Symbolism In Spirited Away

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Spirited away is an animated film from japan made in 2001 about a ten year old girl named Chihiro. The movie starts off with Chihiro and her parents driving to their new home. While driving they get lost and find themselves in a seemingly abandoned amusement park with an old bathhouse. Chirico and her family find fresh food out on one of the stalls and despite Chihiro's objections, her parents start eating the food. At this time Chihiro wanders around the park. It starts to get dark and spirits are coming out of the buildings. Chihrio runs back to the stall where her parents are to find that they were turned into pigs. After this, she meets a strange man named Haku, who then explains to her that the park is a resort for spirits and she must work there in order to free herself and her parents. This movie has many strong messages; one that stands out is its message and philosophy on environmentalism. Three major environmentalist points this film demonstrates are pollution, poor land …show more content…

One of these actions is pollution. Pollution is shown in this movie by showing how certain spirits are affected by it. One example of this is when a stink spirit enters the bathhouse to be washed. The stink spirit appears to be a big blob of mud. As the spirit begins to be washed more and more mud and garbage start coming off of the spirit until it is no long a stink spirit but an ancient river dragon. This scene shows the mass pollution of rivers all over the world. Another example of pollution is with the character Haku. Haku is also a river dragon is this movie as well. Haku the river dragon lost his home because his river was polluted and eventually paved over to build an apartment complex. Since Haku's river no longer existed he forgot his name and was forced to work for an evil spirit. This is suppose to bring light to the effect of pollution using eastern religion and

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