Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is an animated film by Hayao Miyazaki that tells the story of a girl named Chihiro. She visits an abandoned amusement-park, but finds herself trapped in a world where ghosts live. Most of the creatures in Spirited Away are unique and different from each other. However, they all share one characteristic: their body proportions are disproportional when compared with their size. The strange similarities that Miyazaki depicts evokes strong emotions of appreciation and fear in the viewer. They have large eyes and bodies that resemble blobs, but they are quiet. These three features emphasize their helplessness, and the cuteness of the creatures.
The characters’ cuteness begins to overshadow their ominous nature. Chihiro, in a very early scene, encounters a round, large creature that has the body shape of a carrot. The creature appears strange and foreign at first. It is also large in comparison to other characters. Chihiro remains close to the spirit, which is a bit frightening at first. This encourages the audience to pay more attention to its form. When the viewer notices how round the spirit-radish’s form is, he begins to consider him cute, rather than threatening. The general perception is that cute objects are appealing while threatening ones are repelling. It is therefore a question as to how a creature can be both scary and threatening, yet still cute. Miyazaki also applies these opposite connotations to characters from Spirited Away, including the radish-spirit. This tension between cuteness versus threat can be used to reveal a deep and obscure relationship between Miyazaki’s films and consumer cultures.
Sianne Ngai defines “cuteness”, according to her article in the journal “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde”, as “cuteness”, which comes from the instinctive desire of ours to manipulate or control other objects. People are most apparent in their treatment of infants and children who have still-baby features like a round, puffy face. People are often seen pulling on the cheeks and morphing babies at will, while still calling them “cute”. Figures that are “blobbish”, malleable and lack many distinguishing features can also be considered cute because they can be easily shaped. Ngai says that these are the characteristics that define cuteness. These characteristics show why the radish character in Spirited Away looked cute despite his strange appearance. He was round and had indistinct faces, and it seemed like he could be morphed or manipulated easily. These factors don’t answer how the radish and other characters can be both cute and frightening at the same.
Ngai’s cuteness definition may apply to a wide range of situations, but we must remember that in Spirited Away the radish-like spirit appeared to be both cute as well as scary. Ngai asserts that there are traits that define cuteness and characteristics that contradict it. She gives as an example glamour, which she says is seen by many people as something untouchable and high-strung. While models are stunning and pleasing to the eye, they can make people feel helpless. Objects that are cute, however, seem to be easy to control. Ngai, in response to this contradiction, states that cuteness (or weakening) would “immediately destroy the Schein concept of glamour”. Ngai says that cuteness can also be “subjectively enforced” (816). Glamour, on the other hand, is a realm that is threatening and cannot be trampled upon. Cuteness can’t be imposed onto the world of glamour.
Fear of an alien and horrifying creature is what elevates glamour above the common man. The radish spirit is cute, but glamour and cuteness are not the same thing. Sprited-Away is based in part on Miyazaki’s Japanese history, and we can answer this by looking at Ngai’s articles. Ngai states in her article that “kawaii”, which is a Japanese word for cuteness, has a “sonorous similarity to kowai,” which means “scary ‘…” (822). This similarity cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. These two words may have originated from one another. Miyazaki’s ability to combine cuteness and threat in Spirited Away is understandable. Ngai’s argument against the notion that “cuteness is traditionally associated with a complete lack of any threatening …” (823)” provides further evidence for the link between cuteness, and threat. Ngai argues that since observers perceive cute objects as easily manipulable, they are “always motivated by a violent desire of control” when we acknowledge a cute object …”. The violence directed by observers towards cute items is then reflected on the observers, giving a false impression of aggression. Ngai claims that cute objects can both be aggressive and helpless. The tension between cuteness in Spirited Away and the threat it poses can be seen through Ngai’s paradoxical description. We can then see the purity of consumer culture and the corruption that is a part of it.
We can see from Japanese culture that cuteness is a very important part of the relationship.
Miyazaki uses this unusual tension to create tension, but why? No-Face’s portrayal as a tall spirit is both cute and frightening throughout the film. No-Face is neutral between cuteness and threat in his first encounter with Chihiro. In his first interaction with Chihiro, No-Face has a neutrality between threat and cuteness. He is like a looming shadow that looks threatening because of his resemblance of a Ghost, but also shares some of Ngai’s traits of cuteness. No-Face has a combination of cuteness with a threat. This balance is affected by the results of his economic transactions. No-Face is disappointed and nervous when he gives Chihiro free tokens to pay for her services and she politely declines. As a result, he is cute. No-Face gets into a bad situation in which he’s essentially “hobbled” and that suddenly makes him cute.
No-Face transforms into an enormous, sharp-teethed beast when he interacts with a small spirit of a frog. No-Face is transformed into a frog-eating monster. In these parallel scenarios, humility breeds cuteness and greed threatens destruction.
The morality of Chihiro and of the frog can be used to further understand the transactions. Chihiro is humble and pure when she rejects No-Face’s tokens. The Italian word “chiaro”, which means light, is similar to the Japanese “Chihiro”. This similarity speaks more about Chihiro’s pure nature. She represents the pure consumer who is often poor but only wants what they need. The greedy, corrupt frog, who steals the money, represents the corrupt consumer who is never satisfied. He becomes a carnivorous beast–quite different from his awkward and cute depiction–attempting to eat all the creatures in the bathhouse. Miyazaki illustrates the corruption of consumer cultures and the inevitable collapse of greedy economies by showing these moral representations. No-Face is cute because it represents the sustainability of this economic policy. No-Face’s cuteness represents the sustainability of an economy. When No-Face’s cuteness diminishes and becomes ferocity the corruption is what will ruin an economy. Miyazaki says that in order to sustain an economy, it is important for consumers to be pure and humble.
When we look at Spirited Away from Ngai’s “cuteness” perspective, we see that cuteness is a threat. This is something most viewers don’t see. This symbolism, which represents the corruption and purity of consumer culture in a fascinating way, also shows how an economy founded on greed is unstable.
