Dah_Hurka_Nurka

Title: Spirited Away Director: Hayao Miyazaki Medium: Animated Film Key Ideas of Belonging: Entering the Spirit world as a human is a harsh transition which Chihiro is forced to experience. Her switch from a normal ideal world under the care of her parents to a Spirit world in which humans are not welcomed entails her experience with exclusion from a society. Due to humans being spotted easily through scent by the population in the spirit world, Chihiro is discovered quickly and is looked down on. This is shown in the scene where Chihiro has to acquire a bath token from a superior in the bath house which she works at. The superior realises she is human and instantly discriminates calling her dense and refusing to give her a bath token which she requires to perform her job, whilst he denies her request he open handily gives out tokens to any other employee who needs one. When Chihiro first arrives in the Spirit World she is alienated. In the Spirit World, belonging is something which you earn, and it is through working in the bath house and proving her worth, Chihiro is able to experience a connection. When Chihiro starts her job at the spirit bathhouse, she works idly and ineffectively. Lin correctly suspects that Chihiro has never worked a day in her life. Through the assistance of Lin, Chihiro gradually learns to keep up: she works diligently and even undertakes the monumental task of washing the stink spirit until its true river spirit form emerges. Belonging, sometimes, can be bought, but if you do anything to harm the association to which you belong, as No Face does in Spirited Away, that sense of societal standing is lost. No Face is a reappearing character in Spirited Away who plays no main role until one scene which portrays ones greed and wants to belong. No Face uses an ability of his, to generate fake gold, and to give it away to the population of the bath house, in doing so he gains the worship of the people, and attracts greedy people; No Face then consumes these gluttonous people, which leads to a mass of hatred to him and his return to seclusion. Connection to prescribed text: In Romulus my Father, Romulus is disassociated from the Australian community because he is a migrant just as Chihiro is from the Spirit World because she is a human. Romulus is displaced, separated from his homeland, conveyed through the metaphor of his disconnection to the Australian landscape: “He longed for European society, saying that he felt like a ‘prisoner’ in Australia.” Romulus was generalised with all other migrants by the Australians when he arrived due to his ethnic appearance, and as a result was discriminated and branded as a “New Australian”, similar to Spirited Away in which, humans are sought out by scent and instantly singled out. Alike Spirited Away’s concept of, belonging must be earned, Romulus my Father parallels this through the representation of a migrant in a foreign country who struggles to be accepted in the community. When Romulus first arrives in Australia he is looked down upon just for his social standing, he is further shamed when he makes the mistake of setting fire to the farm and is written about in the news, “the local newspaper ridiculed the New Australian for his folly.”After time he gains the respect of the Australian community by his constant providing of his hard work. Like Chihiro, Romulus sets out with a work ethic in order to acquire a standing in the society they are in. A sense of belonging to places can be gained through experiences with certain people and land. Raimond’s sense of belonging to the Australian land spawned from his experiences which he gained Frogmore. One of the main experiences which Raimond goes through which changes his perspective of the landscape and generates his sense of attachment to it, was the scene in chapter 5 where he sets of to hunt. In this scene he describes the landscape as a harsh one, calling it “scraggy”, “sparse” and “primitive”, harshness is beautiful to those who know it. Alike this Chihiro fits into the Spirit World and in particular the bath house because of her experiences with the people. In particular, When she cares for the child whom at first is a foe, soon befriends her and shows her that she is capable to fitting into the community at the bath house. Chihiro also acquires the feeling of fitting in to a certain place, her belonging to the Bath house and the Spirit World in general was gained after all the events and experiences she had with the people there. Her sense of this is seen at the end when she says