Howl's Moving Castle: Green Slime and Getting Old

What does green slime and a castle on legs have to do with the anti-aging industry? Listen to this episode to find out! Join us as we journey with Sophie, a girl under a curse that makes her old. We discuss society's seeming allergy to aging women as well as the advantages that come with getting older. We also talk a bit about the movie version by Studio Ghibli and the controversy surrounding AI Ghibli photos. 

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Transcript

 Thank you to Pinterest for the following selection movie. How? Oh, Sophie, I'm so glad We're all right and can live happily ever after Book. How? Hey, Sophie. Sophie, Sophie. Pay attention to me. What does I charge at this evil lady? Are you impressed, Sophie? Are you, are you impressed by my tackle skills? I also have dramatic acting skills.

If you're not impressed by tackles, I have a skull and everything. I identify with the wizard howl because if I had magical powers, I would use them to get better hair evade taxes. Make computer games for my nieces and nephews. Use aliases that imply I am related to King Arthur. Spend at least half my life as a literal toddler and discover alternate planes of reality so I could flirt with the girls there.

Not to mention, use slime and darkness to fully and dramatically impose the depth of my woe upon everyone around me when I have made a minor fapa that diminishes my aesthetic. The thing is, Hal tells Sophie that he wrote his dissertation on curses and spells, but he never actually says he got the degree leading me to say, with full confidence that Hal Jenkins went and opened a portal to another universe explicitly in order to slither out of his PhD program.

PhD students who are listening let us know,  📍 is this something you would do? 

 

Hi, and welcome to the Literary Lamppost Podcast, where we analyze books and see what we can learn from them. I'm Caitlin. I'm a math grad student, but I love English and I love analyzing literature. And I'm Ashley, an assistant editor for a magazine and a writer.

Today we are talking about how's Moving Castle, which many of us know and love from Studio Ghibli's adaptation. I actually saw the movie a long time before I read the book. I didn't even know that there was a book. Yeah. Many years after watching the movie. How's Moving? Castle was written by British author Diana Wynn Jones in 1986, and it was adapted to a movie in 2004 and there's actually two sequels.

Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah. Um, I've read the second one. What's it called? I forget. Is it Castle in the Clouds? Yeah, I think so. That was recommended to me on my audible right after I finished this one. It's not as good. It is good, but Sophie and Howell aren't the main characters and apparently the third one is also not as good.

But I don't know, that's probably subjective. Anyways, after writing the book, Jones accredited, its writing to a boy in a school that she visited once for the idea. Of a book about a moving castle. She couldn't remember his name, but thanked him regardless, so I thought that was kind of cool. Anyway, Diana Wind Jones studied English at Oxford University where she took classes from both Tolkien and CS Lewis.

That's, that's awesome. I didn't know that. Oh, lucky her. She wrote over 40 books and authors like Neil Gaman and JK Rowling have actually cited her as an influence. Really makes me wanna read more of her books. Apparently a lot of 'em are quite good though. Hal's moving Castle is undoubtedly the most famous.

Anyway. Then the movie was made in 2004 by Haya Miyazaki with Studio Ghibli, and some of the themes that we're going to be talking about are how the movie actually changed from the book, and how Miyazaki decided to make the movie about war when the book wasn't. And also a little bit about the AI controversy surrounding Studio Ghibli.

Right now we're also going to be talking about some of the issues that both younger and older women face. But first, let's get started with a little bit of a book summary. And don't worry, we're not gonna give anything away, but just to give you a little bit of an idea of what is going on in this story.

For those of you familiar with the movie, be warned. The book may surprise you. Many elements are similar, but the main problem and conflict are different, and they're also. Many more layers to each character. And if you felt like the movie didn't really explain things and left a few plot holes, the book fills them in.

We're not gonna tell you too much about the plot, but it's not set during a war, and the witch of the waist is a bit more of a villain. And here's a brief summary of the storyline. So we've got Sophie Hatter, the eldest of three sisters in a magical land called ri, who believes that because she's the oldest, she's destined for an unremarkable life.

