Deslocamentos espaço-temporais: Espacialidades Ma (間) em 'A viagem de Chihiro', de Hayao Miyazaki

Abstract

The West has put silence in the place of lack of communication. In a social reality that demands a constant production of audible and visible signs, the pause seems to have been conditioned to absence. In the East, however, specifically in Japan, the interspaces are valued, being an element related to various aesthetic aspects of the country's culture (OKANO, 2007). Given this, we conducted a study on the communicative potential of the manifestations of the Japanese aesthetic sign Ma (間) in the feature film Spirited Away (千 と 千 尋 の 神 隠 し, Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, 2001), by the filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. We aimed to seek a discussion about the importance and the centrality of Ma for the imagetic, aesthetic, narrative and sound construction of the film, raising a debate about the imperative plurality of means of conceiving communication. For such, we discuss about mass culture (MORIN, 2018), about pop culture (LUCIE-SMITH, 2000) and about the Lotmanian concept of semiosphere from the Semiotics of Culture (MACHADO, 2007). We contextualized the animation industry in Japan (FARIA, 2008; NAPIER, 2007; SATO, 2005), as well as presented Miyazaki's cinematic trajectory (CAVALLARO, 2006). Then we dedicated ourselves to the explanation of Ma, being inserted in the context of Japanese culture (OKANO, 2007, 2008, 2014, 2016). We commented on its manifestations in different cultural segments. At this point, we also relied on Peirce's Semiotic propositions regarding phenomenology (PEIRCE, 2008). We then turned to the movie in question. We discussed the plot of the feature, the relations with other productions that have travel as a theme, the issues explored in the work and the marketing context in which it is inserted (CAVALLARO, 2006; NAPIER, 2018; OLIVEIRA, 2016). Finally, we discussed some elements that highlight Ma' s materializations in the feature, such as the evolution of the character, the visual and sound composition of the work and the insertion of objects, themes or scenarios throughout the film. The research pointed us to the importance of conceiving other ways than the western one for the production of meaning in the cinema, perceiving the silence, the pause and the emptiness as structural elements in the construction of communication.