Positioning herself: Chihiro and Sen in Spirited Away

This study analyses the English subtitled version of a Japanese animation film Spirited Away (2001). My research question is how the subtitled version interlingually conveys the way the heroine Chihiro positions herself... [ view full abstract ]

This study analyses the English subtitled version of a Japanese animation film Spirited Away (2001). My research question is how the subtitled version interlingually conveys the way the heroine Chihiro positions herself along developing storylines. Chihiro crosses the border between the human world and the spirit world, and is named Sen across the border.  In Japanese how to call selves and others strongly indexes interactive identities of interlocutors.  My research is based on positioning theory, and I apply as analytic tools multimodal code switching between visual and verbal codes, and interlingual mode switching between verbal and nonverbal modes and between auditory and visual modes.  Further, I propose an analytic framework of "reeling”.  Positioning is acts of drawing “borders”.  Being fluid, interactive and recursive, borders are cubic measures, by which interlocutors locate selves and others along developing storylines.  Acts of drawing borders are “reeling”, by which interlocutors measure “sukima” (=a Japanese word for “gap”) between selves and others.  Reeling process are as follows: 1) unintentionally making sukima between self and others, 2) intentionally creating sukima between self and others, 3) notice sukima between self and others, 4) have others notice sukima or have them unnoticed, 5) reel through sukima between self and others and interact with each other, 6) interactive identities come and go through sukima.  We can identify two sets of “sukima”: physical one and interpersonal one between characters starring the film, and intermodal one between visual codes and verbal codes and interlingual one between Japanese spoken lines and English written subtitles.  If interlocutors cannot measure sukima as expected by each other, they and their interactions get “airheaded”.  In the film the heroine’s own name is Chihiro in the human world, but the spirit world names her Sen across the border.  The point is that the name Sen is picked out of Kanji character form of Chihiro.  She manages her interactive identities by reeling through various sukima.  Finally the English subtitles do not convey sufficient intercultural contexts beyond the on-going scenes.  Thus the subtitled version does not sufficiently reflect how Chihiro goes through positioning and reeling along the developing storylines.