then. I thought we as a species were bullshit. And I don't really blame myself. I grew up in an area that was heavily forested, but with human settlements expanding all the time -- another prominent memory from that year is of encountering three men and a large machine felling trees in the woods behind my school, and having an, um, altercation. Now there are no woods behind that school. The population quintupled between my birth and my majority, and it's still growing -- and still, as far as I know, with almost no urban planning, no infrastructure for the expanding population, just more and more and more suburban developments, pustulous little clusters of cul-de-sacs with insultingly ironic names. One built right next to where I used to live drained so much silt into the wetlands downhill from it that ecologists said they'd take about a century to recover; it was named "Harmony".
I'm writing this from a train, heading north up the east coast of Great Britain. Somewhere between London and Peterborough, I saw a forest out the window. Not a large one, but still, a proper forest, not just one of these constricted little copses that are more often granted that name here. I got so excited that I had to text someone to tell them about it. Then, I got terribly sad that the mere fact of seeing a forest in England was remarkable enough to warrant excitment. That most of what I see out the window are fields, with little stands of trees here and there among the hedgerows, and every now and again, straight rows of poplars, planted for windbreaks. Windbreaks! In a country that used to be nearly 100% forested! Now, the largest expanses of trees you'll see all in one place are nearly all in plantations. Which, please remember, are not forests. They are monocultures. They are as ecologically empty as cornfields. (Although I'd still rather have cornfields than highways and strip malls.)
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