As a kid, I was fortunate enough to grow up on Studio Ghibli feature films, with titles such as Spirited Away, Ponyo, and My Neighbour Totoro all exemplifying the best that family-friendly animation has to offer. Returning to Studio Ghibli as an adult, I’ve come to appreciate in greater depth the films’ strengths: their beautifully hand-drawn frames, their celebration of Japanese culture, and their depiction of female protagonists.
There is something special about the female protagonists in Studio Ghibli films that, at first, I struggled to place because of my predominately Western lens. Without a doubt, these women stand for female empowerment, but it is a method of female empowerment I did not see in Hollywood’s leading ladies. In popular Western media, a strong female protagonist is characterised largely by her adherence to fundamental binaries. On the other hand, Studio Ghibli characterises a strong female protagonist by her rejection of fundamental binaries. It’s clear to me now that the female protagonists in Ghibli films stand out against Hollywood’s standards because of their uniquely nuanced, multi-dimensional representation.
To truly appreciate the significance of multi-dimensionality in women’s characterisation, it’s worth examining the Western context surrounding female leads. The Hollywood standard for female empowerment plays to gender binaries. That is to say, traditional notions of masculinity and femininity remain key to much of Hollywood’s character creation. In fact, it’s rare to see gender more explicitly performed (hi there, Judith Butler!) than in popular Western media: female characters are built upon a foundation of kindness, passivity and vulnerability, while male characters are built upon a foundation of strength, aggression and stoicism. As such, the feminist icons we tend to see in Hollywood derive most of their badassery from qualities associated with traditional masculinity. What’s being subverted is not the gender binary itself, but how that binary functions. More specifically, how its qualities and assumptions are allocated.
Look at Kill Bill’s renowned female protagonist, The Bride. Audiences come to recognise her power as that of the male action hero: emotionally reserved, physically capable and absurdly aggressive. She is empowered, certainly, but that strength is a direct by-product of her allegiance to masculine stereotypes. A more PG example can be found in Disney/Pixar’s Brave. The film’s female protagonist, Merida, seeks empowerment specifically by her resistance to traditional femininity, as she refuses to take a husband. However, that resistance is also characterised by stereotypically masculine qualities: she is a talented fighter, a loud-mouth and a rebel. To me, these protagonists both exemplify female empowerment, but they do so from within the confines of traditional gender binaries, thereby subscribing to the very structures they seek to subvert.
Studio Ghibli, on the other hand, pays little mind to such binaries. They imbue their female protagonists with a myriad of strengths and weaknesses that do not abide by such gendered classifications. Of the 23 feature films produced by Studio Ghibli, sixteen have female leads, a uniquely large pool of examples to choose from when it comes to female representation, but I’ll start by examining the 1997 masterpiece Princess Mononoke. The titular character, Princess Mononoke, takes the form of a chillingly powerful young woman. As the adoptive daughter of a 200-year-old wolf god, Moro, Princess Mononoke is frequently referred to as the ‘Wolf Girl’. As such, she resists human conventions like gender, which is precisely what gives her a compelling complexity. Throughout the film, Princess Mononoke exhibits both traditionally masculine qualities and traditionally feminine qualities, but relies wholly on neither, deriving her true strength from somewhere beyond such boundaries.
The very first time we see Princess Mononoke, she is sucking a bullet out of her wolf mother’s wound. Her mouth is stained with blood, and her glare is fierce. Right off the bat, we can tell that this is a character who does not abide by fundamental binaries. She is not quite human, as she radiates an animalistic savagery, but she is also not quite animal, as she demonstrates a certain humane intelligence. This scene also introduces Princess Mononoke’s relationship to blood and water, symbols of the natural world that recur throughout the film, but are also strongly reminiscent of traditional femininity, with ensuing ties to caregiving. Later on, Princess Mononoke nurses the film’s dual protagonist, Ashitaka, back to health. Because Ashitaka is too frail to eat, Princess Mononoke chews up his food and spits it into his mouth, an act that feels both maternally/femininely coded and distinctly animalistic. Once again, she exhibits an amalgamation of binaries that would not be achievable within stricter confines. Such complexity is perfectly summarized by Moro, the wolf god and Princess Mononoke’s adoptive mother, who claims, ‘my poor, ugly, beautiful daughter is neither human nor wolf’. Indeed, Princess Mononoke is one oxymoron after another, moving freely between human and animal, man and woman.
Another of my personal favourites from Studio Ghibli is their 2001 feature film Spirited Away. The female protagonist in this example is Chihiro, a ten-year-old girl who finds herself enslaved by a powerful witch after her parents steal food from the spirit world. Compared to popular Disney titles that feature young female protagonists, Spirited Away’s central protagonist is notably unique. Not only does Chihiro subvert the typical damsel-in distress-narrative by aiming to save her parents and the handsome princely character she meets along the way, she also defies typical aesthetic expectations placed on women: ‘rather than having large eyes and upbeat mannerisms […] [Chihiro] has small features and a sullen expression, as well as a lanky and boyish frame’. [1] That’s not to say she is masculinely coded, but rather she doesn’t commit herself one way or the other to the gender binary. Chihiro’s grouchy demeanour and emotional vulnerability demonstrate a multi-dimensionality that realistically appeals to the girls she represents.
There is no right way to represent female protagonists. I’m not saying Studio Ghibli exemplifies the pinnacle of women’s empowerment on screen, or that their methods are completely superior to those seen in Hollywood, but there’s something undeniably refreshing about watching characters like Chihiro and Princess Mononoke in action. Studio Ghibli’s female protagonists do not experience gender as a regulatory tool, but as a fluid, nuanced afterthought. It is in this multiplicity where much of their strength derives.
References
[1] Zoe Crombie. 2019. ‘“Spirited Away” and the Intersection Of Feminism And Marxism.’ Screen Queens, June 25, 2019. https://screen-queens.com/2019/06/25/spirited-away-and-the-intersection-of-feminism-and-marxism/.
Princess Mononoke. 1997. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Japan: Studio Ghibli. DVD.
Spirited Away. 2001. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Japan: Studio Ghibli. DVD.
Sophie Breeze is currently studying a Master of Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing at the University of Melbourne. She is very interested in contemporary feminist theory as the basis for her creative work.