That kind of seems to be a fact of life in the book, that the oldest never gets anywhere in life. How does that make you feel? Caitlin? The oldest never gets anywhere in life. Well, I'm married, I'm doing my masters. I have worked a job for several years. I think I'm doing okay. Congrats. You're doing better than me.

Anyways. Uh, Sophie's cursed by the witch of the waist, who's kind of the bad guy in this book and turns into kind of okay. She is the bad guy in this, well, one of them, and turns into an old woman. So Sophie leaves home, which is a hat shop, hence the last name, Hatter, to find a cure for the curse and ends up in Hal's moving castle in the waste.

And the waste is just a bunch of bland that is not being used for anything else because it's like a mo, like a moor. There's nothing that grows there. It's not, it's not useful land. And so things just kind of roam out there

that castle roams. Is the only theme that roams the witch of the waste. Roams fine. The castle's actually really cool. It roams around the waist, it moves, but from the inside, the door can be opened into different towns around the country by turning the knob to different settings. The castle is also powered by a fire demon named Caler.

Who has this secret bond with Howell that he wants to break? So Kfa and Sophie strike a bargain if she helps break his bond with how Kfa will lift her curse. Howell has got a really bad reputation. He's supposedly known for eating girls' hearts, but Sophie isn't afraid of him because. Now she's old, and it turns out that Hal is actually just really vain and super dramatic and logs running away from responsibility.

Honestly, same. So Sophie designates herself as the cleaner in the castle, much to Michael's consternation. Now, Michael is a teenage boy, a young boy in the movie named Mark. And slowly several plots unravel. And Sophie still a very old woman, finds herself in the middle of them all. So the book has conflict between kingdoms and it mentions war, I think once.

But war is not the main premise of the book. The movie changes that. How Old's movie Castle is not Miyazaki's, first Ghibli movie that addresses war. And Japan has been anti-war since World War ii, and it's often expressed in anime and manga. Which I think is really interesting. Also, the villains in the book versus the movie are also quite different because Miyazaki liked creating complex characters, like not pure evil, not pure good.

His thinking behind that, I think being that war comes from pure evil and he was wanting to create, I think, more gray areas with. His characters like the witch of the waist in the book. She's the bad guy. There's really no good in her. But in the movie she, I don't know. It's kind of interesting. What would you say about the witch of the waist in the movie, Kate?

It turns out she's not as bad as she seems on first glance, and it's a pretty interesting dynamic. And I remember learning in one of my English classes that. That Eastern storytelling does tend to do that with characters, that there's less of this binary separation between good characters and evil characters, and there's more that there's both good and evil in both.

And I think that that's a very different way of looking at things than we have in our Western perspective. We tend to think of villains as all bad and heroes as all good, but I think that that misses out on a lot of human nature anyway. Yeah, it does. 'cause you know, people are complicated. Anyways, um, the war in house moving castle isn't a war of justice.

It's shown to be just two power hungry sides with selfish agendas. So the firebombing in the movies, very much that of World War ii, fueled by patriotism also, those who suffer the most irregular people, not the elite. The royal palace is not bombed as it is safe. Because of magical barriers, but then regular people end up as collateral damage.

I think that that tends to happen in most wars, that the governments make stupid decisions and people end up paying the price. Yeah, I can definitely see that in some of the conflicts going on in the world right now. A hundred percent. This movie was actually a message about the 2003 Iraq War and the War on Terror, which was the United States response to nine 11, but that's a whole other topic, which we won't get into right now, but it's worth Googling if you're curious.

Now, let's take a quick look at how in the movie the King was hounding him to fight in the war, and how kept evading him. How was an interesting character? One of those not completely good, but not a villain either. He has some serious problems both in the movie and the book. He loves running away from his problems and responsibility.

He's very vain about his hair and clothes, even having a complete meltdown once and producing. Copious amounts of green slime, but movie Howl is very anti-war and very firm in that stance, and he actually ends up fighting both sides in the war and nearly dying. He uses aggression to promote his pacifism, which you know is a bit of a paradox.

