Comparing the Politics of Spirited Away and Get Out (Essay Sample)

Student’s Name Instructor’s Name Course Date Comparing the Politics of Spirited Away and Get Out Racism is a serious menace to the peaceful co-existence of people of all races in the contemporary American society and elsewhere. Such issues as racial profiling of minorities especially pitting “superior” whites against the perceived “inferior” blacks who constitute the down-trodden minority are rife in the country. Other social misdemeanors as greed and avarice are also a disturbing feature in contemporary globalized societies due to their capacity to viciously disintegrate the social fabric into shambolic chaos. Taking such socio-political concerns in mind, film makers such as Hayao Miyazaki and Peale set out to depict such disturbing issues via filming through such means as animation as in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001) and horror exhibited in Peale’s Get Out. To this extent, therefore, this paper argues that filming is an able tool of exposing social problems such as racism and greed as a way of redressing deeply-entrenched inequalities in the American society since lessons from films such as Spirited Away and Get Out provide just that education. The paper, however employs a comparative perspective of the above-stated films in making alive its message. The films Spirited Away and Get Out viewed from a structural perspective demonstrate differences made lucid in the fact that though both employ relative comic scenes in their narratives, Spirited Away is animation-based while Get Out employs real human characters albeit in a horror-genre set-up. Nevertheless, the most critical point of analysis in this purview is the issues filmmakers seek to address in the films. In that regard, differences and similarities abound with both films seeming to expose an underlying social issue that disadvantages a given sector of society over the other privileged sect. It is, however, important to note that films reach the message to the intended audience via symbolism. That is why Benshoff (2) posits that “Blaxploitation horror films” highlight racism as a social problem in America. Firstly, it is indubitable that the films differ in their subject-matter with Spirited Away primarily appearing to be Miyazaki’s affront on waning Japanese social values due to a growing tilt towards Capitalism whereas Peale’s Get Out directly delves into the issue of institutionalized racism in the American society. However, a common denominator is that grievances abound in the approaches taken in both films thus underscoring the significance of politics in issues addressed. Corroborating this view is Benshoff (2) who postulates that underlying figurative symbolism in films help reconstruct racial identities from a social and historical context. It follows that while Get Out evaluates the subjugation of blacks by their white counterparts in white-dominated America, Spirited Away symbolically takes us to the Meiji Japan of late 19 th and early 20th century when Western culture trenchantly penetrated Japan thereby degrading its social values. In that regard, both films successfully hammer the point home with regard to attaining their intended target. In a scene in Get out, an altercation Chris Washington-a black photographer in the film gets into with a white police officer illustrates white privilege in a white dominated American society. A realization that his girlfriend’s parents would denounce him once they realize Chris is black further sickens him. Such incidences manifest the viewing of blacks as “monstrous” within a hegemonic society that privileges whites over blacks (Benshoff 3). In Spirited Away, a similarity comes to the fore in a scene in, which the ten-years-old Chihiro grows apprehensive and decides to find a job at the bathtub due to fears that failure to do so would see her turned into an animal by Yubala the witch. In both cases, the characters are policed, dominated, deprived of their freedom and are as a result compelled to fight their way to the end with Chihiro finally securing her freedom and her parents’ from the spirit world. While Chris Washington continuously resented black subjugation by whites, so did Chihiro persist against Yubala the witch of the spirit world who ruled with an iron fist. Such struggles point to a similarity in the films approaches to political issues, which exhibit that social redress cannot be realized when the o...