babeyjocey

[babeyjocey]

it really frustrates me to think about how people are inevitably going to take Remmick’s one (1) singular statement about how much he resents the way the Irish were colonized and forcibly converted to Christianity and use it as fuel for “actually he had a point” and “he was right actually” and “he’s not really the villain here” posts, when the whole point is that Remmick is, through the vampiric hive mind he’s creating, forcibly assimilating people into yet another manipulative and parasitical system. he doesn't value the cultures of the people he assimilates—notice how all the vampires he turns dance to his culture's music using his culture's dances, and how he only uses the languages or knowledge other vampires have to offer when he needs to manipulate someone. Remmick is extremely transparent about the way he sees the people he turns as resources to exploit.

he’s perpetuating a cycle that he claims to hate and resent, and I think the movie is pretty damn clear about the fact that he doesn’t see anybody as valuable or useful to him except as prey and as pawns—otherwise he would just, you know, focus solely on people who actually consent to being turned. but he looked sad in that one scene and he’s an apparently attractive white cis man so people are gonna bend over backwards justifying all the harm he did.

[babeyjocey]

Film Review: The Nightingale (2018)

Director Jennifer Kent’s second film The Nightingale was relesed and played at the Sundance Festival for the first time in fall of 2018. Audiences at the festival were giving a tense warning before the viewing began, advising of the triggering themes that would be addressed during the film’s over two-hour runtime. From depictions of sexual assault, murder, and direct allusions and visuals depicting the Tasmanian genocide, the film serves as a harrowing and bleak representation of the reality of how brutal grief can be, both from the perspective of main characters Clare (Aisling Francois) and Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) through their experiences in proximity to the violence inflicted on the people they love and care for.

The film opens on a small cottage in the British occupied area of Tasmania in the 1820s during the Black Wars, where a man speaks in Gaelic to his wife by the fireside, waking her and their newborn infant from their sleep. The woman is Clare, an Irish fugitive that was caught stealing and was sent to Australia amongst a slew of other convicts, where who works presently as a singer. In the first thirty minutes of run-time, it is established that Clare is stationed to sing for the army-men during their meals and is harassed and regularly assaulted by the lieutenant, Hawkins (Sam Claflin), as well as routinely denied a transfer because of his want to keep her. After Clare’s husband drunkenly confronts the lieutenant and causes Hawkins to lose a recommendation from his higher ups to be stationed up North, he and two other soldiers barge into Clare’s cottage, assault her, and shoot her husband. During the ordeal, one of the soldier’s is charged with keeping the infant quiet and throws the baby against the wall in a panic, killing the baby before hitting Clare over the head with the butt of their rifle, suspecting her dead. However, the tides turn when Clare awakes and, in the depths of her grief, buries her husband and infant, and treks across the Australian countryside with only her horse and a rifle to find the men and deal with them herself, which is reminiscent of the Last Dance quote, “The neglect or repression of grief may contribute to further genocide by perpetuating a cycle of violence focused on revenge,” which embodies the message of the film. 

The secondary storyline that parallels that of Clare’s focuses around aboriginal Letteremairrener man “Billy” or Mangana, who Clare seeks out to help guide her through the dense wilderness to find the lieutenant and his men. He agrees however begrudgingly with the promise of coin and travels alongside Clare where the audience is introduced to the broader backdrop of what is happening in Tasmania through the eyes of Billy as well as the personal violence inflicted on those within its borders through the eyes of Clare. 

The Nightingale at its heart is a dissection of grief and loss both at a physical and visceral level through the loss of loved ones, and on a level that analyzes personal, intrinsic loss of identity. Throughout the film while on her journey to exact her revenge, Clare is troubled by haunting dreams. In one such dream, she hears her baby cry out in the dark forest and dances with her husband in the thick of the trees, only to be starkly reminded that they’re no longer here. In the Last Dance text, one quote applies perfectly to the situation Clare finds herself in after the death of her child. It reads, “Childbearing losses are mourned not only for what was, but also for what might have been.” Although Clare wasn’t bearing her child at the time, I still think that this quote explains the magnitude of the loss she felt when not only her husband, but her child was taken from her, robbing her of a future with her family. In the beginning of the film when she meets Billy, he says he’s seen her before and asks where her baby is. Clare replies, “I don’t have no baby,” straight-faced, though that night she’s haunted by the dreams of her child’s cries.

