This thesis is intended to illustrate that monsters, as beings made of pure culture, embody social anxieties and can be deployed as a means of protest. Therefore this thesis examines monsters in Japanese anime, manga, and film that embody the excesses of capitalism. The first chapter examines Spirited Away and how capitalism’s excesses create monsters such as over consumption, greed, and loss of identity through the disintegration of social relationships. The second chapter examines modern onmyoji and why they are different from their ancient counterpart, especially with regards to the commodification of women and the alienation of others. By examining the societal ills that have created monsters we can determine if these representatives of capitalist excess can be managed.

This thesis is intended to illustrate that monsters, as beings made of pure culture, embody social anxieties and can be deployed as a means of protest. Therefore this thesis examines monsters in Japanese anime, manga, and film that embody the excesses of capitalism. The first chapter examines Spirited Away and how capitalism’s excesses create monsters such as over consumption, greed, and loss of identity through the disintegration of social relationships. The second chapter examines modern onmyoji and why they are different from their ancient counterpart, especially with regards to the commodification of women and the alienation of others. By examining the societal ills that have created monsters we can determine if these representatives of capitalist excess can be managed.

My aim with this thesis is to use a combination of posthumanist and feminist materialist perspectives in analysing the anime film Spirited Away (2001). The analysis is organised as follows: the first chapter of the analysis deals with the notions of agency and magic. Magic is an omnipresent force in the bathhouse depicted in the film; a force that creates connections between different bodies and that also bridges the language-matter divide. By making inanimate matter come alive, magic points to a conception of life as relations rather than as possession. However, magic also reveals the hierarchies at work, as not all animate(d) beings have the capacity or the right to use it. The first chapter is followed by three chapters focused on eating, understood as a kind of intra-action between different kinds of matter. Food is, as I will show, important in the negotiations of boundaries and agency. The question of who is eating who also reveals some of the power relationships that govern the posthuman world depicted in the film. In the two last chapters of the analysis I will, so to speak, push the food plate aside in favour of other matters. The fifth chapter will focus on the physical transformations taking place in the film and how these can be interpreted from a posthumanist and materialist perspective. I will look at embodiments, using a narratologically influenced perspective that allows for corporeal ambiguities and shuns notions of bodies as fixed and clearly separate from other bodies. The discussion will continue in the final chapter where I use 'monster theory' to further examine the leakages between categories. The monstrous corresponds not necessarily to widely-spread images of monsters (known from various cultural masterplots) or to bodies that distinctly disobey the norms. The morphological diversity exhibited by the characters in the film reveals the impossibility of clearly demarcating categories and boundaries between Self and Other.

This paper aims to study the results of dubbing from Japanese to Swedish using a pivot language. The author examines the Swedish dubbed version of the Japanese animated film Spirited Away by comparing it to the original version and finding differences in what in-formation is conveyed through the dialogue. Because the Swedish dubbed version has been translated using the English language script as a base, the English dubbed version is also examined. The findings are then presented, categorized and analysed according to where the changes have appeared and what they consist of. Finally, the results are dis-cussed and compared to previous findings in the field. The study finds how many lines of dialogue have been altered, and that the use of a pivot language has greatly increased the number of altered lines, although no proof was found of an increased amount of mistrans-lations. The increased amount of altered lines leads to the conclusion that the usage of a pivot language can be problematic.