The book How is pretty much the same as far as a character, even down to the green slime, but the conflict is much more to do with the internal workings of the kingdom. He. Refuses to get caught up with the kingdom's power struggles. Also, apparently he's a PhD student from Wales, as was referenced in the opening of this episode.

So while we're still talking about the movie, we wanted to touch on the AI controversy surrounding Studio Ghibli. In recent months, if you weren't aware, there was this trend, and I think it's settled a little. Um, of taking photos of your own life, like you with your dog or child, or your picnic, or even a VA of flowers by a window, and having AI turn it into Studio Ghibli animation style.

It's very popular, kind of seen as a way of romanticizing your life, and a lot of influences hopped on this trend. But if we backtracked two, 2016, when Miyazaki first saw an AI generated animation, his response was, I am utterly disgusted. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself. Yikes. So this whole trend became very controversial.

Studio Ghibli films take several years to make and are hand drawn, and so you can kind of understand his reaction when in a matter of seconds you can create an image in his signature style. So OpenAI actually made this fully available, rolled it out to free users, even encouraging the trend, E, even encouraging the trend and recreating memes.

In Ghibli style. Ah, I don't know how I feel about that. Yeah, it's weird. Deborah Shapiro, an academic specializing in design animation and interaction said the following about open AI's, exploitation of Miyazaki's style. It's not replicating or mimicking it, it's stealing it. And in actual fact, none of it actually retains the soul of any artwork because what's happening with it is that it's kind of like the world's biggest photocopier whilst it's stealing.

She also said that it can't capture the essence of his work, but can't capture the soul 'cause it doesn't have that human element behind it. So this is actually a problem that affects most artists that put their work out online, and I've heard quite a few speaking out about it. What happens is these AI companies take the work of specific artists and use it to train their models, and then the models can spit out pictures in the style of this particular artist.

But the thing is, they usually. Most of the time do it without the artist's permission. And this directly impacts artists who make their living by creating and also just in general, it takes their work and exploits it. And while open AI now has. Implemented a triggered refusal by chat pt. When someone tries to create an image that is in the style of an artist, still living a style like Ghibli is permitted, even though Miyazaki is still alive.

And OpenAI has even defended this saying that users have shared truly delightful and inspired original fan creations. But they're not original though, that's the thing. They're. Based off of somebody else's work. It's like a patchwork of bits that have been taken from somebody else's work. It's not actually original.

Exactly. And the other problem is that Studio Ghibli stands against a lot of things. For example, the exploitation of the environment, while AI contributes significantly to environmental costs. And while Miyazaki hasn't said anything recently about any of this, you could only imagine how he feels. I kind of doubt that his feelings have changed since 2016.

And there's nothing wrong with wanting to romanticize or gify your life. Ghibli films have a very specific feel. They leave you with this sense of comfort and safeness and nostalgia, maybe with a little bit of whimsy. And oftentimes they have an element of sadness, but they make you feel like it's okay that that sadness is there and it's part of life.

They. Have a very specific message that they convey, and I don't think it's fair to judge anyone who hopped on this trend because trends are trends and influencers just wanna do what everyone else is doing, especially if it's cool. And I personally would be thrilled if my life turned into a Gibby movie.

I'm all for romanticizing life, but it's really important to think about the things that you do. Think about the trends that you follow, like are they actually responsible? I think it's really important that you think through the impact of some of the trends that you might. Take part in and think critically in general, just about how the media environment shapes your thinking, because none of us are immune to the influences around us.

And I think a really impactful message that is passed down to in particular women is that as we age and get older, we lose value and we have to do everything that we can to not lose our youth and beauty. I think that this idea is explored really well in Sophie's character. Yeah, so Sophie's the main character, so we see the world through her eyes, and what's really interesting about her is that when she's turned into an old woman.

It's not exactly as if she's still a young woman trapped in an older woman's body. She, she actually kind of becomes an old woman, you know, while still wanting to break the curse. We see how she embraces her elderlys and her personality changes when she's young. She's scared of everything. She's very quiet.

