Friday, July 31, 2009

Miyazaki and my resolve

I have seen 4 miyazaki movies till now..saw kiki's delivery service lately and realised i don't remember much about princess mononoke...the same powerful tying in of myth, fantasy and technology...within the broader landscape of a contemporary society

So witches fly and co-exist without any hoopla, just like a different sect, like other kinds of people...No american u vs me, or its either you or me concepts...no insecurity..
is it because the japanese are so hierarchical, that it doesn't take much to fit in one more ladder in their hierarchy...he is a cobbler, he is a an untouchable, she is the queen, and she is a witch...so a collective can easily grapple with diversity by the use of hierarchy?
Another one of my observations is that, a collective societies have myths, destinies , and outer supernatural forces operating more naturally...one of the reasons cud b tht, since the collective is so rigidly defined and everybody's identity is closely dependent on the rest of the society, an individual is dependent on these very same outer forces like destiny and miracles to make things happen for him

The collectives also define god to cultivate an inherent idea of a panopticon....to manage and survive, the weakest should be able to survive, so the strongest has to help the weakest, and for that we need to make the strongest believe that he ain't the strongest...
which is why the rulers are linked to god...god ordained etc...reconciling with the fact that power and authority is also required to control a mass of ppl, and the ruler has to be vested with as much power as god...we haven't seen god and we can't continuously believe of his presence...so we need someone to take his place...BUT, he is human afterall, and we have defined a society where we need to convince god is the strongest or rather noone is stronger than any of us and so..

In that sense, seems like an individualistic society is more evolved and science believer, won't accept superstitions and miracles and coincidences and supernaturals governing us at face value...will take things in my own hands, simply bcos i can...and for the most part, my identity ain't/need not be compulsorily dependent on what is the rest of the society is doing...so you find another kind of diversity cropping up in these societies, every human being an island...so while diversity is created, i am not sure if these societies are equipped/evolved enuff to handle them...so problems of alienation, longing for acceptance, loneliness etc.

The further we move away frm being a collective, the more indi we become, the more we move away frm the idea of acceptance...so i wonder, if thats a good thing, drawing me to another fundamental question, do we need to maintain the collective, do we need to survive....will our survival help us evolve or shud we just let us be? why this inherent assumption that our survival is our responsibility and an inherent necessity?

So coming bak to princess mononoke...its abt the outliers/rejects of the society - the prostitutes, untouchables who work for the iron factory which causes pollution and ultimately destroys nature...miyazaki uses powerful personifications for nature...so we create our own problems with nature by rejecting parts of the society or something like that, don't remember...

That's the whole point! a director who fascinated me, who i think is doing something very interesting....i have spent some 10 hrs watching 4 of his films and now i don't remember what he was trying to tell me....so i have decided, all the movies/stories/books that appeal to me, i am going to make a note of them rigorously...

Sorry for the looong digression on collectives and individualistic societies, had to just keep a note abt tht too...most thoughts tht have been infesting my mind for ages....

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