Disscusion and powerpoint
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TaymorandMiyazaki1.pptxShakespere’s The Tempest and Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service. Prospera & Kiki: Mastering their Art Dr. Peter Fields
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Modern people shape their world and themselves with their art.
The universe calls to us and expresses itself through our art. Taymor depicts Prospera on the edge of a basalt clift. She holds her obsidian staff above her head. She is open-mouthed and wide-eyed as if possessed by something that drives her to madness. She is completely absorbed by her art and incantation. Her cloak is also glassy obsidian. It seems to be wing-like with feathers that reflect the green, blue, and indigo light of the sea and sky. The cliff’s edge, the staff, and the cloak all derive from lava, the same material as the island. Like Prospera, modern people see their art as providential: “I have,” she says to Miranda, “with such provision in my art, / so safely ordered, that there is no soul--/ No, not so much perdition as an hair, / Betid to any creature in the vessel.” (1.2.25-30).
We imagine our world and then seek our own place in it. Nature teaches us through our imagination and we harness that power.
Modern young people answer a call only they seem to hear. The universe whispers to their imagination. Kiki stirs and sits up. The hillside world seem to be moving, pushing her to do the same. She is wearing a pink apron tied in a big bow behind her that doubtless required someone else to tie for her. Her gray-green dress has blousy shoulders. Her outfit is not what someone her age ordinarily might wear to lounge in the grass. She wears an oversized red bow in her hair that little children might wear. She seems too tall, too big for a little girl’s outfit. The waves in the lake below her are white-capped and twinkle in the sun as if trying to catch Kiki’s attention. The hillside world is green and swaying in a chorus, waving in the same direction as the movement of the cottony clouds. The breeze catches Kiki’s hair, bends the grass, and drives the clouds towards the west. She gazes intently at something only she can see in her imagination. Miyazaki directs our gaze past the back of her head and red bow towards her horizon as if we too are mysteriously summoned. We are just behind Kiki, ready to follow and share what she sees in her mind’s eye. Like Kiki, modern young people are on hair trigger alert, poised to launch out on the magic broom of their dreams, whether they are ready or not: “So if you have been planning something special,” intones her father’s portable red radio, “tonight might be the night.”
Our Parents are not ready to let go
Modern parents are not ready to let go of their children. We strike our parents as ill-equipped to face the world. Kiki’s mother mixes potions in a workshop where all kind of herbs are hanging around her in bunches. Below the hanging plants, she carefully measures her potions in glass beakers and test-tubes. Suddenly, Kiki bursts into the greenhouse. She is polite and sincere to the older woman sitting at a table, but she cannot help but cause a commotion. The older woman chuckles and smiles, reminiscing about when Kiki’s mother was the same age. Until this moment, the potions of Kiki’s mother had been bubbling quietly. Now Kiki’s mother turns to Kiki, alarmed by her sudden entrance and her plan to leave home that very night. In her mother’s hand the potion darkens, bubbles over, and explodes, cracking the glass of the test tube. [Insight]: As adolescents, we are irrepressible, even destructive, and disrupt old systems before we are ready to take on the world: “And I have had no time,” laments Kiki’s mother, “to teach her how to mix potions like me.”