She's stern and serious. Also convinced that she's not pretty, but the experience of being an old woman gives her. Freedom to speak her mind and not care about being pretty anymore. She realizes it's not the most important thing. Now we can speak as young women, and while we know that men and women of all ages face different pressures, we're not addressing them right now, though we do recognize them.

We're also less qualified to speak to them because of who we are. Who we are. It seems like. Often, especially in the film industry, after a woman gets to about 35, she kind of fades off and we don't see that much of her anymore. Yeah. Most films are about much younger women, obviously not always, but often, and I think that most women can identify with that slight pang of grief that comes along with pretty much every birthday after 21, and it's something that you actively have to kind of fight off.

It's just so pervasive. I feel that because like I'm 24. I'm not old at all. But then there's all these things about quarter life crises and oh, you know, teenagers saying that you're so old once you pass 21. And it's, it's hard to not absorb that. It is hard and. You have all of these voices saying that, oh, the best time of your life is 21.

It's all downhill from, no, don't get me started. So like every birthday after that, there's just that slight sense of grief. And I know that it's not correct that it, I shouldn't have that, but it's just, that's just how it is. And it's interesting. I don't think that men experience that the same way. It also seems very unfair because for men there's the whole silver fox characterization, but there's nothing like that for women.

Rather, there's a whole anti-aging industry. Women are not actually allowed to age. Oh no, not at all. They're actively taught to fear aging and do everything to prevent it, like. It's completely normal for women to dye their hair when they go gray, but it's considered a bit strange when men do it. And there's all the anti-aging stuff that's advertised, like on YouTube.

I'll see all these anti-aging creams being advertised. I've actually just started rolling my eyes since I've noticed it. It's like it's everywhere. It's 'cause they're getting old. The algorithm knows. So there's the hair dye, the plastic surgery, the Botox, the facelifts. There's just so much, and I'm not immune to it.

I'm 26 and I've started worrying about getting wrinkles, like do I need to start retinol? Do I need to start vitamin C treatments? All of that. And I know it's crazy, but you just absorb this stuff, you know? And it takes a fair bit of positive self-talk to get yourself out of that mindset. Society tells us that as a woman ages her worth goes down.

And that's just so wrong. And while that might not always be super blatant, it is the predominant message. And I think that there's actually a decently good reason for this. I genuinely think that as women get older, they start to care less and they're harder to control and manipulate. And so the only way to control 'em is to tell them that they don't have any value once they get older.

I remember seeing this Tumblr quote where a woman said something along the lines of, you spend so much of your young life worrying about aging, and then you realize that after 35 there's this whole other country that you never knew existed, like this whole other experience of life. And I'd really love to see more stories that feature older women as the main character and more older women on the screen to give younger women somebody to look up to, like.

Meryl Streep is one such icon. Maggie Smith. Another one is Judy Dench. Julie Andrews. They're there. They're just a lot less common and they are usually not the main character. So young women often feel like they have to fit a certain mold. You have to look a certain way, act a certain way, have a certain amount of accomplishments, and you have to fit like.

All of your study, all of your career building and all of your relationship and having children's stuff into like 15 years, between 20 and 35, that's stressful. Yeah, it's so stressful, and obviously this is generalizing and many things have improved for young women in recent years, but in some ways they've gotten worse.

One idea within the manosphere, which is it's not even hidden, like it's very clearly. Part of what they believe is that women are only valued while they're young. And there's this expiration date set on women over 25, and we see this trend of men in their thirties and forties aiming to date women or girls who are 18 and 19 specifically so that they can quote, unquote, mold them into the perfect submissive woman who will obey them and do whatever they say.

They're, they're not even hiding this. They're creepy. Straight up coming out and saying this. They are, it's crazy. For example, we have Leo DiCaprio who keeps dumping his girlfriends as soon as they turn 30, and getting together with new women who are much younger. Is he currently dating a woman who's 26 while he's 50?

That's a 24 year age gap. Like that's messed up. And sure you could say that she's a consenting adult, but she's 26. He's 50. There's obviously going to be a power imbalance there, a maturity difference, that's the problem. And no, Leo DiCaprio is not part of Red Pill, obviously, but in a subtle, non loud way.

