For children without being childish
Hayao Miyazaki's Boy and the Blue Heron and the difference between faery tale and fantasy
Have you read Grimm’s fairy tales? Are you aware that several versions of stories like Hansel & Gretel exist and many do not end well for the protagonists?
Hayao Miyazaki’s latest outing is a response to those viewers who claim to “not get” his movies because they “don’t really have stories” or “don’t follow the American Hero’s Journey” structure. Oh, there are stories and even a hero’s journey, it’s just that they aren’t all about you.
Boy and the Heron has a heroic protagonist and a hero’s journey in it, but because Miyazaki is not trying to sell action figures or video games, he can be far more honest in his depiction of this journey and the world it exists within.
Many professed fans of his work go for the spectacle and don’t understand this; they don’t realize the cuddly-looking cat buses and hollow-eyed sprites might, on a bad day, just as easily devour the children who have landed in their midst as play and nurture them. Such is the nature of nature itself. It can be fun if you know what you’re doing. But whether you know what you’re doing or not, things could turn sinister at the turn of a leaf.
Under the bewilderment of the “Miyazaki world,” aka the land of fairy tales and dreams, the mythical unconscious realm we can never fully know, much less predict—the only hope we have is to rely on our character. This is why the human protagonists of his films may have flaws, but they never lack pluck. Like Gretel’s cleverness, it is the prerequisite for surviving in the upside-down world.
The deep, dark underbelly of the universe, what breeds underneath the unturned stone or exists within the mossy underside of that log you casually leaped over while exploring your local woods, is far more vast and grotesque than you can comprehend. Miyazaki’s other worlds are places filled with temptations, marvels, and threats. Enormous landscapes with schemes and histories of which the odd human plays only the tiniest part. Infinite expanses of verdant unknowns we’ve overlooked in our man-made hubris.
With no fear that an unfamiliar tunnel pass or ivy-overrun tower might be a portal to the underworld, we see no reason to develop our character into a force that can survive the ordeal.
Yet we ignore the other world at our own peril.
Miyazaki vs Disney, Faery vs Fantasy
The defining difference between Miyazaki’s oeuvre and Disney’s is that while the former created fantastic spectacles on par with anything the latter has ever put out, he would not surrender to the audience’s delusion of self-importance.
In a traditional faery tale, the protagonist with whom the audience identifies may be a stranger in a strange land, but they are no more significant in that land than they are in their home world.
This is how it’s possible for the Brothers Grimm to tell several different stories with the same premise. In some, the orphans get eaten. In others, the orphans do not. It doesn’t matter to the universe what the outcome is, and this is hammered into the child listening because they have no idea from the outset what the outcome will be.
Contrast this with fantasy, where the protags are all-important—their actions decide the fate of the world.
People like to mark the beginning of the Fantasy genre with Tolkien, and I think it’s not a bad place to start, with one caveat: he did not become a true Fantasy author until The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is about an insignificant Victorian proxy named Bilbo who gets thrown into a saga beyond his comprehension, during which he’s exposed to realities and characters both terrifying and outside his control. His role in the success of the entire venture is minor at best, and he returns home a little braver but moves on and pursues the life of a normal, if slightly eccentric, halfling gentleman.
It is very much a Miyazaki-style fairy tale. A Miyazaki story usually centers around a pivotal moment in a boy or girl’s life, during which the vast other side of nature reveals itself to them.
The human protags are pulled into this mystical other world to play a supporting role in the primordial ceremonies that have existed long before we were conscious. These are processes that we once barely grokked through our bizarre-seeming rituals (and which most of us today have forgotten and do not understand anymore at all).
The hero or heroine plays their part in the proceedings, but one always feels that while their actions might have an enormous impact on them and their immediate relations, the rest of reality will remain unaffected.
SPOILER PARAGRAPH: Even as Mahito’s ultimate decision not to succeed his great-granduncle as master of the realm he’s created causes it to disintegrate, it doesn't much affect the black meteorite which empowered that realm’s creation or the reality Mahito returns to once it is destroyed. Outside the story’s central conflict, WWII rages on.
