Blog Talkback: Miyazaki Week: Why "Princess Mononoke" is Not an Environmentalist Fable

I know what you're saying. The difference is, the creators of Gundam were always aware of the contradiction of what they were doing. They may have been ultimately anti-war in attitude, but they always knew, deep down, that violence is exciting no matter how harsh you portray it.

My problem with Miyazaki is that he aggressively preaches pacifism to the brink of its extreme, but can't help but satisfy the commercial side of filmmaking by directing skillfully done, albeit "clean" action scenes. It's difficult for me to put into words...but I just get this feeling that Miyazaki is admonishing the audience for enjoying the violence in his films while at the same time throwing down these clean, skillfully directed action scenes.

I don't like that, which is why I can't fully enjoy Miyazaki's "serious" and "action oriented" films. Remember how laughable that scene was in Gladiator when Russell Crowe, after dispatching a bunch of people in gloriously dazzling manner, yells to the audience in the coliseum, "Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here??" And then throws his sword down in disgust.

I get the feeling that Miyazaki is saying this to the audience pretty much every few minutes in Princess Mononoke. In general, despite its even-handedness, I find Princess Mononoke to be an angry, bitter work, and full of contradictions.

I acknowledge, however, that this is what makes it interesting despite my problems with it. PM is the only Miyazaki film that constantly goes up and down my "favourite Miyazaki" list, which goes to show that it must be doing something noteworthy.
 
I think the thing about most "environmentalist" fiction is that it portrays nature as this weak and cuddly little thing that must be protected, and specifically that we must protect for our own good. The trees love us and if we can only keep enough of them growing in a pretty little garden where they'll happily keep pumping out enough oxygen to keep the global Human Life Support System operating, everything will be fine. Nature is something to be kept alive by the sufferance of man.

The thing that Mononoke does differently is to portray nature as something entirely alien. It doesn't give a crap about you, and if it's sometimes very beautiful to our eyes it is only as an unintended side effect as it goes about the business of being itself, for itself. It is concerned with its own survival as an end in its own right. When it becomes a garden, something to be cared for and nurtured and protected by humans, then it ceases to be nature.

If there is a balance between humanity and nature, it is not a loving relationship. It is the balance of two sides constantly at war, constantly pushing and pulling and testing one another, making each other stronger, yes, but only insofar as each side seeks out and destroys the other's weaknesses.

Miyazaki mourns the death of that kind of unrelenting and unrepentant nature, yes: he shows that something savage and beautiful and necessary has been lost when we tamed and neutered it. But he also shows that, if things had gone the other way, nature would not have mourned US.
 
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