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Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

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Re: Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

#31

Post by JoshTriplett »

hajile wrote: post #28
everyone wrote: post #18

MAJOR SPOILERS!!! wtf! no spoiler warning at all. Grave of the fireflies was one of the few Ghibli films I hadnt got around to seeing yet. Plot is totally spoiled in the first few sentences. fuck you author!!

For what it's worth, that "spoiler" is a known fact less than 2 minutes into the film. As with all Ghibli films, the greatness is in the watching.

I agree; some stories are more damaged by spoilers than others. If the primary appeal of a story is a shocking surprise, the spoiler takes much of the fun out of it. But some stories aren't particularly hurt even if you know the details.

However, in this case, the spoiler (which I read long ago) told me that it's a film I want to skip; I don't enjoy stories with bad endings, no matter what message they're trying to convey or point they're trying to make. There's too much of that in reality already to seek it out in fiction.

Re: Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

#33

Post by mynameisvlad »

everyone wrote: post #18

MAJOR SPOILERS!!! wtf! no spoiler warning at all. Grave of the fireflies was one of the few Ghibli films I hadnt got around to seeing yet. Plot is totally spoiled in the first few sentences. fuck you author!!

I mean, it's an 18-year old movie. What did you expect? That nobody ever talks about the plot of movies forever and all time? There's a time when we have to say "okay, people have probably watched it, it's safe to talk about it freely now", and 18 years is definitely more than enough time for that to be the case.

Re: Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

#34

Post by Nadya »

bionsuba wrote: post #26
happyscrappy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Japanese were in many ways more brutal and ruthless than the Nazis but have done a great job whitewashing their despicable past. Wiped away with mushroom clouds that they invited.

Your comment was going so well until that last sentence. Yes, the Japanese government committed atrocities. But I have a hard time seeing how that somehow justifies the US killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians that had nothing to do with it when Japan was basically begging to surrender. Yes begging to surrender, but the US only wanted unconditional surrender, which they knew to a society based on pride…

The only hint of surrender was the Japanese approaching the Soviets to broke a negotiation of surrender, to which the Soviets essentially ignored. That's hardly "begging".

They wanted to keep all the land they had gained imperially (Taiwan and some other land, I forget offhand). Which was essentially an "OK, we lose. But we get to keep everything we took before we lost." which was denied by the Soviets and would have been denied by the US.

The issue being glossed over is that anyone speaking against the war or saying Japan would lose would be murdered by fanatical military leaders. If you were against the war, you were against the Emperor and Japan. A traitor.

Civilian deaths are not justified by political military conquest. Especially when any civilians who speak out against the political military conquest are killed. That's a lose:lose scenario for the civilians and I don't see how anyone could morally justify such a choice.

"Die going against your country or die because of it." is hardly a choice...

Re: Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

#35

Post by ectoplasm »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #29
shadowmoses wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In his own words, “You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.”

> You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two. As a statement, it sounds poetic at first, and the first two sentences are absolutely perfect; however, there's something very wrong about the notion of "preserving the balance", and I've seen that noti…

The point is that what you consider evil, somebody else considers good, and vice versa. Furthermore, we define good in terms of evil and evil in terms of good. The existence of one necessitates the existence of the other, whether in the past, present, or future.

Re: Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

#36

Post by Natsu »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #29
shadowmoses wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In his own words, “You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.”

> You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two. As a statement, it sounds poetic at first, and the first two sentences are absolutely perfect; however, there's something very wrong about the notion of "preserving the balance", and I've seen that noti…

I believe the idea is that human notions of 'evil' are based on imperfect knowledge, at best. Therefore, quite often one person's 'evil' is another's 'justice' and letting people rampage in pursuit of it does not make for a peaceful society. Rather, people have to be able to work together in spite of their differing ideals, instead of hoping to be able to eliminate or marginalize everyone who might not believe the same thing.

Re: Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

#37

Post by dragonwriter »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #29
shadowmoses wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In his own words, “You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.”

> You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two. As a statement, it sounds poetic at first, and the first two sentences are absolutely perfect; however, there's something very wrong about the notion of "preserving the balance", and I've seen that noti…

> Evil should not persist out of any sense of balance

I don't think the quote supports the idea of evil persisting out of balance, but rather that to advance the greater good one must balance the need to oppose the notionally evil things (which nonetheless contain good) with the need to oppose the evil contained in things which are notionally good.

Its the only interpretation I can see which makes sense in the context of the sentences that the one on balance follows. What is preserved is not the balance in the state of the world between the sides (or between good and evil), but the balance you recognize between the good and evil in each side, a balance that is lost when you commit to one as "good" and ignore the evil it contains, and the good contained in the other.

Re: Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

#38

Post by fitzwatermellow »

Might be in the minority, but I strongly disagree with the assessment that Miyazaki-san's final film "The Wind Rises" was not amongst his greatest. I re-view it every few months for inspiration and find it holds up quite powerfully with each repetition. Japanese anime does Italian neo-realism in epic scale. The engineer as the manifestor of dreams. War as a terrible catalyst of progress. Surreally creepy voice acting by Werner Herzog as the mysterious Castorp in an homage to Thomas Mann. What's not to love?

For more on the controversy here's a link to the Chicago Reader review that sums up why some perceived it as being sympathetic to fascism:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-wind-rises-hayao-mi...

Re: Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

#39

Post by MichaelGG »

ectoplasm wrote: post #35
JoshTriplett wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two. As a statement, it sounds poetic at first, and the first two sentences are absolutely perfect; however, there's something very wrong about the notion of "preserving the balance", and I've seen that noti…

The point is that what you consider evil, somebody else considers good, and vice versa. Furthermore, we define good in terms of evil and evil in terms of good. The existence of one necessitates the existence of the other, whether in the past, present, or future.

That's weak. You can go down a definitional hole and say someone might consider anything good. Fact remains that things like, I dunno, torturing children and slaughtering villages are things that we'd be perfectly fine eliminating. We'd be A-OK without having people that have, as the near entirety of their existence, hunger and pain.

Even in nature, there isn't a real balance. Any perceived balance is simply the result of ongoing fighting and current stalemates. When things go "out of balance", groups or species go extinct and things move on. Absolutely nothing in nature is stopping a species from taking over the entire planet, consuming all resources, then going extinct.

And personally, I don't define good in terms of evil. Like a silly saying of defining light in terms of darkness (uh, no, I'll define it as certain energy bands or something, thanks).

Unless you meant this on a conceptual level, like, if we had never heard of the concept of insanity, it might be hard to say we value sanity since it'd just be an unquestioned state of affairs. I don't find that a very useful definition as far as a course for action goes; we'd be quite fine eliminating "evil".

Re: Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

#40

Post by MichaelGG »

shadowmoses wrote: post #13
grownseed wrote: post #12

It makes me deeply happy to see this here. Miyazaki's mind is truly unique (and by extension most Ghibli films too), nothing else quite compares (and as the author points out, certainly not Disney & co. despite being Ghibli's distributors in the West). I've introduced many people to Ghibli, a lot of whom would have never even considered watching an animated film (even less so a foreign one), and most came away truly…

In his own words, “You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.”

How does one "preserve the balance"? Could you provide an example action you might take that is preserving this balance? I'm having trouble turning this into anything useful, other than a generic, general sort of "don't be hateful and rash; think things through; sides aren't perfect" kinda thing.
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