He's doing the same kind of thing as these guys in this red pill. Pick cookies, spacer, because he's doing it. Other men can look at Leo DiCaprio, someone who's really successful. He's famous, he's wealthy, and go, ah, he's doing it so I can too. He's setting a precedence. He makes, he makes, okay. And another thing that's really gross in these celebrity spaces is that there's these countdowns until young actresses turn 18 to become quote unquote legal, which I think is just really gross.

Like I remember recently when Millie Bobby Brown. Was about to turn 18. There was a literal countdown and creeps on the internet. Were just waiting until she turned 18 so they could legally sexualize her. I just think that's so sad. Genuinely, some of these dudes, I think would continue to go down the ladder of age, down the age ladder if it wasn't illegal.

There's also the whole body count thing, which we talked about a bit in our episode on Pride and Prejudice. One reason that these older guys want to be with super young girls is because they have a lower body count. Um, make of that what you will. The thing is, younger women, 18 or 19, are also more likely to put up with bad behavior and bad treatment, like emotional abuse or cheating.

Because they simply don't know better yet, they might still be working out their self-worth and their identity. I know that in my first relationship when I was 20, I didn't know what was good or bad for a relationship and how I should be treated. And so when my then boyfriend told me that something that was very clearly problematic was normal, I believed him and I put up with that behavior because I just didn't know any better.

It's really sad. It is, yeah. And the I, the whole ideology of the quote unquote sexual marketplace where high value men have money and a lot of sexual experience, et cetera, and high value women are sexy and young and virginal, and this whole glaring double standard and also the objectification. You can tell I don't think very highly of these ideas.

Um. It is a way of trapping young women into domesticity and taking away their agency, their ability to have control over their own life. I mean, come on, you're still a baby at 25. I'm 26 now, and I still feel like a baby. I think the Hobbits we're into something with the whole, you are not an adult until you're 30 thing.

Yes, a hundred percent. I agree. And it's sad because there are a few women in this space which promote the same stuff. Like Pearl Davis from Just Pearly Things is one, she's I think 27 or 28 and she's come out and said, yeah, I'm past my prime. And how sad is it to actively choose to promote an ideology that degrades you and degrades other women?

I. I think that a major reason this is a thing is because once you get older like Sophie, you stop caring and that gives women more power to control their own lives and make decisions for themselves. It's a lot easier to manipulate younger women. With less maturity and less life experience into being dominated.

And honestly, even before Red Pill got traction, older women were seen by Western society as having less value. In many cultures, the elderly are venerated and revered in our society, less so many women say that once they past childbearing age and are no longer traditionally beautiful, they feel invisible and not valued.

That's so sad, and I'm actually really glad that a book like Hal's Moving Castle exists. Where the main character is elderly, even though you know she isn't really, but the way that she's portrayed I think is really good. It portrays Sophie as an old woman, as caring less about what people think and not being afraid to make her own choices about her own destiny.

She's so badass. That's amazing. She's awesome. She's a very hail old woman, as the book says, we also want to mention that some of the problems in the media sphere are women led. For example, the whole trad wife movement. Which promotes traditional gender roles. Now, there's nothing wrong with a domestic life, but this trend in particular can easily promote rigid gender norms and ideas that contribute to misogyny.

The whole aesthetic bread making pretty dresses, videos with homemade curtains and flowers can be really beautiful and enticing. But the problem is that the aesthetic ness of it all. Romanticizes a time where women did not have a choice about what to do with their lives, and it takes significance away from the real work that women who stay home do.

The job of being a stay at home mom, especially with young children, is not always going to be glamorous. It's not going to be this beautiful, ethereal, cottage core kind of little life. It's hard work. Yeah, and there's this weird paradox with telling women to stay home and not work when actually it's a full-time around the clock job, especially when there's kids involved, and it's a really, really good thing to want to be a stay at home mom.

And a homemaker, if that's what you want, and that's what your partner is supportive of. It's valuable and contributes greatly to society in ways that have not been acknowledged. But it's the choice that's important, and it's the pushing of this is the only slash best way to be a woman. That's problematic.

