Cultural Writings of the Fairy Tale: a Spatial Reading of Three Studio Ghibli Productions
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Cultural Writings of the Fairy Tale: a Spatial Reading of Three Studio Ghibli ProductionsAuthor(s)
Date
2020Citation
Barros-Grela, Eduardo. "Cultural Writings of the Fairy Tale: a Spatial Reading of Three Studio Ghibli Productions", in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Magic, ed. Lydia Brugué and Auba Llompart. Leiden: Brill, 2019, pp. 262-272 https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004418998_026
Abstract
[Abstract] In this chapter I delve into the many postmodern manifestations of Studio Ghibli’s
productions in order to uncover the ‘shades of magic’ that engulf the fairy- tale genre
and are re- told as parodical discursive manifestations of the anti- fairy tale. In particular,
I look at three different productions of the Japanese franchise, all of them directed
and written by Hayao Miyazaki: Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, 2001),
Howl’s Moving Castle (Hauru no Ugoku Shiro, 2004), and Ponyo (Gake no Ue no Ponyo,
2008). These three films expose a refractive correlation with space, as they provide a
contradictory resignification of magical places that have a rhetorical impact on their
protagonists’ mindsets. As divergent forms of heterotopias, both the natural and the
artificial worlds portrayed in these films appear as magical environments in which the
objects acquire a sense of place and are conceptualized as autonomous and performative
entities. Magic is therefore interconnected with nature, allowing an ecocritical
reading of the films based on their productions of space. The discourses of such
spatiality will be the analytical focus of this essay, in which I interrogate the cultural
projection of the fairy tale in terms of transnational folklore.
Keywords
Studio Ghibli
Fairy tales
Space
Japan
Folklore
Fairy tales
Space
Japan
Folklore
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ISBN
978-90-04-41898-1