千与千寻

To tell a compelling and effective story, storytellers must construct an immersive world in which that story takes place, a process known as world-building. Different world-buildings require different approaches or details than others, but ultimately the intention is the same: suspend our disbelief, draw us in, make us enter the world the author has created. No matter how far-fetched and imaginary a story is, a fictional world that it belongs to must have a certain connection to the viewers to be approachable and associable.

Animation, among all existing kinds of mediums, is often discussed as a special agency to convey such intertwining link to our world on the screen. While at first, it might sound contradictory that animation, an inherently unrealistic medium, can create a realistic world, such ambiguity is preciously the core that makes animation such a unique medium apart from others. Yet, how can animation consistently achieve a realistic, tactile sense of reality that grounds us within the fictional world, even if that world is far removed from our own? In her paper “Animation and History,” Esther Leslie suggests that animation, in essence, is disordered and fragmentary. Each component detaches, reattaches, and misattaches from and to our existences, intermingling the realm of consciousness and unconsciousness, logical and illogical to strike a difficult balance between fantasy and reality. In this essay, I would like to explore the illustriousSpirited Away(Hayao Miyazaki, 2003) through the lens of “fragments in animation”, analyzing in-depth apropos of Leslie’s theory and howSpirited Awayutilizes fragments to keenly achieve a sense of realism, unlike others.

According to the Leslie, components of animation can detach, reattach, or misattach from and to our experiences and existences. Each function plays a different role in connecting or departing with our understandings of the world. Among the three, detachment is the most straightforward one, yet is significant enough to epitomize the fundamental of animational principle. Animators can take the common rules and bend or break them however they wish, leading the viewers into a world that could never possibly exist. Every object that seems preposterous to possess any sense of meaning in real life is resuscitated in the animated realm. As Leslie notes in the discussion of the free-wheeling side of animations, “ If down below on earth is the world of body and action, then up there above (animation) is the world of mind, thought, imagination, and other histories (27,)” it is virtually an entity that embodies our fantasy and realizes our dreams. Subjects occurred in animation are stripped away from their original representation while physical laws or values that we are accustomed to are deemed to be broken. However, even the wildest fantasy is deeply rooted in real life. Animators reattach various aspects of reality to fabricate an illusion of physics to emulate the semblance of the physical world where there isn’t one. In the words of Leslie in accounting the “different nature” of animation, “its nature is of a different kind to the one we inhabit, and yet it is not distinct from it. Animation presents a parallel world. (30)” Unlike films that strive to put the world within one’s reach, offering the most realistic visual sensation to the viewers, animation embodies an underlying familiarity with the real world in subtle details such as verisimilar environments, paced storylines, and nuanced characters, albeit the fictional world may be drastically different from what we might encounter daily. Both detachment and reattachment, aforementioned, hold a coherent definition in terms of their intrinsic meaning and functions. Segments in an animation detach from reality to extend the latitude of imagination, wandering the realm of creativity, while others emanate a sense of verisimilitude, connecting the viewers to one's personal experience and attachment. However, misattachment, the final piece in Leslie’s notion of “fragments of animation,” is not as clear-cut as the other two. The exercise of misattachment in an animation is a process of creating ambivalence, imposing an alternative layer of meaning on a subject that overturns many of our basic assumptions about quotidian life. Subjects that hardly applicable to our understanding of the world manifest their union to reality via misattachment, and vice versa. With such disjunctive yet intuitive interaction, they serve more of a purpose than solely creating visual and emotional satisfaction, making the new-established world just as fascinating and sophisticated to take in as it is for us in reality.

