Money On Film: Spirited Away

0:07Hello! Welcome to Money on Film. I'm Felix Salmon of Bloomberg. I'm here with Nadira Goffe. Culture writer at sleep. We are in our third and final of this little mini-series. We have already talked about Margin Call. We have already talked about Materialists, which is a movie you don't need to see. but this week is the culmination the climax the greatest of all this week we are going to talk about economics in a way we're going to talk about spirited away the 2001 hayao miyazaki animated studio ghibli film which is one of my favorite movies of all time from one of my favorite directors slash animators creators of all time and is this a movie that you had seen before?

0:54No, I had never seen this before. Okay, well, I'm excited to talk about it. How many times have you seen this movie? That's a really good question. It's not the Studio Ghibli movie that I've seen the most, because that would be Howl's Moving Castle, but I've probably seen this movie at least five times. So your Spirited Away count is higher than my Margin Call count. Yeah, though my Howl's Moving Castle account would probably scare a Victorian child. So, yes, I watch the Studio Ghibli movies a lot. And I have such a fond place in my heart for them. And what's really lovely about my face when I talk about these movies is all I can do is smile.

1:37And if you would like to see that, you can. Because we're taping Insight Studios. Nadira's the queen of the Segway. And so if you would like to watch these episodes on YouTube, that's where they'll be available. But you can also find them wherever you find your podcasts. Okay, Nadira, you are the expert on Spirited Away. You've seen this many times. If you are asking me all of the gory details of Margin called, now the tables are turned. Oh, Lord. Spirited Away, lovely, heartbreaking animated movie from 2001 from Japan. Is it about something? It's about many things, some would say. But the main plot follows a 10-year-old girl named Chihiro who is moving to a new neighborhood.

2:22And somewhere along the way, as her parents and her are traveling to the new neighborhood, they get stuck in a spirit realm where her parents are turned into pigs. And in order to save them and also save herself, she has to work in the spirit realm. Now, the part of the spirit realm that we see is basically a bathhouse, and it is run slash owned by a witch named Yubaba. and basically Chihiro has to get a job. She has to get a job. She has to work for Yubaba. She has to work at the bathhouse in hopes that she can turn her parents back into humans and that they can escape the spirit world. Spoiler alert, she does.

2:59Yeah, thank God. That would be a really different kind of movie if she did it. Oh, I tried. I just stayed here laboring for my entire life, and then Yubaba ate my parents. Yeah, no, that is not what happened. No. There are some of the most wonderfully beautiful creatures in this movie. The imagination that goes into the inhabitants of the spirit realm is just glorious. And I think I like the little bouncy lantern the best. Yeah, I love the soot sprites. Oh my God, the soot sprites. I love the soot sprites. They're my favorite. The soot sprites are absolutely adorable. Everyone is awesome. awesome there's that big lump and white thing that goes up in the elevator yeah oh my god he's so great i love it i love it all hayao miyazaki is truly the best to ever do it all of it you should watch all of his movies they're not all made equally you can find plenty of different sort of rankings about what's the best and whatever but they're all equally stunning they're all beautiful so yeah we there's a lot of just surface beauty and you can just lose yourself in the imagination and the beauty of the individual frames and the individual scenes, which a lot of people do.

4:14And obviously there is also just this legendary orchestral soundtrack as well that brings half of Japan to tears every time they hear the first chord. And so there's everything you need. And as your, you know, Pracy suggests, this is a classic fairy tale kind of plot. This could have been written by you know hans christian anderson and there's something incredibly timeless about it yet at the same time there's also something incredibly timely about it given that it was made in 2001 um when japan was struggling with this sort of lost decade and this idea of we were booming in the 1980s and there was you know we were buying up rockefeller center and we were sending up we were making the best companies in the world and then suddenly it all just kind of crashed and went sideways and we'll never be the same again and all of that actually also makes it into this movie which is why it's such an interesting movie just from a sort of economics perspective like i think you can i think most people actually see this movie and don't even think of it as an economic allegory.

5:32But that is what it is. Yeah, I mean, we're here to talk about movies that have a lot to do with money, right? And when we're thinking about the ways that money can work or what it can look like in movies, we often think about the sort of margin call-esque movies. We think about paper money. We think about Wall Street. We don't often think about labor. And this is a movie that is about a lot of things, one of which, or two of which being primarily greed and labor, right? When Chihiro is working at this bathhouse, they are doing really harsh labor all for Yubaba, who is quite literally sitting in her beautiful office counting her gems, you know?

