Ponyo is about the daughter of a foppish ocean wizard so disgusted with pollution he actively wants humanity to be destroyed. Princess Mononoke is about industrialization killing unknowable forest gods. Pom Poko is about tanukis fighting deforestation using their magical ballsacks—if you thought for one second that just because Miyazaki didn't write or direct that one it meant I would resist the temptation to write a sentence containing the words "magical ballsacks," then I'd like to thank you for choosing this column as the first thing you've ever read by me. Nice to meet you!
Studio Ghibli
Perhaps where Miyazaki's anti-capitalist tendencies are most obvious is in Spirited Away, a movie so good that by comparison, it makes The Godfather seem like The Godfather 3 and The Godfather 3 seem like Tyler Perry Presents Madea: On Trial at the Hague. Spirited Away is so rife with symbolism about Miyazaki's belief in the dehumanizing effect of capitalism that someone much smarter and less lazy than me could probably write an entire book on it, but for now, we'll have to settle for a few examples. To start, consider the film's setting:Â
Studio Ghibli
The bathhouse is beautiful, elaborate, tempting—but we see firsthand that it operates by having a workforce that is paid virtually nothing if anything at all. When we first meet Kamaji, the freaky Dr. Robotnik-ass six-armed boiler man, he describes himself as "a slave to the boiler that heats the bath." He also tells the adorable little soot sprites that if they stop working, the magic that gives them life will wear off. The message is clear: here, you produce value, or you die.Â
And the person taking all of this value is Yubaba, the cruel witch. Her quarters at the top of the bathhouse are ornate and luxurious, a far cry from the squalor from which the employees live. It might also be worth noting that her quarters are the only part of the bathhouse decorated in a Western-style.
Studio Ghibli