Leslie denotes animation as a medium that is significant and to the extent necessary for the sake of our curiosity and desire to discover. Yet, no film has fulfilled such desire likeSpirited Awayin which components are detached, reached, or misattached to establish a channel that straddled across the reality and the fantasy. It is obvious to see howSpirited Away’s story drastically detaches from reality, as Susan Napier, in her essay, defines the film’s narrative as “ethereal illusiveness” (76). The story opens with Chihiro and her parents accidentally stumble their way into a magic land, which opens up a chain of bizarre incidents. First, Chihiro's parents turn into pigs because of their irresponsible gluttony. Soon after, Haku, a total stranger who asserts that they have known each other for a long time, demands her to find a job in this world if she wants to rescue her parents and return to the real world. Then, with Haku’s help, Chihiro successfully secures a position at this resplendent bathhouse peopled by spirits and gods. Solely judging the narrative,Spirited Awaydelineates a spiritual world that can only exist in our imaginations. Human will disappear if they do not consume any foods from the magic land. Animals can speak, behave just like we do. Spirits and gods from ancient myths and folklore are ubiquitous.

Nonetheless, despite the fantasized nature ofSpirited Away, one would surprise that how deeply a sense of realism is ingrained in the film. In contrast to a lot of animated films’ approach to reality that aims to capture every strain of hair on a character,Spirited Awaysubtly approaches a sense of life from a different perspective. It often focuses instead on trivial details that make reality what it is and hide them within the film, triggering us to notice aspects of life that we see every day and to appreciate the beauty. In the scene where Chihiro is going to check out her parents in the pig house with Haku, series of actions are shown to portray her departure as she is putting her feet into the shoes in the furnace room. Normally, this would just be a simple sequence depicting Chihiro’s on-going actions. However, Miyazaki, in creating this sequence, is trying to imitate how, in reality, a little girl does it. As a result, in the film we see Chihiro does no just put her feet in the shoes, rather she taps her toe, making sure it is snug and tight, and then she goes running off. Such little magic moments that obliquely reattach to reality typify the film’s close connection to our daily surroundings. While it is unbelievable, inSpirited Away, the bathhouse is more alive and real than it ostensibly appears. There are employees with jobs to do with a coal-powered furnace that virtually powers the entire place. Every client (spirits) seems to have their own tastes and preference for the baths. With all of these details, it feels like there are countless stories unfolding in the background. How these employees wind up in the bathhouse? Where is the train heading to? What’s the story of Kamji? If we choose to follow another employee in the bathhouse instead of Chihiro, how will the story end up? There are such depth and richness inSpirited Awaythat feels like the entire story extends beyond the edge of the frame, waiting for us to discover.

The film is also filled with ambiguity in which elements mismatch to spark new interpretations. The spirit world itself proffers a great example of such misattachment. It is an awe-inspiring and magnificent world while is centered in an abandoned amusement park. The bathhouse is ostensibly sumptuous, however, all the staffs seem to get involuntarily tied up with this place. A stink spirit who seems to be the most thorny guest that the bathhouse ever encountered, turns out just to be an old river spirit that is jeopardized by human wastes. All of these elements create an ambivalent tone that is simultaneously inviting but ominous. Also, the characters inSpirited Awayare portrayed as ambivalent as well. Often, their role in the film is unclear and shifted. Haku, who dedicates everything to help Chihiro to return to the human world, is seen as offish and inexplicable from the words of bathhouse staffs. No-face, a mysterious creature, seems like a gross monster of greed and consumption in the first half of the film. Later, however, it turns out that it is just an innocuous spirit that gets tangled up in his love with Chihiro. Even Yubaba, the cruelest character in the spirit world, has shown us her amiable side when seeing how she treats her grandson, and by the end in valediction, even Chihiro calls her granny as an expression of her gratitude.

It is by blending elements like these; at once understated, magical, and verisimilar, thatSpirited Awayepitomizes the fragmentary yet informative nature of animated films. After all, animation is just another vivid expression of our incredible imagination for communicating universal ideas and pure emotions.Spirited Awaychallenges our expectation of what animation can be, and helps to preserve the whimsy and creativity we all used to have.

Reference:

Esther Leslie, “Animation and History,” in Animating Film Theory (Durham: Duke, 2014), p. 25- 36.