For Billy, his grief is entirely dissimilar from Clare’s, though is just as prevalent in the story. Billy is an aboriginal Letteremairrener man that lives in Tasmania during the Black Wars, which were fought between British colonials and the aboriginal Australians of Tasmania. The Black Wars were horrific and told the truth of what British colonization was: the unjust genocide propogated against the aborginal population so the British could maintain more reach and land. Through Billy’s eyes and perspective, the audience understands his hatred for the white invaders in his land expressed through his frustration of being forced to assimilate or face death, represented through the hanging bodies of aborigines peoples from the treeline as he and Clare navigate through the country.

While Billy’s narrative focuses primarily on the grief of losing his homeland and his people as a whole, he, too, is personally affected by the violence inflicted by Hawkins. The soldiers had been traveling with Billy’s uncle, Charlie, using him as a guide to lead them up North to Launceston so Hawkins could speak to his higher ups himself when Charlie promptly stopped in the middle of an open field. “He we are,” he said. “You want all the land? Here is the land.” Charlie’s act of defiance against his white oppressors is met with death, being shot by the same weapon used to kill Clare’s family days earlier. And later on when Billy discovers him, he diverts Clare’s journey to give Charlie a proper send off, performing a ritual on his body. As in the teachings of Jen, lectured by Confucius, Clare is “able from one’s own self to draw a parallel for the treatment of others,” and mourns Billy’s loss with him, however briefly. In Despelder's Last Dance text, it refers to how genocide impacts the personal greiving process of those affected, reading “in the wake of traumatic bereavement from such losses, there may be few opportunities to grieve. For example, in Rwanda, many of the dead did not receive proper funeral rituals.” This sentiment is highlighted by specifically Billy’s narrative, though the lack of opportunity to mourn is expressed by Clare’s; the two have a singular focus that overtakes them after they are directly impacted by death in their lives.

Clare and Billy have both experienced momentous losses depicted on and off screen, and The Nightingale is careful to not mirror their experiences in a way that calls for competition of grief or comparison of loss, but in a way that asks the audience for their sympathy, their capacity for understanding, and to experience their loss alongside them as the story progresses. By the end of the movie, Clare has killed the man who murdered her baby and is dealing with the trauma of both taking his life and seeing Hawkins again, struggling to make the decision to end his life as well. Billy and Clare make it to Launceston where she discovers Lieutenant Hawkins in a bar speaking to his higher ups, and she decides to enter in after him and confront him face to face.

Inside the bar, Clare emerges with no weapon or means to kill Hawkins and instead confronts him, telling him that he can tell her to shut up or threaten to kill her, but his nightingale died when he took her family from her, and “you can’t kill what’s already dead.” Hawkins attempts to deny her accusations of rape and the killings of her family as the bar remains silent, with him going so far as to hit her to silence her, which is to no avail. Clare reclaims her identity and expresses her grief through song, singing in part “I wish, I wish, I wish in vain / I wish I had my love again.” before leaving the bar and slumping to the ground where she’s collected by Billy, who later that night sheds his English clothing and paints himself traditionally, using a spear and entering the lieutenant’s room, killing him. In doing so, Billy is shot and retreats back to the riverside with Clare where he declares that he’s not going anywhere to the sky - “I’m home,” he says.

The film ends not with Billy bleeding on the beach or the townspeople coming after them, but with Clare singing in her native tongue to the open air as the sun rises. “... my true love will come at the break of day, and he’ll strike up a song out of love for me.” In allowing herself to grieve, to finally mourn the loss of her husband and child, Clare is able to not end the cycle of violence perpetrated against her or Billy, but is able to detach from the feelings of wrath and revenge that plagued her for the days since they died. She is able to sing a song of mourning alongside Billy knowing that while nothing has fundamentally changed, the man who has caused her pain is gone even though all across Australia there were thousands more just like him. His death allowed her and Billy reprieve, however short.

