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Rethinking Human-Nature Relationships in the Time of Coronavirus: Postmodern Animism in Films by Miyazaki Hayao & Shinkai Makoto
• By David Ryan. Miyazaki moves beyond illustrating simple contrasts by creating relationships in apposition (not opposition), and this interdependency often encourages experiential growth for his younger protagonists.” Writer-director Hayao Miyazaki’s films are carefully planned adventures into the realms of innocence and experience. His abstract themes and dense stories have garnered deep admiration from western audiences, for Miyzaki gives prominence to his younger characters by imbuing them with a strong sense of curiosity, stubbornness, and resilience. His popular fantasies have a reputation for being difficult to grasp for adults let alone intrepid children, but his stories do have recognizable patterns, such as settings that depict rural and city life, characters who evince fear and generosity, and narratives that illustrate abundance and modesty, secrecy and openness, conflict and peace. These commonplace binaries are often expressed through more focused themes, many of which illustrate characters growing toward a stronger moral agency actualized in a world shaped by opportunity, selfishness, isolation, and danger. Love, too, composes the core of Miyazaki’s st •
Abstract: Issues we are confronted with in the age of the Anthropocene, such as climate change, extinction, and the coronavirus pandemic demand a fundamental rethink of human-nature relationships, but at the same time we are faced with a ‘crisis of imagination’, which is highlighted by the paucity of stories or narratives that enable us to fully engage with these issues. We have a ‘climate crisis’ as well as a ‘crisis of culture’ and both derive from the same source: epistemological limitations in the paradigm of modernity. The most problematic limitation is the fact that our social scientific knowledge has blind spots when it comes to nature and spirituality which makes it almost impossible for us to rethink human-nature relationships in a meaningful way. Miyazaki Hayao and Shinkai Makoto, however, directly illuminate these blind spots by making nature and spirituality central features in their animation films. This opens up new epistemological and ontological spaces in the hearts and minds of a global audience, making it possible to imagine something new. And that ‘something new’ is ‘postmodern animism’ which emerged from the fusion of The Miyazaki Interlude: The Conscious and Unconscious Intervals of The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Japanese director hayao miyazaki