Throughout my life, I hadn’t realized that a lot of what I thought about being “normal” was a product of socialization. To be digestible to my family, friends, and the world around me, I had to wear pretty dresses, always have my hair and make-up done, cook, clean, and, inevitably, spend my life in search of a husband. This would give me value.
Although these are valid desires — some of which I still hold onto — unlearning the necessity of them felt like a burden I never asked to be left with. This was a trauma I spotted in the young women of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001) and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).
Both protagonists are thrown head-first into the expectations placed on women early in their lives: to be in service, parent others (including their own parents) and do it all with a smile. Whilst Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi) is thrown into domesticity, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is required to play a beautiful daughter to fascists. All the while, the girls endure massive amounts of trauma. What makes both these films so special is the space they create for fantasy to help both girls process this trauma.
Fantasy and story-telling is a central mechanic in both films, albeit in different ways. Chihiro’s fantasy world creates an environment in which she is miserable, but it also allows her to accept the massive change in her real world while learning to take responsibility for her own agency. Ofelia’s fantasy world, on the other hand, gives her a purpose, and a reality in which she has the promise of a brighter future in the face of absolute bleakness. In this way, both stories create hope. There is a promise for Chihiro and Ofelia that things will get better through story-telling — whether told to themselves or to us, as the viewer — despite the domestic expectations placed upon them.This is consistent in both films.
Spirited Away opens with a defeated Chihiro, starkly contrasting the smiling drawing of her on her card and the lively colors of her “farewell flowers”. In fact, the viewer is barely given a chance to partake in any of what Chihiro’s parents would describe as the necessary joy and excitement in her move. She is boxed in by messy luggage, despondent, and fundamentally upset. The film makes you sit in the discomfort she feels, making you experience the unfamiliar and eerie open spaces the family explores as Chihiro protests, teetering on the edge of a tantrum. We watch as her grievances and hesitations are consistently ignored by both parents until they are horrifically transformed in front of her, leaving her to fend for herself.
But this vehement dismay doesn’t leave once she is “spirited away”.
Like many women, Chihiro is asked to play the hero. She plays the role of savior and mother through having to save her own parents, as well as the residents of the bath-house, and Haku. She must also take responsibility for both No-Face and Yubaba’s son (Ryūnosuke Kamiki) by the end of the film. What makes Spirited Away so special is the permission it still grants her to weep for nearly half the film. She is difficult, reluctant, and oftentimes waits until she has no choice but to do something. She is not expected to be perfect, or bear this weight without complaint. She protests a large portion of the help offered to her by Haku (Miyu Irino), fumbles while helping Kamajī (Bunta Sugawara), and often allows her distress to consume her.
She does not want what has happened to her. She has been uprooted from her life, separated from her parents, and forced to perform labour for people who don’t have her best interest in mind in a world so unfamiliar to her. However, Spirited Away doesn’t take this agency away and it doesn’t rush her. The film allows her to be shown shivering in bed, unable to sleep after the events of the first day, while also shortly sneaking away to reunite with Haku, immersing herself in a flower field that breathes the first semblances of joy and peace into her life again — much like the joy of the farewell flowers she had to lose initially. She is given permission to exist in joy and sorrow, as a child, and as a young woman who is overwhelmed by responsibility she did not ask for.
Similarly, Pan’s Labyrinth also opens in the midst of a move, with a noticeably uncomfortable Ofelia reading a fairy tale in anticipation of her life changing forever. With an abusive step-father and sickly mother, Ofelia’s move not only promises change, but also distress. She is also required to parent her mother, and is even left with the responsibility of saving her brother’s life — which ultimately ends her own. She has to fend for herself in a place that has been established through and promotes an inherent patriarchal violence. Though the Faun also often dominates and overpowers Ofelia, it is her defiance of his final command that allows her to then also defy her step-father and save her brother. This action is what ultimately frees her from the patriarchy.
Pan’s Labyrinth asks Ofelia to be incredibly resilient through unthinkable circumstances, and it is again the fantasy world that allows her to simultaneously grieve and grow throughout this.The film opens and ends through it, sandwiching Ofelia’s experiences in magic that allows her to distract herself and process her own trauma without disclosing whether or not it even is a fantasy world. Despite her death, despite the trauma and horrors she endures, she is given a happy ending.