I don’t like this film because I can say that I relate to losing a husband or a child, or that I’ve experienced the ravages of war and genocide in my home country; I like this film because it touches upon our human necessity to crave a response to death, and a way to exert our control over the situation. We have no control over life and death, and the reason why this film is able to resonate with people so deeply is because this is at the core of its message. By killing, Clare is continuing the cycle of violence that took her family from her, but at the same time, it’s a way for her to exert control over the situation and avenge the loss of her loved ones. As Schopenhauer said, “The world is the battleground of tormented and agonized beings who continue to exist only by each devouring the other.”

The Nightingale stresses that the actions of others can be an uncontrollable force, and the only thing we have control over when facing death is how we choose to respond.

Beautifully haunting.

★ ★ ★ ★ / ★ ★ ★ ★

[babeyjocey]

sylvia plath

[babeyjocey]

02.24

[babeyjocey]

And the birds, as they always had, sang at the sight of the fire as if it were dawn – flying through the smoke and flame with unending glee.

Beholden, work in progress.

[babeyjocey]

Ecce, the eyes of the beholder.

[babeyjocey]

feb 17. winter.

[babeyjocey]

Spirited Away: The Relationship Between Self Identity and Cultural Tradition in Post-War Japan

When exploring deep ontological questions in relation to our position on Earth and in nature as human beings, reflecting on who we are and the very matter of our existence, answers are often searched for in religious texts and philosophical writings that predate most modern audiences. Specifically addressing the era of postwar Japan from 1945 to 1989, a period of time in which questions of an ontological nature were asked and inspired by a loss of identity in the height of violence witnessed in the war and the disillusionment from the national Japanese identity, questions of how the Japanese people fit amongst society in the midst of the modern era emerged. In terms of the postwar Japanese state, “[that of] which saturates society with myriad regulations and commands considerable powers, and which falls into the category of the strong state in political science classification - barely exists in the Japanese consciousness,” a sentiment which is expressed by this shift in society following the conclusion of WWII that emphasized an exploration of the Japanese cultural identity among its people as a response to the disassociation and disillusionment experienced as a result of the war’s outcome. The zeitgeist of this era in particular was characterized by this shift from traditionalism to modernism, a shift perhaps expressed and witnessed more tangibly in the Japanese art and literature of the period in which these ontological and philosophical questions of existence and nature manifested into artistic explorations of the topics and Japan’s overall “complex cultural identity.”

In the midst of this shift in which the cultural and social foundations, as well as the actual landscape of Japan was changing, so was the direction of cinema, particularly animation. One studio, Studio Ghibli, highlighted animated films whose themes and narratives in part attempted to address these questions of ontological significance. While films such as 2008’s Ponyo and 1989’s Kiki’s Delivery Service address these themes of identity, existence, growth, and environmentalism with Japanese culture and mythology interwoven in the films’ narratives, one Studio Ghibli film in particular encapsulated all of themes themes excellently, providing a narrative that surrounds the personhood and personal identity of Japanese youth, integrating the climate of prewar traditional and postwar modern Japan in the story of a little girl trying to find her way home. This film is Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away.

Founded in 1984 in the midst of the last years recognized of the Japanese postwar era, the Japanese animated film studio, Studio Ghibli, was co-founded by company president Toshio Suzuki, producer Yasuyoshi Tokuma, screenwriter Isao Takahata, and director Hayao Miyazaki, who wanted to pursue larger feats outside of the animation studios they previously worked for. Their inaugural film, 1984’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, set the direction for the animation studio, with several films afterward taking the same tone and inhabiting the same enigmatic and enchanting style of Nausicaä. These common threads and tropes within Studio Ghibli films consisted of mostly child-centered or child-driven narratives, appealing to a younger demographic and fanbase in terms of aesthetic and style whilst simultaneously containing subtle themes that relate to an older demographic as well. The gorgeous animation style is characteristic of Studio Ghibli as highlighted by films such as 1997’s Princess Mononoke and 2005’s Howl’s Moving Castle, both of which explore expansive worlds that possess such exquisite detail from the skies, to the trees, to the blades of grass. What connects the narratives of these films is the “interlinked trends” summarized in the two words “kokusaika (internationalization) andfurusato (native place or old hometown)… these trends, while appear[ing] to represent opposite trajectories actually exist coterminously as refractive processes and products, and... together they index the ambiguity of Japanese national identity and its tense relationship with cultural identity (or identities).” Director Hayao Miyazaki himself, whether consciously presenting these themes within each film or not, portrays this pivotal perspective of the Japanese mindset and those existential questions of what the Japanese identity is and how that coincides with Japanese citizens’ personal understandings and individual identities. These concepts are ever-present in media produced by Studio Ghibli, none more apparent than in one of the studio’s most acclaimed films, Spirited Away. 

