Spirituality Analysis: Rise of the Guardians

I’ve seen “Rise of the Guardians” a few times but I never really paid attention to the metaphors in it before. Despite having very little to do with religion directly, “Rise of the Guardians” is focused on faith and belief, and is a very spiritual movie.  

One of the main points of the story is that when the children don’t believe in the Guardians, they can no longer see them. The guardians can still do things that affect the childrens’ lives but the children can’t benefit from those things the way they could if they believed. Similarly, we don’t always see the blessings we receive, and we can benefit much more from God’s gifts to us if we believe in Him and are aware of them. This metaphor can be taken too far, of course. When children stopped believing in the guardians, the guardians started losing their powers and becoming weaker. God doesn’t become any weaker when we don’t believe in him. However, there are some real things, like legends, that do fade if people don’t keep telling them. I’m sure there are many wonderful stories that have been written or told that we no longer know about because no one passed them on.

The villain in “Rise of the Guardians” is a symbol of fear. Pitch causes nightmares and spreads darkness and terror. I think he was a perfect choice for an antagonist. Fear and doubt are the polar opposites of faith and hope. And Pitch isn’t just an overwhelming blanket of darkness, he attacks each person with what they are specifically afraid of. He doesn’t seem to like outright confrontations, instead sneaking into children’s rooms and turning their dreams dark. He takes away the guardians’ support before attacking them outright, capturing Tooth’s fairies and destroying Bunny’s eggs before going after the guardians themselves.

During an earlier part of the film, Pitch is confronted by, and defeats one of the guardians. Sandy has similar powers to Pitch and can be seen as a representation of hope. Sometimes our fears do defeat our hopes and we are left in darkness for a while. But in the end, Sandy was brought back by a small group of children in some town somewhere in the United States. It could have been any town, in any place.

The number of children who believe in the Guardians dwindles as the film progresses. In the end, there are just a few left. But there is one light that just refuses to go out. Pitch discovers that it only takes one single light to fight off a whole horde of darkness. My favorite moment in the film is when Pitch asks the Guardians who will defend them, and the boy who refused to stop believing steps forward and declares with determination that he will.  More than anything else it is children who defend our stories and holiday rituals, and even our religions. I know that for me, Christmas has become less and less magical as I’ve grown older. But I’m pretty sure it will be more special again when I have kids of my own who will see it as I did when I was young.

In the end of the film the villain is banished to obscurity, and light is restored across the world. One of my favorite things about stories like this one is that the metaphors are not forced or obvious. If you want to see them, you have to actually pay attention to them. I think all well-crafted stories have good metaphors. It’s hard to tell a meaningful story without representing truth in it, one way or another, and we humans are pattern-finders. Even if the makers of the film didn’t attempt to put all of this symbolism in it, we will make the connections. “Rise of the Guardians” just happens to be an especially good example of a film that promotes spirituality, in that it touches on a lot of truths about light and faith.

Critique Analysis: The Golden Compass

“The Golden Compass” is a book that I have seen on bookshelves and in libraries my entire life, but had never bothered to pick up and read before. The only opinion I had to go off of was my Dad’s disapproval of its “anti-religious” themes, so I was very interested to read it and come to my own conclusions about it.

The book is a critique of crime in the name of bettering society. That is an unquestionably real problem that almost all governing bodies face. Many times, throughout the course of history, governments or religious groups have been willing to commit atrocities in order to negate a perceived threat to society. For example, the Nazis imprisoned and slaughtered people of Jewish faith as well as other outcasts all under the obviously false assumption that the Jews were causing the economic problems in their society. In “The Golden Compass” children are cruelly separated from their spirit animals—called daemons—in a procedure that often leads to a slow, miserable death. This is justified by the people who are doing it because of a scientific phenomenon called “dust” which is attracted to people who have gone through puberty. The church has decided, without any scientific evidence, that this dust is either attracted to or causing sin, and so they are attempting to prevent children from reaching a level of maturity at which the dust can affect them. There is no proof of any kind that the dust harms anyone. The name “dust” may even have some significance, in that dust is small and harmless and nothing to get worked up about.

The book doesn’t just critique the institution of the church. The church is represented by the main character’s mother, who was the founder of the group that does experiments on the children. The main character’s father is a representation of the institution of science. He is also willing to sacrifice the lives of children, but for him the goal is scientific progress, not the ultimate end of sinfulness. In the end, he harnesses the energy released from separating a child and his daemon to open a portal to another dimension.