6:15And these are one of the first workers, actually, that we get in this sort of bathhouse is a spirit who is in charge of stoking the fires for the boilers. And the way he introduces himself is by saying, I am a slave to the boilers. Right. Like that's the sort of level of a capitalist allegory that we're talking about in this kid's movie. And that is also the level of, like, you can definitely read this movie on a very sort of Marxist level in that way. And I don't think it is actually a particularly Marxist movie, but it definitely has a lot of those Marxist tropes of you have, like, the Rentier who is physically and metaphorically at the top of the bathhouse.

7:03she is covered in jewels she's a very scrooge mcduck kind of character and she has beneath her in every possible sense all of these wage slaves basically who are doing her bidding and are sleeping shoulder to shoulder in not very salubrious conditions in order to make sure that she just gets richer and richer for no particular reason on and layered on top of that is the sort of parable of the way in which chihiro a heroine um rejects the lure of riches and she isn't interested in gold and that shows her purity and that helps her free her parents and also there's like the good witch yubaba's sister who has also rejected the lure of riches and lives in a relatively modest tracks it stops down the train tracks and has a lovely sort of utopian life that hasn't been ruined by capitalist excess um and hasn't been ruined by literally oil which is like the the name on the outside of the bathhouse like this is and a lot of that seems quite heavy-handed to me but yeah you have this sort of um bucolic utopian rural existence of of the sister um which is obviously being painted in contrast to the terrible conditions that are being faced by humans being turned into pigs and all the rest of it under capitalism so in that sense i think yeah Yeah, it does function as a rather heavy-handed sort of capitalism is bad movie.

8:48Yeah, for children. So, you know, a little bit of heavy-handedness is allowed, is okay. I think what I am always captivated by, outside of just all of the many ways Miyazaki's movies are charming, are that they always tend to talk about the sort of same handful of really complex things, right? He's really good at exploring historical turning points, either how countries change during war or because of economic fluctuations, and therefore how countries or societies are modernizing. He's really beautiful at talking about love and how children feel, perceive love. But I think the one thing that he is the best at, especially when it comes to family movies or media made for all ages, is talking about greed and pollution.

9:40And so in addition to this sort of very visual and somewhat heavy handed metaphor for capitalism, right, there's also all of the ways that the effects of that pervade. And so there's this one moment where there's this stink sprite that comes in. And basically they find out after cleaning him off that he was just a river god or protector of the river who was just full of pollution, of just human pollution. Right. And so they're pulling the pollution out and then they see his true form. And all of the pollution made him repulsive and unable to do his job and smelly. And it's just like there's these sort of really beautiful smaller moments that don't only pertain to the sort of central structure that I think Miyazaki is always really good at just like putting in there.

10:31And then the reason why this is much richer and much better than the simple sort of capitalism is bad allegory is because there's also a relatively sophisticated and actually sophisticated story of what happens during a period of sort of speculative fervor and liquidity glut. that you have this right called no face yeah who is by design not allowed in the bathhouse and this is one i think i think something which is important to dwell on is the yubaba for all that she loves her riches when faced with this no face who has huge amounts of gold says no i don't want you because she knows, she's wise enough to know that that level of gold is bad.

11:33He enters the bathhouse, he spreads his gold around willy-nilly among everyone, and chaos ensues. And in the end, the bathhouse is saved by our 10-year-old heroine who manages to sort of extract him from the bathhouse. And she has kind of saved capitalism by removing this external force, which isn't just greed. People definitely want his gold, although it turns out that the gold is not gold. Yeah. But it's the fervor that comes in when people are able to get rich quick. And also in terms of a sort of like simplistic metaphor, he presents golds, but then he also eats them. And he also eats them.

12:23Yeah. And I think that is another level of Yubaba's concern, right? She knows that that level of gold is not good, but she also knows that... She doesn't like it when her workers get eaten. When her workers get eaten. Like she understands how dependent she is on their labor, right? The bathhouse, as we encounter it, you know, at the beginning of the movie, is a self-contained economic system, not a particularly pleasant one, but it is one that is sustainable indefinitely. once no face enters then he threatens the entire structure of that capitalist um enterprise and that is exactly what miyosaki is trying to explain happened during the sort of 80s boom in japan is that during the massive run-up in property prices and also in the stock market.

13:19Everyone moved from a system of like working for a living where you made your money through labor to a much more speculative world where everyone tried to get rich quick. And that created this massive boom, this massive speculative burst, the bubble burst. And really until, you know, a couple of years ago, there was, you know, the stock market has never recovered from where it was and um and it put it it really depressed an entire country who are like we thought we were amazing and it turns out it all just was taken from us and this movie does a pretty good job of saying that however bad the capitalist dystopia of the bathhouse is that the amount of excessive greed that accompanies a sort of liquidity glut and an external sort of change of behavior is much worse.