Released in August of 2001, the film Spirited Away originally entitled Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi or ‘Sen and Chihiro’s Spiriting Away’ follows the young protagonist Chihiro’s adventure through an enchanting world envisioned as a bridge between modernity and myth, intertwining kami, traditional Japanese creatures, and spirits with a modernized setting, grounding this world through Chihiro’s perspective. Containing “echoes of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz,” Spirited Away illustrates to audiences a story of innocence, fantasy, and identity conveyed through Chihiro’s unwanted adventure, highlighting the subtle indirect commentary of Miyazaki specifically related to the deterioration of Japan’s relationship to cultural tradition which was severely severed during the transition from its traditional prewar roots into postwar modernism. What separates Spirited Away from other fairytale-esque fantasy media is the relationship the film has with mythology and folklore, using the Shintō religion and beliefs as a basis for the introduction of kami and the spirits that inhabit the world Chihiro finds herself enthralled in. The usage of these traditional creatures and concepts reads as an intentional choice by Miyazaki who uses Spirited Away as a vessel by which to deliver a response to the overconsumption, capitalism, greed, and loss of identity in Japan. In essence, “Spirited Away offers disturbing visions of excess, liberating moments of carnival, and a sharp critique of the materialism and toxicity of contemporary Japanese society through its complex vision of a quasi-nostalgic fantastic realm threatened by pollution from within and without,” with the central themes rooted in a ideal “return to Japan,” that emphasizes Miyazaki’s perspective and hope for a future Japan that still upholds the traditions, cultural attitude, and identity of  prewar Japan in the modern era. At the heart of Spirited Away, this conversation and discussion of what it means to be Japanese, the identity of Japan and individual identities is one had through the eyes of a human child at the mercy of the spirits, a little girl trying to free herself and her parents to get back home.

In the film, Spirited Away begins with a familiar experience for some children: moving away from home. On the way to their destination as Chihiro laments over the life the family essentially leaves behind, they become lost on a road marked with shrines. Eventually, the family discovers an abandoned theme park. Author and professor of Japanese Studies Susan J. Napier discusses the beginning sequences as a continual crossing of boundaries with the first being the family entering and crossing a tunnel, and with the theme park being a point of interest, due to Chihiro’s father “explicitly describ[ing] it as a remnant of the economic bubble that Japan went through in the 1980s. The theme park suggests the artificiality and the ephemerality of the bubble and, perhaps, inevitability of its bursting.” In this theme park, while Chihiro is hesitant to eat the food readily available and displayed in one of the many restaurants, Chihiro’s parents immediately decide on eating the food rather ravenously, suggesting to put down a credit card afterward. This action, perhaps a lesson in greed and an outright display of the overconsumption rampant in Japan, turns Chihiro’s parents into pigs. This introduces the threatening nature of this shift from Chihiro’s reality to the spirit world, with this narrative itself “blur[ing] the distinction between dream and actuality.” The first friendly face Chihiro encounters is Haku, an older boy who’s character aids Chihiro throughout the film, actively helping her attempts to get her parents back and free both them and herself from this strange new world. As Chihiro navigates this world, the audience is introduced to the bathhouse - a location which introduces the most pivotal parts of the narrative that illustrate the themes of capitalism, greed, overconsumption, and identity as it relates to modern Japan.

