Economic Analysis of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away

“The factory owner steals the largest part of the work day from each worker. That’s how he gets rich at our expense.” The workers are forced to work more than thirteen-hour days with little pay. Most of the workers knew how the system worked but if they did complain they would be fired immediately and someone else would do the job. The job market for the majority of an uneducated workforce is a cycle with little pay the workers hardly make little for their family much less to improve there lives. There was hardly any other option for men but to work in factories unless they were upper class women, however could marry into the rich or the much less desired option of being a prostitute. According to the book by Galvao there is a double standard to women who are prostitutes they are called “whores” for having sex for money, but women who have multiple affairs in the upper class are never acknowledged. The proletariat is looked down upon for having to work these tough jobs for little pay while the rich live freely without interruption. The feelings of jealousy toward the bourgeoisie create contempt and animosity between these two groups. “The mansions spend on abundant tables. Factory women work for five years to earn the price of a bourgeoisie dress. They must work their whole lives to buy a cradle.” These budding social classes and ideologies created a clear division between these groups.

However, what happens when the roles of the classes turn? This is Karl Marx predicts within his book The Communist Manifesto. The proletariats are the class considered to be the working class, right below the bourgeoise in terms of economic gain. Karl Marx discusses the number ratio between the two classes and discloses the fact that the proletariat outnumber the bourgeoise. Within the class is a sense of belonging, the bourgeoise live their lavish lives and have most of the say so when it comes to power. Most laws and regulations work in the favor of the bourgeoise class, while the working proletariat class is the class of struggle. This is where it ties into man’s self-alienation. Marx’s idea that the working man has alienated himself from humanity by becoming a machine of society, no longer being able to think for himself but rather only thinking of survival and mass production. By focusing on production for the bourgeoise, man is unable to relate to himself or others around him. He is alienated in the fact that he no longer belongs to a community but more so to a factory. This is beneficial to the bourgeoise because they would not have to fear the alliance of the workers against them if each worker felt isolated from one another. Karl Marx describes within his book the overview idea of the working man as a tool for production, a machine himself, isolated

Miyazaki’s childhood was short as he was born January 5, 1941 during World War II, thus without exception, his films main characters are children, deal with growing up and often consist of one young female lead and one young male lead. This is evident in My Neighbor Totoro (1988) as the two main characters are young girls who, unlike adults, can see and befriend the spirits of the spirit world. In Spirited Away (2001), the leading character Chihiro is a young girl who must deal with growing up, similarly to Kiki in Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989). Princess Mononoke (1997) also features these stock characters in the form of young San, adopted daughter of the wolf goddess Moro and Prince Ashitaka, a young girl and boy. Hayao Miyazaki has expressed strong feelings about childhood, saying that it's a paradisiacal time when, "you're protected by your parents and unaware of the problems around you". Miyazaki’s upbringing during World War II would explain another unique mark of his films, that being his interest in flight.

As Marx’s states in his theory, when the working class becomes aware of their exploitation, this will result in a revolt lead by the proletariats. The major theories studied by Marx can be used to analyze the characters and situations presented in the film.

Monsters Inc. might just be seen as a Pixar animated kids movie when you first see it, but when you look deeper into it, you can see many similarities to the general economic concepts; such as our economy today. In the film, several principles of economics were covered. The film illustrated the truth behind the difficult decisions common people have to make every single day. Which included Scarcity, Choices, and Opportunity Costs, The Factors of Production, and the Supply, Demand, and Market Equilibrium; are all involved in the story a lot of decision making, made by the main characters.

The working class in this film are forced to endure agonising labour in extremely dangerous environments whilst the upper class, the ‘sons’ are free to live at their will. The dystopic setting of the ‘depths’ becomes evident through Lang’s use of symbolism when the dictator’s son, Freder, journeys to the depths and starts to see the workers being eaten up by the machines in the scene ‘Slaves of the Means of Production” (14.58-17.52). This symbolises the dystopic society in which workers do not have the right to be safe. This idea forms a contextual connection to the 1920’s Weimar Republic where there were two distinct classes, the conservative elite, who were free to live at their will, and the workers who were forced to endure labour with no guarantee for safety. Through the contextual connections of political reform and the shared perspectives of dystopian societies the quote “the object of power is power” is strongly supported by George Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’.

Marx’s primarily aims to explain how communism will free men, end the class struggle. The work argues that class struggles, and the exploitation of one class by another is the source of all inequality. Marx’s theories become one the motivating force behind all historical developments. The work strongly advocates the freedom of the proletariats which Marx’s claims can only be achieved when property and other goods cease to be privately owned. He see’s that private property has been a problem through out history, capital that aids the ruling class to maintain control. Marx argues that the lower class come together in a revolution and gain power and eventually take the power away from the upper class.