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15:44Rates as of January 1st, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or card.apple.com. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch, terms and more at applecard.com. What I hadn't thought about until this conversation is that you're right. if this was a staunchly anti-capitalist movie, the bathhouse would have been in shambles by the end. Right? Like it would have been rubble, perhaps. And that's not necessarily what happens. Like Chihiro, she gets her family and she gets out. She falls in love with the river god along the way and that's beautiful.

16:18As you do. As one does. Who's also a dragon? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a very beautiful child with a very beautiful bob. Yep. And shout out to bobs. I think we should have more bobs in animated movies and just generally. But yeah, I hadn't actually thought about that, about what the movie would look like if Miyazaki was trying to say something a little bit more harsh or staunch instead of this really interesting and beautiful nuanced layered portrayal that he gives of what that economic period was like. And yes, and I think you're absolutely right that the environmental subtext to the movie or text is equally important.

17:04And relationship between capitalism and the environment is portrayed, I think, relatively sensitively. The bathhouse, when it's a bathhouse, is not really destroying the environment. the invite that the nature is you know the oceans come in the waters are clean but clearly yeah as you say with the stink sprite coming in that is a very obvious allegory of just like be careful of your rivers don't just pour pollution bicycles into them and that's another theme that miyazaki is always very um interested in like you can find it in all of his movies and he's also made some movies that are very staunchly about the like princess mononoke like he's made other movies that are very much about um the environment and how capitalism or how these sort of different structures can pollute or co-opt the environment and i i sort of love how he combines everything into this my favorite aspect of this movie is that he could have made a movie about an older girl He also could have made a movie about a boy, but he's really good at making specifically coming-of-age movies where the protagonists are young girls.

18:23And I think something that I really latched on to when I was younger is that I had never, I couldn't remember having seen a movie where the, a coming of age movie specifically, where the protagonist is a young girl and she wasn't saving the world. she was just saving her family. And I think that that is such a smart distinction between how society sort of gender labor. Like, in movies about young boys, or just guys in general, labor is always codified as, like, supporting the family or going out and doing these things of valor for your country or whatever. But labor for women is often always socialized as taking care of your family and being a caretaker and doing things that are a bit more internal.

19:19And there's an aspect of that to this movie and specifically the choices that Miyazaki made in terms of this main character and this plot that I think just feels so satisfying to actually have a movie that's dedicated to that thing, even if it's dedicated to it in a roundabout fantastical way, but it's dedicated to that specific type of labor in addition to other types of labor that I think as a young girl watching it, it felt so much more relatable than like, I don't know, trying to save the world, but just trying to save your parents, you know? Yeah, and just having the opportunity to have those flashes of knowledge and wisdom that can save your parents.

20:02Like she recognizes her boyfriend when he's a dragger. She recognizes that none of these pigs in front of her are her parents. She has the ability to, you know, she's kind of klutzy, but also she's wise beyond her years. Yeah, I do love that a good first third of this movie is just characters insulting her. And she's just kind of like, all right, I have no choice in this matter. You know, they call her a klutz. And at one point, one of the characters says, like, I'm so proud of you for making it this far. You're so thick. I didn't think you'd be able to do it. And she's just kind of like, I just want to know where my parents are.

20:38Like, I just got here. I don't know what's happening. And every single time she tries to do something, they're always like, this kid, like, you're so annoying. Why would you ever think of doing it that way? And I kind of like that she pushes past all of it. And yeah, like you were saying earlier, she's the only character who, because of her sort of pure of heartness, can see the no-face spirit for, can see that money, that the gold that he's offering is not the thing that she wants from him and not the thing that she wants at all. Well, you know, she specifically says a number of times, like, that won't help me.

21:12Like, I don't need that. And I also think another thing that we didn't talk about in terms of that character that I love is you find out at the end that he's just so lonely. Like, no matter how much money, whether it's real gold or fake golds he has, no matter how many people he consumes, he's doing it because he's so lonely, right? And he can't square away that those actions are not actually going to fill that void. and that there's like something else that he needs to fill that void. Yeah, his like finest and greatest form of being is the very thin and translucent no face rather than the I have eaten all of the...

21:52Yeah, the globular. Globular. Yeah. We should also mention the naming part of it because this movie has a whole very interesting thing to say about identity and the way in which capitalism, as represented by the bathhouse, turns you literally, in this case, into a number. Her name changes from Chihiro, which is a perfectly lovely name, to Sen, which is a number, this number 1 ,000 in Japanese. And so long as she remembers her name, she has a chance of getting out. But if you just forget your name and are nothing but your status as a number, then that's that. And then it's all over. Yeah. Wow. He's really working on some powerful stuff.