In Spirited Away, the bathhouse is a central location that Yubaba, the film’s central antagonist, runs as the exploitative boss who subjugates and takes advantage of her workers. Yubaba’s role is representing that of modern Japanese society, exploitative, uncaring of individuality and only production and the usefulness of those as it relates to her goals. The primary way Yubaba is able to exercise this power and subjugation over others is through a deal or contract signed with parties in this spirit world in exchange for work, with Yubaba owning their names. In the film, “Yubaba has Chihiro sign a contract and takes three-quarters of Chihiro’s name, i.e., three characters 荻野尋 out of Ogino Chihiro 荻野千尋 from the signature, leaving only Sen 千… Yubaba controls people by depriving them of their names,” with the article later referencing a work of Ursula K. Le Guin which reads “who knows a man’s name holds that man’s life in his keeping.” In this way, Yubaba is able to strip Chihiro of a part of her identity, reducing her to Sen, a literal number further exemplifying the reality of Chihiro’s function at the bathhouse an within this society not only first detested as a human, but then resembling the rest of the workers as a cog in their machine that fuel this overconsumption and greed literally as the furnace which fuels the bathhouse being represented as a pig. This reality of feeling as if one’s personal identity is stripped in favor of being another worker uplifting a corporation that does not perceive their individuality and values consumption and product over personhood is a common sentiment that was expressed in the postwar Japanese era. While individuality at the time was favored as democratization occurred within the country, “what was striking about the Japanese after World War II was [Japanese people’s] disregard for liberty in another sense; they did not concern themselves with who controlled coercive power.” In the case of Spirited Away, Yubaba is this coercive power whose influence over this spirit world forces the workers to give away a piece of themselves and their identity to gain a position in the workforce, which is a piece of social commentary too overt to ignore or dismiss.

This commentary directly reflects the perception of individuality in Japanese society, with “the Japanese concept of society [being] analogous to an organism which is created naturally, spontaneously… The individual is one cell of the organism that is dependent on the whole for its being. In this way, the distinctions between the individual, society, and the state become blurred. The Japanese word for human being/individual, ningen, can be translated as ‘among people.’ The notion of individual autonomy is weak.” Therefore, the overarching ontological question that is present here is the basis of identity - who are you and what sets you apart if you are one in a crowd? More specifically addressing this emphasis on names,  does my name shape part of my identity and make me who I am, or does who I am make my name have weight? These are questions that are critical and left ambiguous for a large part of the narrative, although attempted to be addressed when it is revealed to Chihiro that if she stays long enough, she will forget her name and become, in essence, an eternal slave to the labor enforced by Yubaba as Haku is. 

The world of Spirited Away transcends the scenes of the bathhouse or the theme park, reaching deeper and evoking this “ethereal elusiveness” which makes the film not an interesting watch, but one that is “at once beautiful and fragile in [its] complexity.” In the film, there is an essential relationship between its character and the natural world around them, therefore in Chihiro and Haku as well. In the first few scenes of Spirited Away, Haku emerges as a friendly and familiar face, appearing to be one of the only human characters in the film who gains the trust of Chihiro as he attempts to help her escape the theme park before nightfall when the kami and spirits begin to inhabit the park. Haku, despite never having met Chihiro to her knowledge, knows her name and claims “I have known you since you were very small,” a statement which is true to Haku although he cannot remember it. In this world, memories are fickle because of the value of work and labor being a force that clouds the sense of self. Toward the end of the movie as a solution to Chihiro’s situation stuck in this world is approached, having aligned herself with the mysterious No Face, it is revealed by Chihiro that Haku’s true identity is that of the Kohaku River that runs throughout this part of Japan, an integral part of the natural landscape that had also lost its way, swept up in this world of corporate greed and modernism. The metaphors here, when looking, are heavy-handed, with the idea of the Kohaku River, a natural presence that is reminiscent of this “old Japan” being forgotten and only remembered by a spirited young girl whose journey walking alongside the spirits and eventually gaining acceptance into this world is able to discern.