LOTR, by contrast, is a world-encompassing epic in which the fate of all Middle Earth hinges on the journey of a ring and its wearer. Here, the demonic orcs and their masters are clearly evil, and the forces of good are rife with powerful men and women of impeccable character carrying on titanic struggles the world cannot afford them to lose.
This is a fantasy because the protagonists are all-important. Whereas, even in The Iliad, arguably the most epic and “important” of ancient war adventures, one gets the feeling that Homer’s wine-dark seas and merciless mountains would be indifferent to the Greek’s winning or losing, much less Achilles getting his due or Odysseus finding his way home. The gods might be sad for a time, but they’d be onto their next schemes before the poet set down his lyre. This cosmic indifference is felt in nearly all pagan myths and legends. Nearly all Norse sagas end tragically because they can afford to.
Not so with Fantasy fiction. If Jason doesn’t come home with the Golden Fleece, he doesn’t get to be king, if Frodo and Sam don’t destroy the ring, all goodness is extinguished from the world.
The replacement of faery with fantasy as analog for modern narcissism
Miyazaki understood that fairy tales and myths were for children because they were meant to impart foundational character-building truths. Even if the story is “about you” and takes you on a hero’s journey, the understanding is that you are not that important in the grand scheme of things.
Even badasses like Porco Rosso are ultimately bit players unable to stop the relentless march of history goaded on by the monstrosity that lies in the hearts of the masses. The choice instead becomes about how you, as the individual, will live your life knowing that the hero myth is an illusion to grow beyond and not a fixation to ruin your life and the lives of your progeny.
This is a lesson buried in our older storytelling traditions. One which American modernity, in its eagerness to sell manifest destiny and cowboy TV lunchboxes, forgot. Instead, our comic book “superheroes” are so named because a) they actually can save the world on their own and b) they can never stay dead. If they did, people would have to accept the truth of life, move on from the power fantasy, and cost Warner and Disney massive earnings.
Now look at one of the oldest hero stories of the Anglo-Saxon tradition: Beowulf, which becomes a cautionary tale after the time skip when it’s clear that the old king still seeks a hero’s death, not strength and long life for all his followers. Archetypally, Beowulf never matured from hero to king, let alone king to sage. At his age, Beowulf would have succumbed to the dragon either way, but narcissism got to him first.
Wonder what a society that refuses to grow past the hero stage is like? You’re looking at it.
What we have done to the terrifying foundational truths on display in our children’s tales is the same as what we did with Miyazaki’s films: we aped the style and aesthetics, shaved off the grotesqueries, and put them in video games and other consumables where the experiencer is given unrealistic power.
People exclaim that The Legend of Zelda is “like being in a Miyazaki film” without realizing that it’s totally antithetical to Miyazaki.
If it were a Miyazaki production, Link would be a hapless bystander with a small part to play in the unfathomable forces at work across the land of Hyrule. Swift justice would eventually be dealt to the player who spends dozens of hours gleefully murdering its inhabitants. And the central conflict would not be resolved by killing the big bad to restore Hyrule to its former glory, but by coming to terms with the internal loss that the changes to the landscape represent.
However, in the final analysis, Miyazaki is an optimist.
He just doesn’t believe in saccharine sentimentalities. He also probably thinks we should all grow up a bit.
Despite their disturbing elements, his films are a delight to watch. They engross us precisely because they don’t shy away from harsh realities like heartbreaking loss or the necessary costs of survival. Rather than trivialize these truths by exaggerating our uniqueness in experiencing them or presenting simplistic answers, Miyazaki gives them their place in the full spectrum of heightened emotions that arise during times in our lives of great crisis or change.
Miyazaki’s fairy tale films teach us that we must tread carefully—even amidst worlds of wonder, cultivate our competence as we never know when our lives might depend on it, and grasp that meaningful growth can only come once we stop obsessing over ourselves and genuinely work towards the betterment of those we care about.