This thesis delves into film music and how it can be used to shape and influence the viewer on different levels, as well as how the music in itself portrays a character. A qualitative textual analysis was used in order to get an answer to these questions. The object of study for this analysis was Studio Ghibli’s film Spirited Away, and the characters that were analyzed were Chihiro, No Face and Yubaba. Multimodality was one of the main theories used, since it was the most fitting for the subject of analyzing characters on a deeper level. It was used to make meaning of signs with personal and cultural references as a guide later on for the material that had been collected. Neoformalism was the main method for this analysis. Leitmotif or returning instruments are used to either indicate a character’s presence like No Face or Yubaba, or the character's emotion or motivation, like Chihiro’s leitmotif when she is reminded of the real world. The music was used to create a narrative with Chihiro and No Face, while the music for Yubaba was mostly to create a sense of emotion. The changes in Chihiro and No Face leitmotifs that can be heard throughout the movie, indicates character development. Yubaba’s music doesn’t change and is used more to settle an emotional impact when she’s shown. Silence was also heavily used, mostly in relation to Chihiro. Sudden changes from an abundance of music to silence to create an eerie feeling around elements that scare Chihiro is the most used, but also the loss of leitmotif for No Face to show change. The music is also used to highlight the difference between the real world and the spirit world, the real world has western influenced style of music while the spirit world has an eastern influenced style of music. This is also reflected in the characters, with No Face having Japanese bells to show he’s a spirit, while Chihiro and Yubaba having more western sounding music to show they do not belong there. / Detta examensarbete fördjupar sig i filmmusik och hur den kan användas för att forma och påverka tittaren på olika nivåer, samt hur musiken i sig porträtterar en karaktär. En kvalitativ textanalys användes för att få svar på dessa frågor. Studieobjektet för denna analys var Studio Ghiblis film Spirited Away, och karaktärerna som analyserades var Chihiro, No Face och Yubaba. Multimodalitet var en av de huvudsakliga teorierna som användes, eftersom det var den mest passande för ämnet att analysera karaktärer på en djupare nivå. Den användes för att skapa betydelse av signs med personliga och kulturella referenser som en vägledning senare för det material som hade samlats in. Neoformalism var huvudmetoden för denna analys. Leitmotiv eller återkommande instrument används för att antingen indikera en karaktärs närvaro som No Face eller Yubaba, eller karaktärens känslor eller motivation, som Chihiros ledmotiv när hon påminns om den verkliga världen. Musiken användes för att skapa ett narrativ med Chihiro och No Face, medan musiken till Yubaba mest var för att skapa en emotionell koppling till tittaren. Förändringarna i ledmotiven Chihiro och No Face som kan höras genom hela filmen, indikerar karaktärsutveckling. Yubabas musik förändras inte och används mer för att lösa en känslomässig påverkan när hon visas. Tystnad användes också flitigt, mest i förhållande till Chihiro. Plötsliga förändringar från ett överflöd av musik till tystnad för att skapa en kuslig känsla kring element som skrämmer Chihiro är den mest använda, men också förlusten av ledmotiv för No Face för att visa förändring. Musiken används också för att belysa skillnaden mellan den verkliga världen och andevärlden, den verkliga världen har västerländsk influerad musikstil medan andevärlden har en österländsk musikstil. Detta återspeglas också i karaktärerna, där No Face har japanska klockor för att visa att han är en ande, medan Chihiro och Yubaba har mer västerländskt klingande musik för att visa att de inte hör hemma där.

I denna undersökning vill jag visa att film har ett egenvärde som berättarform separat från skönlitteraturen, där särskilt japansk animerad film är ett område som tidigare marginaliserats inom filmteorin men bör ges ett större akademiskt utrymme. Med hjälp av de fem filmanalytiska aspekterna berättelse, mise-en-scène, kameraanvändning, klippning, ljud och filmmusik undersöker jag hur regissören Hayao Miyazaki konstruerar den japanska animerade parallellvärlden i filmen Spirited Away samt hur det animerade mediet påverkar filmen. Min analys visar att publikens inlevelse i parallellvärlden skapas genom en otillgänglig narration där kamerans låga vinklar och point-of-view-shots gestaltar världen ur huvudpersonens vinkel. Parallellvärlden kommer till liv genom en detaljerad traditionell japansk scenografi, runda karaktärer och en rik diegetisk ljudbild. Den långsamma klippningen bjuder in publiken att bli medskapare av parallellvärlden och musiken skapar en känslomässig inlevelse samt fungerar som en sammanknytande väv genom filmen. Den animerade formen möjliggör en större frihet i animatörernas skapande av filmens mise-en-scène, samt bidrar till en större tolerans hos publiken för det irrationella intuitiva händelseförloppet och en delvis överdriven ljudbild.