While audiences are unable to read the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, I think it’s clear what Chihiro is trying to represent when you watch the film especially regarding her interactions toward Haku; Chihiro is the enigmatic representation of the new generations of Japan who are attempting to navigate the complex aspects of Japanese culture from the traditional world to the modern world alike. Spirited Away is special in that it frames this coming of age film within the lens and perspective of a young person’s conflicting view of Japan,  taking into consideration the “prolonged recession” that marked the 80s and 90s, the zeitgeist of the postwar era, the “paradigm shift” that occurred between the pre and postwar eras, and especially the traditional, natural world that Miyazaki frames as being left behind. 

The world of Spirited Away transcends the scenes of the bathhouse or the theme park, reaching deeper and evoking this “ethereal elusiveness” which makes the film not only an interesting watch, but one that is “at once beautiful and fragile in [its] complexity." The aesthetics of Spirited Away reflect “Miyazaki’s views about the environment, reflect[ing] a deep synthesis of his artistic and aesthetic philosophy, along with his ethical, social, and political views.” Through assessing the relationship between Miyazaki’s portrayal of post-war Japan and ecology as it relates to Japanese identity and personhood, we emerge with an understanding of Miyazaki’s values heavily aligning with an environmentalist standpoint in juxtaposition to the rampant expansion of technology and intrusive agriculture that suppresses Japanese nature. The attention Miyazaki pays to aesthetics, specifically his use of color and of the spirits he shows inhabiting Spirited Away, illustrates a close relationship to the concept of a “return to Japan,” as a method by which we return inward to nature. In Spirited Away, Miyazaki’s hope, in essence, for this appreciation of nature is conveyed through Chihiro’s careful approach and understanding to the foreign aspects of this world that she respects at face value, and highlighting the need for this cultural attitude even in light of the embrace of technology and the country being so removed from traditional prewar Japan.

Spirited Away is an unconventional film that showcases this blinding hope of embracing Japanese past to find meaning in the present and inform our relationship to the world we live in now instead of favoring a world that could be as a result of modernization and technological advances that can, at times, suppress the beauty of our world. In Spirited Away, there is one scene that expresses this ecstatic beauty and conveys these messages loud and clear without saying anything at all. During the film, the first true moment of quiet reflection comes on the train which runs through this spirit world. Upon entering the train, we see the spirits on screen as transparent figures that mold into their seats, unmoving, not looking up at the wonder of a train traveling by the water or the little girl and her No Face friend aboard. This scene is another moment of respite that is illustrated after a series of action, a moment of calm for Chihiro as she is allowed to breathe. Director Hayao Miyazaki calls this, the moment of breath between scenes, “ma,” inviting an audience to imagine ma as a space between a clap, that moment which allows for the audience to find a connection to the protagonist where they take this breath with her during a transition. Between the stills of the hand painted animation, this train ride is the moment of reprieve before the last stretch of the movie where Haku’s real name is revealed, and Chihiro returns and passes Yubaba’s test of identifying which pigs are her parents when presented with a drove of them. Upon her correct guess, Chihiro and her parents are returned back to the human world with Chihiro receiving thunderous applause and cheers from the spirits and the kami who once detested her very presence.

By this point in the narrative, Chihiro has emerged from this chrysalis of childhood innocence into a girl changed by her experience and unafraid of the strange and new experiences in her life that will follow. Chihiro in herself is an example of the hopeful balance that Miyazaki’s film illustrates -  a representation of the new generation that will emerge from this postwar era into something new entirely with a renewed and comprehensive understanding of traditional and modern Japan, transcending this terminology and persisting deeper to the root of the problems the nation faces. Miyazaki’s film conveys a hope in the future, that in accepting these parts of Japanese national identity, we can begin to accept these parts of a Japanese identity on a personal level, reconnecting with what it means to be Japanese and who Japanese people are collectively while still valuing this pivotal sense of self one searches for in these ontological questions of existence.

Spirited Away, in essence, was never an outright answer to these questions of why we exist, but a poignant film by which we can find meaning in our world and ourselves that transcends the need for an answer. Spirited Away is the lesson book by which we can embrace our lives and our struggles, ones that may seem to overwhelm and drown us, and to value those moments of ecstatic beauty amidst it all - those moments of ma, of breath between action, of silence between a clap.