Neither world rids her of horror either; in the “real” world she is responsible for protecting her family in the midst of civil-war, and in the “fantasy” world she is asked to endure monsters and trials in order to reclaim her birthright. It is the hope of a better life that gives her the will to keep trying in the fantasy world, and as a result, seeps into her real one and gives her purpose.
Through these experiences there are also many encounters with the grotesque. Despite the “fairytale” we are made to believe Ofelia is fighting for, she, and we as the viewer, are constantly exposed to gratuitous amounts of blood, harm, and violence. This is not the story the film opens or ends with, but it is integral to Ofelia’s journey. To be happy, Ofelia has to embrace the fantasy — because when she doesn’t, she is beaten down. The fantasy holds the promise of self-actualization, of agency, and freedom despite what is happening around her. She is given space, just like Chihiro, to be a child, to dream, and yet, to still have agency despite the enormous amounts of responsibility and sacrifice asked of her.
Interestingly, these aren’t the only ways the films allow these girls to lean into their agency. Both Ofelia and Chihiro are not only allowed to, but encouraged to lean on the other women in their lives — not to save or mother them, but to uplift them and be uplifted in return.
In Spirited Away we see Lin (Yūmi Tamai), another servant at Yubaba’s bathhouse who later becomes Chihiro’s caretaker, genuinely come to love and support her despite her initial hesitations. These moments are consistent but shown subtly, in small gestures like offering food and gentle guidance. She never pushes Chihiro too far or takes over. She simply supports Chihiro as she lives her own life, even stating her own goals to leave the town, in between moments of mutual support.
In Pan’s Labyrinth, Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) is given a similar role. As Captain Vidal’s housekeeper, her central role in the story is a caregiver, and from the moment we meet her she very evidently supports Ofelia on every step of her journey. Whether it be moments of reassurance, sharing stories, or even an attempted escape, it is clear that Mercedes cares deeply for those around her. But her experiences have weight outside of Ofelia’s story, despite this integral part in it. Mercedes is strong, outspoken, and lives with ferocious purpose. She supports the rebels, stands up to Vidal, and saves her brother, much like Ofelia, all while required to show extreme levels of resiliency and responsibility in a violent space. These shared experiences, albeit traumatic, strengthen the relationship between both characters and make their time in the space all the more bearable, again emphasizing the importance of support in the face of shared trauma.
Seeing the cyclical relationship between women who uplift one another is another way these films establish how vital it is to see these relationships on-screen for those who have been socialized in this way. Neither Lin nor Mercedes are inherently domestic in the way their respective worlds wish for them to be, much like Chihiro and Ofelia. The films shine a spotlight on them as complete people outside of the domestic spaces they’ve been pushed into without detracting from who they are: multi-faceted women with their own respective goals, traumas, likes, dislikes, passions, etc. Though some of these may be domestic, they are not bound to it despite what they have been told.
Both Spirited Away and Pan’s Labyrinth use their fantasy lenses to give their protagonists agency as they navigate the responsibilities placed on them. Escapism is never made fun or light of — it is a vital and valid tool given to them for agency in the face of injustice, and the unfair expectations regularly placed on women.
Like the Faun states, “… where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world.” In that light, the similarities between the films become all the more striking. Princess Ofelia’s dream of the human world is a space for her to grow, to experience the traumas and pains of human life in a context that allows her to grow and change, much like Chihiro’s time at the bathhouse. Of course, the elusive nature of Pan’s Labyrinth’s narrative means that we are not sure which world is real. Is it Ofelia’s human life, or is it her time as a Princess — the answer to which is never given. Both films show us that it is not the reality of these experiences that gives them value — but the space they make for their protagonists. That they give them permission to dream, that they help them process their trauma, bond with others like them, and ultimately allow the audience to escape as well. There is generous and loving room created for important representation, mutual support, and for both Chihiro and Ofelia to blossom amidst moments of anguish, to simply be girls in unfair situations, trying their best.