As many other countries around the world China has its long history of a struggle for equality and prosperity against tyrants and dictatorships. The establishment of People’s Republic of China in 1949 seemed to have put an end to that struggle for a better life. “The Chinese people have stood up!” declared Mao Tse-tung, the chairman of China’s Communist Party (CPP) – a leading political force in the country for the time. The people were defined as a coalition of four social classes: the workers, the peasants, the petite bourgeoisie and the national-capitalists. The four classes were to be led buy the CPP, as the leader of the working class.

poor” tension all the time.Karl Marx’s depiction of class conflict illustrates that the masses are the ones who should wage an armed struggle against the ruling class (or the rich), but The Purge ironically boasts a perversion of his idea. Instead, we see how the ruling class eliminates everyone under their wing with bullets and blades. In comparison, it is like witnessing an elite protest where conflicting interests are pitted against each other. Even in a state of normlessness, we see that anarchy remains at the mercy of the elites.

Improving one's own position within their social hierarchy in society is impossible for the Proletariat: there is no social mobility, meritocracy (a system of social stratification based on personal merit) and/or ladder-system, as the class being born into will already determine the position in the social hierarchy (Lecture Notes, 2005). The polarization between these two classes is obvious and conflict will occur as a result of inequalities.

“Hibiscus Town” is a 1986 movie which depicts the constantly changing social structure of peasant life in the period leading up to and during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The film looks at peasant life in a small town in China, Hibiscus Town, which acts as a microcosm of China where we are able to observe how the momentum of the Cultural Revolution moved to redefine and transform class boundaries. “Hibiscus Town” concerns itself with the life of Hu Yuyin, the film's protagonist, and how her new label as a class enemy dramatically changes her circumstances.

Among four types of alienation that Marx provides; alienation from the product, alienation from labour process, alienation from one another, and alienation from species-being, the first one explains that what the workers made does not actually belong to them but capitalists (Marx, 1932, p. 325, 326). Furthermore, the process of activities of workers are also estranged from them because workers externalize their ability to work, labour power, to the object, but that labour power is controlled by capitalist and exists outside of workers (Marx, 1932, p. 324). As we saw in the movie, those are workers that who spend 10 hours a day at the workplace and devote themselves producing productions; however, those productions end up belonging to capitalists. For example, trains cars, clothes, and those other commodities are made by hands but it is head that who actually uses them. Consequently, in the capitalist society,

“Dagong” means “working for the boss” or “selling labor,” and illustrates the commodification of labor and the subordinate status of the worker, in contrast to socialist imaginations of work as liberating. “Mei” means little sister, often associated with young, unmarried women in contrast to “jie”, the older, mature sister . Thus, the term dagongmei symbolizes the subordination of female migrants, both as migrant workers under urban factory owners, and as women expected to work long hours, some sacrificing their education, in order to support their families. Pun articulates the very real struggles many dagongmei face, from the 1993 Shenzhen factory fire that killed over 80 migrant workers, all but two female, only then alerting China and the rest of the world of the human costs of China’s rapid development to one woman, Yan, who screams in her sleep after years of work despite being in deep physical and emotional pain. Such pain is unbearable, and to scream out is the only way to survive. Yet as Pun argues, their very survival is of itself a form of resistance. These migrant workers may not be organizing, staging mass strikes or protests against the state or factory owners, but they are resisting. By screaming out, Yan is forcing the world to hear her pain. By telling

There are two distinct social classes featured in Fight Club that constantly clash with one another: bourgeoisie and proletariat. The bourgeoisie consists of powerful, wealthy individuals who are well above the proletariat. These are the people who “control the world’s natural, economic, and human resources” (Tyson 50). On the other hand, the proletariat is made up of weaker individuals but hold a much larger amount. Even though they lack power, the proletariat make up for it in numbers. They are the “majority of the global population who live in substandard conditions and who have always performed manual labor” (Tyson 50). Although not obviously mentioned, the proletariat is the ultimate source of bourgeoisie power as their labor allows the entire system to function. Without the proletariat, the bourgeoisie would cease to exist. The struggle to survive has kept the proletariat from fighting back.

In this particular book of Zola's the townspeople of Montsou are wantonly exploited for their labor by the ruling class that owns the mine that the town was built around. By forcing these 'proletariats' to consume their lives in the working of painfully long hours in unsanitary, underground conditions for insufficient pay, the ruling class makes it virtually impossible for the townspeople to earn a living, feed a family, or to go on to any other station in life. The following quotation, in which Vincent