22:42You know, when you're a kid, you don't think about all of these layers, obviously. But then as you... Not least because you don't speak Japanese and you don't know that Sen means 1 ,000. But yeah. Yeah, that is very true. I will say not all of the English dubs are made equally for Studio Ghibli movies as a whole. But the Spirited Away one, I think, is particularly lovely. And I think a part of the reason why is because Studio Ghibli wasn't famous at that level yet. And so a lot of the English speaking voice actors that they got to do the English dub are just voice actors, whereas the movies that he sort of made later on, and I love many of them, the English dubs are like stunt casted.

23:24Like a part of why I loved Howl's Moving Castle growing up is because Christian Bale voices Howl in the English dub. And I thought that his voice was very attractive. Young Lee didn't fully understand, but she knew. And yeah, but I think what I love about this is that, yeah, it's just, I don't know. There's something so special about making a movie, maybe even your magnum opus, at a point in time where you don't have as many constraints or ideas about the types of movies you should be making or what you're known for, right? And so I think Miyazaki just going, like, throwing everything at the wall with this one and coming off with something really beautiful and also succinct and saying a lot, I think is such a, it's so inspiring.

24:08It's such a feat. It's definitely something that is, you know, when we talk about animated movies in general, a lot of them do often feel kind of unnecessarily cramped and constrained because you're like, this is animation you can do anything you like yeah and this one you're just like holy shit you're taking full advantage of the fact that you can imagine anything show anything do anything you're like and we're just gonna run with that yeah and reminds me a little bit of the czech animator jan's funk may i don't know if you know his version of alice in wonderland but it's amazing but it's just like and that's all stop motion and and it's it's just brilliant and you can yeah you you it it is one of those great is one of the great things about animation in general is that it's just so anything you can imagine you can do you don't need to worry about anything and i love that he lent into that in this movie before we go can we talk quickly and by that i mean can i probe your your beautiful brain my economic mind yeah about the baby did you have any thoughts about the massive baby i'm i'm this many years old and i still don't entirely understand what's going on or what is supposed to be meant by the massive baby any ideas any thoughts the only thought i have when it comes to the massive baby is that the motivation for Yubaba to continue to exploit her workers, that this is this insatiable creature that she needs to just keep on feeding and housing and creating more and more luxury for and will never be satisfied.

26:02And while she is certainly selfish, she can, by looking at the baby, kid herself that she is being selfless in that she's doing this all for someone else. Yeah, it is such a humanizing choice to make her a mom. Right. Like, in the way. And I kind of like that none of the parents are great. Like, a part of why, a part of how they end up in this mess, which I guess we never said, is she hears parents ignore all of her misgivings or hesitations about what they should and shouldn't do. and basically they come across this abandoned theme park. Abandoned theme park, by the way, being a classic trope of the Japanese decline, which had a whole bunch of abandoned theme parks after the bubble burst.

26:48And so they come across this abandoned theme park and there's this stall that has all this really delicious smelling food and like tons of food, massive portions. And her parents ask for 20 seconds if there's anyone around that they can pay for the food. And they're just like, we have money, we'll pay them later. and they just start housing things down. And Chihiro's like, I don't think we should be doing that. And then that greed is what turns them into pigs and what makes them unable to go home and what gets them trapped in the spirit world and what kind of sets the whole thing off. I mean, it is a different type of greed.

27:19It's specifically the gluttony in contradistinction to the greed for gold that we see later on in the movie. But yeah, we are, again, Chihiro is pretty naturally immune to the kind of gluttony and greed that afflicts the rest of us. Yeah. Which I guess is what makes her the heroine of the movie and able to, you know, be so timelessly, eternally loved by... This is, what, the biggest grossing movie in Japan for decades? Yeah, until the Demon Slayer movie in 2020. Demon Slayer being a very, very famous anime and popular anime. Made a movie and dethroned it. But yeah, no, this movie is... There's a Billie Eilish song named after Chihiro.

28:00Ariana Grande has a Chihiro tattoo like this movie is even for the sort of the biggest names in our pop culture pantheon today this movie is still one of the most important formative things for them so big deal go watch it we can both recommend it thanks for listening to this final episode of Money on Film thanks for listening to the other two if you did that many thanks as well to Andrew Harding for putting this whole thing together and to a whole other cast of characters. Yes, and also thanks to Micah Phillips, who's behind these cameras that you, you can't see him, but we can, for producing the video, to Benjamin Frisch for producing the audio, and to Merit Jacobs for engineering.

28:42And I think that's it for us. And that's it. We're done. For now. We're done. If you liked it, then maybe we'll come back for more at some other point in the future. But for the time being, thank you for listening to Money on Film.

28:59Thank you.