And let's just remember that the whole traditional housewife idea was pushed on women after World War ii. During World War ii, a lot of women entered the workforce because the men were off at war, and when they came back, there was this big advertising push to get women back into the household and stay there.

And they did this by romanticizing the whole women's stays at home, baking bread in flowery dresses, and this was also used to sell products. So Jillian Brissett in her thesis at Providence College wrote by the 1950s advertisements made it clear that a woman's place was in the home just after they had told women that they could obtain work outside the home.

Companies flooded magazines with advertisements for the latest household products modeled by women using them while appearing as feminine as ever. The perfect housewife used her new vacuum with her best heels and dress on. Do you vacuum in high heels? I can't imagine anything worse. I'm just like, and I'm so thankful Josh usually does the vacuuming.

Oh, nice. Um, but this wasn't actually a natural state. This was an artificial. Trend, I guess you could say that was constructed by advertisers of the time. It wasn't actually reflective of real life for most women throughout history where both men and women worked in whatever capacity and this whole construction of the traditional gender roles women.

Is at home and is a homemaker, and she greets her husband at the door with a smile with dinner cooked when he comes home from work. It actually led to a ton of housewives being prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-depression meds, because being stuck at home all day every day sucks. We all remember covid.

Exactly. And the ideal that they're projecting isn't actually a good reflection of reality. And I love this idea of, if it's so natural, why does it require so much enforcing if it was really natural? It would just naturally happen. Right. I also think that there is this whole idea of equality for women.

We can't support housewives, and I actually think that is wrong. And I've seen a lot of videos of girls saying, I'm not a feminist. I can cook kind of things. And I think that that's where some. Feminists have gone wrong because at the end of the day, it's about choice and it's about what you want to do with your life.

It's about having agency. Even down to like anti-aging products, if that's what you wanna do, go ahead. Just think about some of the reasons why you might be doing those things. Think critically about them. Anyway, back to Hal's moving Castle. What I love about Sophie's journey is that while she doesn't like that she's old and she's upset about having been cursed, she kind of embraces her old age and the confidence that comes with it, and she doesn't recoil from it.

In fact, she embraces the change. And this perspective shift that it gives her. Also, it's interesting to consider that this story is a bit of a reverse beauty in the Beast story. The movie does turn howl into a bit of a flying bird slash monster who struggles to turn back into a human, but he's not like that in the book.

He's the beautiful one. She's plain also, she says about herself, she's the one with the wrinkles and the bent back. And yet Hal knows she's under a spell and that she doesn't really look like that. And the two do fall in love, like Beauty and the Beast, except the other way round. And Sophie in the end, when she does finally break the curse doesn't go back to the scared, quiet mouse that she was.

She retained some of that freedom that she gained as an older person. Something I think we could all learn from to care a little less, to forget about what society says and just do what we want and be who we are. Because at the end of the day, who cares. And let's value particularly the older women in our lives, in our lives.

For both of us, it's our amazing mom. And for me, it's my mother-in-law, Sam and some of my coworkers. They are such incredible role models of strong and courageous women who have so much life experience and strength, so much wisdom, and are such valuable people in my life. And as our mom says, growing old is such a privilege as the alternative is to die young.

As Kate Bayer says in her book, I hope this finds you well, how the dead  📍 must cringe at our resistance to look as if we've lived. And on that note, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Literary Lamppost. Join us on Instagram and share your thoughts with us. We'll be posting a few community things this week, so keep an eye out for both our posts and our story.

We'd love to hear what you think. Also share this podcast with someone you think would enjoy it, and stay tuned for next episode in which we will be talking about The Giver by Lois Lowry. Make sure you follow us on YouTube at the literary lamppost, as well as subscribing on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast platform to make sure that you don't miss any of our new episodes.

Thanks for listening and see you next time.  This podcast includes brief excerpts from literary works for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and analysis, which we believe constitutes fair use under copyright law. Our theme music was created by Joshua Ibit for exclusive use by the literary Lamppost podcast.