Slate Money Money On Film: Spirited Away
9 snips
Mar 27, 2026 
Nadira Goff, a culture writer who analyzes film and storytelling, digs into Spirited Away with sharp cultural and economic lenses. She explores the bathhouse as an exploitative workplace. She discusses No Face as speculative chaos and the river god’s cleansing as environmental critique. She highlights names, identity, and Chihiro’s coming-of-age journey.
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Bathhouse As Japan's Economic Parable
- Spirited Away allegorizes Japan's 1990s economic decline through the bathhouse as an exploitative but stable system.
- Felix Salmon links the bathhouse's hierarchy and labor exploitation to Japan's lost decade and falling corporate fortunes.
Yubaba As The Rentier Exploiter
- The film frames Yubaba as a rentier figure at the top extracting surplus from wage laborers sleeping shoulder to shoulder.
- Felix Salmon reads this as a Marxist-style portrayal: jewels and office counting versus exploited workers in poor conditions.
Greed And Pollution Intertwined
- Miyazaki repeatedly links greed and pollution: the polluted river spirit reveals environmental damage from human excess.
- Nadira Goffe highlights the stink sprite cleaned to reveal a river god clogged by pollution.