Andrea (Week 6)

What are the underlying thematics of Princess Mononoke? How does it ‘defamiliarise’ its historical setting, according to Napier (2005)?

The underlying thematic of Princess Mononoke is “indermines the myths of traditional Japanese identity while offering a counternarrative in their place.” And “Princess Mononoke reenvisions the conventions of Japanese history (…) the most important one of subversion and defamiliarization. The film defamiliarizes two important icons in Japanese culture, the myth if the feminine as living-suffering and supportive and the myth of the Japanese as living in harmony with nature, often expressed through a union of the feminine with the natural.”(Napier, 2005)

Although Princess Mononoke is not based on an actual historical event, “it belongs properly in a section on animation and history because, in its distinctive way, it is a meditation on Japanese history that provides a counter narrative to some pivotal myths of Japanese culture and society.”

It ‘defamiliarise’ its historical setting based on “which the main protagonists are those who usually do not appear on the stage of history. Instead, this is the story of the marginals of history.” (Napier, 2005)

Reference

Napier, S. (2005). Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.