Essay Questions

How are the themes of environmental concern explored in the film?

The theme of environmental concern is explored primarily through two characters: the “stink spirit” or the spirit of the polluted river that Sen/Chihiro assists in purifying and Haku, the spirit of the Kohaku River. These two tragic characters are both victimized and defined by the environmental degradation that they suffer through and it is in interacting with these two characters in the spirit realm---seeing how much the anthropomorphic versions of these noble bodies of water hurt when they are polluted or when their human world analogues are destroyed---that Sen/Chihiro learns to see the value of caring for the environment.

Can you consider No-Face to be an antagonist? Explain your answer by citing scenes in the film that support your answer.

No-Face can be seen as a victim or a tragic figure in the film rather than an antagonist as he isn’t actually malicious. He is lonely because the rest of the supernatural beings community, for reasons never clearly disclosed, shuns him. He is a timid, mute character who ends up becoming an all-consuming, brash, blob of a monster when he begins swallowing the equally brash, equally demanding and greedy staff that man Yubaba’s bathhouse. It is the influence of the staff and the bathhouse that turn No-Face evil, at least temporarily.

Why do you think Yubaba is presented as so thematically different from the rest of the other inhabitants of the spirit world? What does Yubaba represent?

Yubaba represents the corrupting influence of Western consumerist-capitalist culture has upon traditional Japanese sensibilities. She is drawn to resemble the traditional European storybook witch to make the visual connection to the concept that the animator wants to critique.