The Combination of Hero's Journey Monomyth and Archetype Pattern of Wild Woman in Spirited away (2001), Jepanese Animation

In recent years, in the most important animation films, we can find an increase in the presence of females in children or young teenaged films. It seems that feminism thoughts have effected cultural entertainments such as kinds of toys, comic books, popular music and also industrial film productions, specially animation works (for example, Spirited away (2001), Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) and Brave (2012)). Some of these products belong to huge companies like Walt Disney. In former decades, young teenage girls were obeyed personage in most films. But nowadays, everything has changed. In new films, female heroes have the first, main and effective roles. Heroines are more different characters than the past homogeneous samples. They are not weak girls waiting for a lovely survivor, but they are heroines who try to save themselves and even their friends. They play not only an effective role in making their fate, but also they influence their own environment and other’s life. They pass all levels of heroic journey like a real hero but with all female characteristics. The structure of these new heroines represents a new heroic pattern. The statement of new pattern is the main question of this research. In order to find the quality of the presence of female heroes, in this research, we have studied “Spirited away” (Miyazaki, 2001). This is one of the most famous animations containing various visual symbols, such as a girl with a perky role. This animation film has been welcomed by the audiences in many movie theaters of the world. A famous Japanese company animation that was named Ghibli made this marvelous production. “Spirited away” went in honor Academy Award Oscar for the best animation in 2001 and later 34 other international awards, meanwhile, this animation had nominated for 19 awards in its career. This animation film was registered as 41 top films in cinema history in IMDB reference site. The theoretical framework for analyzing this movie is based on hero’s journey mono myth of Joseph Campbell that allowed us to understand most of the visual symbols used in it. Then, according to the existence of female hero, we analyze hero’s journey of Joseph Campbell with “wild woman” archetype theory of Clarissa Pin kola Estés. The results show that the total framework of story line and character development is based on Campbell theory (hero’s journey), but because of the presence of female heroes, “wild woman” theory can explain this movie adequately. The results show that “peace with father” and “meeting the goddess” levels in Campbell’s theory are not suitable for female hero’s characters in this movie. Therefore, in this story, having a connection with “wild woman” is one of the levels of the improvement of heroine. Using symbolic paraphrase of Estés about feminine conditions of heroines, some parts of Campbell’s pattern which were need to be reviewed would be completed. Therefore “Spirited away” can be looked as a female narration of Campbell theory (hero’s journey) that can be analyzed by wild woman archetype theory of Estés.