While none of the novels or films we’ve watched for class have resonated with me in terms of my metaphorical home, I do feel like I have made progress this week with my creative essay. On Wednesday’s workshop, we were split into four groups depending on our level of comfort and progress on our paper’s and while I was not entirely sure which group I belonged to, I went with group 2 which focused on rewriting the project proposal and getting important guiding questions down. Here is my list of new guiding questions:
Why do young people relate so much to Studio Ghibli films?
What makes these films more relatable to people like me, who are American and don’t relate as much to American Disney animated films?
How have these films opened a door for Asian American people to feel like they can relate more?
While a lot of my questions may not make sense without context, they make sense to me and I think I have a much clearer idea of where I want my paper to go. During Wednesday’s workshop, I decided to do the exercise from group 1 which was timed writing. I did not give myself many specific parameters of what to write and wanted to leave it open for my imagination to take hold and so I wrote nearly two full pages on the nostalgia that is deeply woven into the Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. From there, I made the connection from my annotated bibliography of the strong female characters in such movies and how they have impacted me as an adult. The characters that Hayao Miyazaki makes tend to be strong female leaders, who do not need a male love interest to save them from some horrible fate. Instead, these two films in particular that I am focusing on (Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle) both have female main characters that each have their own individual strengths and weaknesses and may need help from companions but never relying on anyone else to solve their problems or go on their quests for them. This is definitely an aspect of the films that I want to explore in more detail in my creative essay and until then I need to find the specific connection of that role of feminism to Asian American pop culture but I don’t think that connection will be hard to find.