The solution in the end of the book was somewhat unsatisfactory in a storytelling sense because the problem remained unsolved and the main character did not really triumph in any way. However, the conclusion that the main character comes to is very close to something I think is useful and helpful. Both of her parents want to try to stop the dust, and everyone is assuming that it’s evil. Because of this, she decides that everyone is wrong and the dust must be good. She makes it her goal to prevent her parents from stopping the dust. This doesn’t sit well with me. Just because she jumps to the opposite conclusion doesn’t mean she isn’t jumping. However, her decision to search for the source of the dust is a very good one. She must find out for herself what the dust really is, and then decide whether it’s good or not. The decision to discover the truth for herself instead of relying on the assumptions of other people sets a very good example for readers of all ages.

There were a few things in the book that bothered me. Aside from the main character’s conclusions in the end, there were things that rang false to me about the daemons. It was implied throughout the story that when your daemon settles, you have discovered who you truly are. I don’t believe that part of maturing is necessarily choosing a road that you will follow for the rest of your life. The ability to change does not end when you become an adult. I might be taking the metaphor too far here, but that’s what it felt like to me.

Overall, I did enjoy the book. I think it pointed out true flaws of church and state, and accurately portrayed the kinds of consequences that can come about because of those flaws. The solution that was found in the end of the story may or may not have been a useful one, depending on the way you look at it. But it does encourage readers to find out things for themselves instead of taking for granted what the authorities say.

Response 8: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

I can’t remember how old I was the first time I watched Nausicaa. I do remember it, but I can’t remember when it was. I think I couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old. I absolutely loved the film, though I don’t think I understood it. Watching it again, for the first time in years, I can see a lot more of the politics that went into it. It’s very environmentalist and anti-war.

This can be problematic for childrens’ media. For one thing, impressing our own opinions and political associations on young children is not the best way to raise them, and could bias them in unfortunate ways when they are older. For another thing, movies for kids that deal with real social, economic, or environmental problems still need happy endings or kids won’t like them. Often, as in Fern Gulley, the solution to the problem is not difficult and does not require any sort of sacrifice on the part of the characters or the audience. If the main conflict of the story is exclusively some social or environmental problem, then often a film for children will wrap up the problem completely even when the problem is still there in reality.

I think Nausicaa does a better job than most environmentalist films for children. While the politics are definitely there, the problems are a little more complicated than usual. In real life, these sorts of problems are much more complex and difficult to solve than in films, even Nausicaa, but the fact that the environmental situation is so complicated in the film helps to counter the strong bias that the writers of the film obviously felt toward the issue. The environment in Nausicaa, is literally trying to kill off the human race, or at least it seems to be. What it’s really doing is cleansing the earth, but in that process, it is also making people sick. The line between the right decisions and the wrong ones is a lot thinner in this movie than most environmentalist films.

Nausicaa also doesn’t end with a simple solution, and not all of the problems in the world have gone away. Nausicaa saves her valley by sacrificing her life for it. She doesn’t quite die, because the ohm work together to heal her, but she was willing to give up her own life to save the lives of her people. This sort of character is a much stronger role model than a hero who saves the day by fighting hard enough, or getting lucky. After the valley is saved, the work isn’t over. There is still war and danger in the world. There are trees to replant, and political issues to resolve. The people of Earth, if they want to live, will have to learn to make sacrifices and work with the toxic jungle instead of against it. Nausicaa is not about solving the world’s problems, it’s about taking the first step in the path to solving them.

Diversity Analysis: Grave of the Fireflies

War stories are most often told about soldiers or leaders in the winning army. We tell stories about the people who are privileged, and the people who survive, and the people who win, because that’s what we want in our own lives. But in doing that, we forget that there are others. There are people who are not privelaged, people who lose wars, and people who do not survive. Just because we don’t envy them doesn’t make their stories less valid, or less important.

“Grave of the Fireflies” is about a boy and his little sister in Japan during World War II. They are not particularly important people. Their father is in the navy, so their mother is alone in taking care of them. They are not unique. There were probably many children in their situation. I think the creators of the film intended for that to be the case. They were not trying to tell a story about one specific pair of children. They were trying to use a story about one specific pair of children to describe hundreds of children in similar situations.

The children lose their mother in an air raid, and go to live with their aunt. They aren’t treated poorly, but their aunt resents them because food is in short supply, and neither of them are going to school or doing anything to help the food situation. Eventually they decide to leave and try to survive on their own. Despite all their efforts, they can’t get enough to eat, and eventually, both of them die. This sort of character is rarely mentioned in media, or given any attention to. This sort of story is not the kind of story that people want to hear. We want to hear stories about success and survival. However, this sort of thing does happen to people. People really do starve, and people really do die, and for every war where one side won, the other side lost. The story of the losing side is just as real as the story of the winning side.

Despite its depressing plot, and its themes of tragedy and loss, the film is not altogether dark. This is a beautiful story of love and family, and how these things survive even in darkness, poverty, and death. That, also, is unfortunately uncommon among stories about war. War is terrible, and horrifying, and many people die in or because of war. But even so, there is always light. I believe we need more stories, like “Grave of the Fireflies” that show the darkness of war, but don’t revel in it.

