We All Know a No-Face (Spirited Away)

The Stories We Tell

Spirited Away & the importance of identity in a rapidly changing world

We all know a No-Face. Someone who has no true identity, who mirrors their environment in order to fit in, who doesn’t possess the ability to think for themself. Someone who parrots whatever opinion or hot-take is popular on Twitter that week. Someone who is addicted to external validation and consumption. Lonely and insecure, these No-Faces crave connection or purpose, and think the best way to achieve their goal is to loudly conform to societal expectations.

I know this because I was No-Face for a time in my early 20s. I think back on certain periods of 2020 and cringe at the performative nature of my chronically-online presence. What did I have to offer as a nobody white-guy with nothing of value to say? Why did I feel the need to weigh in on every issue?

It was a strange time in my life. I had moved back to Chicago after school, surprised when very few of my high school friends did the same. I was left stranded in the land of employment, realizing far too late that the future I chose would leave me empty and unfulfilled.

So I lapsed into vice and distraction.

I drank on weeknights, gambled incessantly on sports, and mindlessly scrolled Twitter and Reddit. I struggled with tremendous health challenges, which only compounded my misery. Really, though, I was desperate for connection.

Lacking any outlet for true connection, and feeling unfulfilled with work and love, I turned to social media. You know social media? That everpresent, unregulated cancer that plagues the strong and tears down the weak. I turned to online communities as a replacement for real community, which exists, but damn if it isn’t hard to find these days.

And why shouldn’t I have? Shouldn’t social media serve to connect and unify, rather than enflame and divide? No, of course not. Because social media, just like the bathhouse in Spirited Away, is driven by one power alone: capitalism.

Social media giants design algorithms to manipulate and control, to enslave your attention and use it as currency. They discard your soul and ignore your mental health.

In Spirited Away, the character of No-Face acts as a mirror, taking on the essence of his environment. In the bathhouse, a microcosmic representation of any capitalistic society, all the power and money is concentrated at the top, while those at the bottom scrap and claw for every bit of leverage they can. We see this in the way Chihiro is first treated by workers at the bathhouse, who see her as a burdensome risk who might jeapordize whatever power they may have. So they take advantage of their rare bit of authority and treat her like filth, commenting on her smell, naivety and laziness.

Thus, when No-Face enters the bathhouse, he ineviatably becomes a gluttinous monster, terrorizing its workers and reflecting the greed and consumerism that coarses through every step on the bathhouse’s hierarchal ladder.

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