Miyazaki's Little Mermaid: A Goldfish Out of Water
2014; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 66; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/jfilmvideo.66.3.0018
ISSN1934-6018
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoAbstract When Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away reached American theaters in 2002, children by and large were enthralled, but some of us adults were confused. This English-language version of the original Japanese film bore the Disney logo, but it was clearly not Disney. It was longer, for one thing, with odd pauses during which the characters seemed to be pondering,¹ and the line between good and evil seemed blurred and shifting. On the other hand, it also did not fit the American stereotype of Japanese animation--too detailed, too expensive, and with a surprising absence of exploding robots. One thing about this movie did strike a familiar note: like many Disney features, it presented imagination as a sometimes dark and dangerous thing. That imagination is both a gift and a curse is hardly a new idea; its double-edged presence in children’s literature has long attracted scholarly attention. But for an animated film to warn viewers of the hazards of something without which it could not begin to exist seems downright hypocritical. When the most creative, surrealistic animated images are made to serve a story that preaches reason and restraint, they seem almost to erase themselves, like the path through Tulgey Wood rubbed out by broom dogs in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951). Disney publicity has never officially acknowledged any ambivalence about its chief product; what would a commercial for a Disney movie or theme park be without the word "imagination" or its near relative, "dream"? Yet even the post- Walt animated films of the neoclassic period, which began in 1989 with The Little Mermaid, may convey, in the tension between their pictures and their plots, a deep sense of unease.²
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