Message from lclark

[Anonymous]

Excellent review of Spirited Away and comparisons with the Odyssey. I agree with Kyle Moody that Chihiro must learn and grow like Telemachus and Haku indeed acts with the attributes and timely interventions of an Olympian god like Athena. Another major allusion (or reference or borrowing) is Circe's transformation of Odysseus's men into swine in Book 10, reflected, of course, in the fate of Chihiro's parents after they eat improvidently of the food of the gods (very much the way Odysseus's men become transformed after having eaten of the food provided for them by the deceptive witch-god Circe). Also Chihiro must use her intelligence and boldness to outwit more powerful beings than herself, much as Odysseus does in his conflict with the Cyclops and the Laestrygonians and with Circe herself. As Odysseus was dressed in rags and disguised as an old man by Athena in Book 13 and told by her that he must undergo blows and humiliation in silence, so Chihiro, disguised as Sen, a lowly bath-house attendant, must learn humility and other forms of self-abasement as she struggles to free her parents from their enchanted metamorphosis and, in the process, acquires wisdom, initiative, courage, self-reliance (in the full Emersonian sense) and an understanding of life far more complex and profound than that possessed by her thoroughly bourgeois parents before and after their porcine transformation.

I liked especially the scene with the "stink god" revealed, after his combative cleansing by Chihiro, to be not a stink god at all but a river god, made loathsome and mephitic by pollution (a theme central to Miyazaki's The Princess Mononoke). This is an allusion to the battle of Menelaus and his men with the slippery and mutable Proteus, the old man of the sea, as recounted to Telemachus in Book 4. I agree that Spirited Away could be used to supplement the Odyssey and increase student engagement, particularly as Miyazaki's film is far more imaginative than the pedestrian attempts made so far to film bits and pieces of Homer's epic. Chihiro's adventure is also, at heart, a story about the centrality of family in our lives, a theme Miyazaki illustrates vividly and unforgettably, just as Homer does.

Leigh Clark
Monroe High School[Edit by="lclark on Jun 11, 10:54:51 PM"][/Edit]