Shojo Savior: Princess Nausicaä, Ecological Pacifism, and The Green Gospel

I DeWeese-Boyd - The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 2009 - utpjournals.press
The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 2009utpjournals.press
In the distant future, a thousand years after “The Seven Days of Fire”—the holocaust that
rapacious industrialization spawned—the earth is a wasteland of sterile deserts and toxic
jungles that threaten the survival of the few remaining human beings. This is the world of
Hayao Miyazaki's film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. In this film, Miyazaki offers a
vision of an alternative to the violent quest for dominion that has brought about this
environmental degradation, through the struggle of the young princess of the Valley of the …
In the distant future, a thousand years after “The Seven Days of Fire”—the holocaust that rapacious industrialization spawned—the earth is a wasteland of sterile deserts and toxic jungles that threaten the survival of the few remaining human beings. This is the world of Hayao Miyazaki’s film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. In this film, Miyazaki offers a vision of an alternative to the violent quest for dominion that has brought about this environmental degradation, through the struggle of the young princess of the Valley of the Wind, Nausicaä. As a messianic figure, I contend the shojo Nausicaä offers a beneficial estrangement from common conceptions of the gospel and opens up the ecological significance of Christ’s message of non-violence. Exploring the ecological and pacific aspects of the gospel through this figure, I argue, may provide a helpful lens for examining our own distorting visions in this age of war and environmental crisis.
University of Toronto Press