Paper short abstract:

The paper is an investigation of animated movies as forms and technologies of contemporary spirituality. The case study chosen, Tales from Earthsea by Gorō Miyazaki (based on Le Guin’s Earthsea) will be investigated through a “visual ecocritical” (Pike 2010) approach and with regard to the content.

Paper long abstract:

This paper would investigate the role of animation technology in the context of contemporary eco-spiritual turn and the general contemporary link beetween popular culture forms and religious fascination (Feldt 2016).

Animated movies are an immediate and accessible form and technology of communication, based on the expressive potential of shapes and colors in motion that arrange the soul to welcome concepts and messages: the quality of plasmaticness (Leyda 1986). Compared to documentary cinema or live action, it allows us to build from scratch worlds where our understanding and perception of the environment has infinite potential in free forms.

Especially for ecological issues is focal because the most powerful and popular cosmographic technologies (fantastic storytelling) convey a strong sense of wonder (Attebery et. al. 2022).

According to Feldt (2016) pop cultural products inform and give shape to our spiritual-religious life and as Geertz (2011) writes, the narrative-building itself builds a sense of the world around us.

We will focus on Tales from Earthsea by Gorō Miyazaki (2006) freely based on the Earthsea Cycle (1968-2001) written by Ursula K. Le Guin. The case study chosen concerns technology and eco-spirituality on a double level. Firstly, it allows a “visual ecocritical approach” (Pike 2010) focused on the language of images considering animation a means of transmitting ecological messages unintentionally; on a sub-textual level or thoroughly mixed with other vexatae questiones or domains such as morality or balance/world equilibrium. Secondly, leguinian Earthsea’s world itself is dominated by magic, and we can see many different elements which pair with natural world. Magic is seen as equivalent to our world’s technology, a sort of alchemy, and it presents a dilemma with the universal machine since Magic, just like contemporary Science, doesn’t have an intrinsic moral direction or compass.