“Grave of the Fireflies” is unconventional in many ways. Its protagonists are not particularly unique in their society. In fact, in the beginning of the story, it’s made clear that there are many young people dying in similar ways. They are orphans—not tragic orphans who go on to save the world, but orphans who go on to starve to death because they don’t have anyone to take care of them. The themes of the story do not include overcoming difficulties and coming out on top, and the ending seems to mourn for the nameless children who died because of the war. I think the film contributes a lot to the diversity of our media.

Nostalgia Analysis: The Wind in the Willows

At the end of most adventure stories, there is a homecoming. Often this homecoming is used to compare the adventurer to his or her previous self. It shows how much the adventurer grew during his or her journeying, and what they see differently now that they have come back to their previous life. Usually in story, this homecoming has a little bit of an edge to it because the hero is unable to truly return to his or her previous state of being. This is often how it is in reality, since we grow and change when we leave stages of our life behind. Many people long for the relatively carefree days of childhood, and for homecomings that they can never truly experience. “The Wind in the Willows” describes several kinds of longed-for homecomings which satisfied my need as a reader to return home.

One kind of homecoming that is rarely experienced is a homecoming where everything is untouched. While traveling through the forest to Rat’s house, Mole catches the scent of his home, and knows it is nearby. He and Rat search for it and find it exactly as Mole left it nearly a year before. He and Rat spend the night there, and Mole is grateful he will always have this simple home to return to. So often when we go back somewhere, things have changed. Our friends have made new friends or our old house has been remodeled. We would like things to be familiar and comfortable when we return, as if nothing had changed at all.

Another way to keep our home familiar is to refuse to go too far from it. Adventures are fun, but home is safe and comforting. Rat never has much of a desire to leave. There are times when he considers it, but he will always stay close enough to his home that he can return to it. I’m sure there are people who wish they could just stay in their childhood. They wish they could still be taken care of by their parents and spend time in the places they’d always spent time in. Sometimes, after being away from home for a long time, I’m sure there are people who wish they had stayed.

A more common type of homecoming in fiction is to win back your home at the end of the adventure. In Toad’s absence, Toad Hall is occupied by a clan of weasels. In order to return to it, Toad has to forcibly evict the invaders. He is successful in his endeavor, and learns from it. In our absence, it seems things change a lot. The children of today are different from the children of twenty years ago, who are different from the children forty years ago. Places change, as trees are cut down and replaced and houses and roads are rebuilt. Progress marches steadily forward, keeping us from truly going back to live where we did before. We all wish we could fight that and bring things back or get rid of new things we don’t like.

“The Wind in the Willows” is a book that focuses on home and homecomings. It advocates a return to simple happiness. It doesn’t speak out against going on adventures, but its homecomings are the most pleasant and rewarding parts of the book, and it induces feelings of nostalgia as its adult readers remember homes and times they have now lost and would like to return to.

Response 8: George Washington

In statistical analysis, there’s a method of choosing subjects for a study called stratified sampling. One of the biggest problems with statistics is that it’s hard to get a sample of people that represents the population. There are always minority groups that are likely to be missed. When you take a stratified sample you make sure to pick people from each group. This concept can and should be applied when studying or creating media. There are a lot of kinds of stories, and a lot of kinds of people. Our media says something about who we are, and it’s important for us to make our media representative of our world.

“George Washington” is not set in a city. The main character is not a superhero, though he aspires to be one. Most of the major characters are not white, and none of them have much by way of worldly possessions or status. The storyline is atypical as well. Most of the lead actors were not professional actors, and I doubt very much that the setting was props built in a studio. The portrayal of the story had an artful sense of reality to it, and it focused on parts of our world and our country that we rarely see represented in media.

An ecosystem with very little diversity is rarely stable or healthy. Neither is a culture. We need lots of kinds of people, and we need lots of kinds of stories. I think this film is a good example of something that steps outside of the norm, but it’s also just one kind of movie. In class we watched clips from a movie set in India, and another set in New Zealand—or at least in Maori culture. Before we watched the Maori one, I was considering diversity to be exclusively unfamiliar things. However, my family has lived in Hawaii for the past five years, and Polynesian cultures are very familiar to me. The setting of the Maori clip, including the lighting, building style, and accents reminded me of home. So diversity isn’t necessarily what is unfamiliar. My home town of Laie, Hawaii, which is where BYU Hawaii is, is probably one of the most diverse places on the planet. If you go to any sort of event there and look out over the audience, you will see literally every skin color in the world. It’s a unique place, because there is no racial majority. There’s prejudice, like there is everywhere, but the level of diversity, I believe, makes the town stronger. I think it’s the same with films, and I think our national culture would become stronger if we portrayed a wider variety of characters in our media.