The story of Princess Mononoke revolves around an exiled
prince, named Ashitaka, who is searching a way to remove a curse of hatred that
will spread and consume his life. While he search for a way, he met many people
with different rank and goals that they want to achieve for a better future for
them, even though there methods or goals are wrong to some. When Ashitaka met
the leader of the iron village, Eboshi, to seek some answers of his curse, he
learns that Eboshi is trying to make the humans survive at all cost against the
forest and their gods. She believes that the human’s purpose is to survive
against the gods, destroy their lands, and make a prosperous city for the
humans. This is a great goal for us humans to live happily, but methods are
wrong. We all have different methods way to accomplish our goals in life,
whether it is reasons, survivability, or simply emotions that drives us to our
goals. Let me take hate as an example, to both sides of the war, both gods and
humans have an immeasurable amount of hate towards each other. They are willing
to kill any traitors to keep up the war. We are no different from them. We have
wars and crimes in our world. We let our hate drives us easily to cause
violence and destroy one another without knowing the damages that we cause around
us. Even their all mighty forest god has some hatred towards both sides. Our
God may have times that he will release his hate on us, but he is a forgiving
God and we must be a forgiving community to each other. If we were to have hate
consume us and war with each other, then we will be dancing in the empire’s
hands, even though it for our sake.
What should we do when our lives are in danger, but we risk
many things in the process?
How can we be a forgiving community when we have so many
emotions that drive us away from it?
I see can see where you are coming from because of what we see in the world. Every day on the news, all we hear is about is killing and crimes. From what you have written, the movie seems to portray violence as an act that has no thinking involved what so ever. It seems as if both sides have not even thought about how to approach this situation but rather have gone to violence with no hesitation. Also we need to remember that the world is not ugly but beautiful. It is a creation of God and no matter how "evil" or "violent" a person may be, they are still the creation of God. Do you think that maybe the reason why we think our world is so violent is because the way that the media portrays us? Are we blind to what is right and attentive to what is wrong?
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post, I think I have watched the movie, but I can't quite remember... Anyways, you are right about hate, it does induce us to act in a very impulsive way and makes us regret those irresponsible actions. I think we should be able to control out hate or learn to use that energy into something that will inspire us to be better sons and daughters of God, if we could do that the world would a better place. Answering the second question, forgiving is not really an difficult task if you have God's help, it doesn't really require you to do much; i have learned that forgiving means to leave the right and urge to revenge in God's hands, it doesn't mean forgetting..
ReplyDeleteGood observations, Joseph. The film does a good job of exploring how hatred can infect us and move us toward more violence (the metaphor of Ashitaka's hand). But it also has a major theme of industrialization vs. the environment. Can human industrialization coexist with nature? Or does one inherently destroy the other?
ReplyDeleteI imagine interviews with Miyazaki could help contextualize the film more and provide more insight into the story.