'You can make horrible things if you want, but I want nothing to do with it.'
Learning from the Never Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki on art, technology and parenthood.
The other night I watched a documentary about Hayao Miyazaki, the beloved filmmaker/animator, before bed. This decision was, in part, because my kids have softened to watching more Miyazaki movies of late and enjoy all of them. Considering the fight they put up before watching each one, it’s a herculean feat, although that’s only getting them to agree to watch initially. Once the movie starts they’re hooked, just like I knew they would be. Those of us that know about these movies know how special they are.
So I watched The Never Ending Man, which came out in 2016 and documented Miyazaki’s uneasy retirement, obsessive lording over of a computer-animated short being built for the Ghibli Museum, and ultimately his decision that even though he was getting older and couldn’t focus like he used to, there was still another feature film left inside him that needed to come out.
One of the prevailing themes was Miyazaki’s opposition to using computers to generate art of any kind. He’s a staunch believer in hand drawn animation, which has a quality to it that’s unrivaled. There’s a throwaway line in the early part of the movie where he talks about how popular the song “Let it Go” from Frozen is, and how dreadful the theme of the song is about embracing being an individual that helps set the uneasy pace for this movie. Frozen was such a huge success of an animated film and that song is one most parents know all too well. And Miyazaki, a renowned creator of wonderful animated films, thinks it all just sucks.
He’s brutally hard on the younger guys working on Boro the Caterpillar. Just brutal. Most of his time in the studio is spent undercutting everything they’re doing by hand-animating the scene they’re working on to show them how it should be done, and the animators are scared out of their minds of ever defying or upsetting Miyazaki. He’s both invigorated by their energy and enthusiasm, and disgusted by what they’re doing. It’s not that he doesn’t understand it, it’s that he believes they don’t understand him. They’re talking about how quickly they can finish an animation, and he scoffs because finishing quickly isn’t what makes great art, it’s getting it right.
There’s a scene where he meets with someone pitching AI generated animation to him as something to look forward to in the future, and it’s really something. As someone who occupies a lot of author spaces, AI generators are impossible to ignore. For the average layperson, they might see an occasional headline about ChatGPT and brush it off, but for most people in artistic fields, it’s an oppressive Sword of Damocles dangling over our heads. Miyazaki’s reaction to AI is… well, all that really should need to be said about it.
“You can make horrible things if you want, but I want nothing to do with it. It’s an awful insult to life.”
The look on their faces is just… they’re shattered. There’s a disconnect between folks who want “help” in creating “art” and the people who want to create art, and that chasm is only going to grow in the coming years.
“I fear the world’s end is near. Humans have lost confidence.”
They released Boro the Caterpillar at the Ghibli Museum in 2018, which is currently the only place you can view said movie, and Miyazaki is working on what could be his last feature film. Past films of his have used some computer-assisted imagery, but Boro was the first to be built from computer animation. Miyazaki in his old age seems to be leery of technology, but willing to incorporate it where he can. His son, Goro, has directed a few films that have fared nowhere near as well as his father’s films have. This includes the entirely computer animated Earwig and the Witch, a film that was critically panned. I should note that Goro never had the greatest relationship with his father growing up, with his father so immersed in his work that he spent little time with his family.
As always, it’s about balance.
Miyazaki is a remarkable artist who never found a way to balance his passion for creation with being a parent, although he found a way to balance his own hardline belief on hand drawn animation with the occasional compromise. Goro’s earlier creation, Tales from Earthsea, a maligned and messy adaptation of the beloved Ursula K. Le Guin’s work, shows some of that complication, and one of his blog entries talks about his relationship with his father and the impact it had on the creation of said film.
“For me, Hayao Miyazaki gets zero marks as a father but full marks as a director of animated films.”
It’s about balance. I spend at least a few hours a day with my own kids while they grow up, and while it can fluctuate and depending where I’m at in my writing process my days can vary, spending time with my kids remains the most important part of my life.
What’s the point of being a brilliant creator if the people who need you most, the people you can have the biggest impact on, don’t get to know you? There’s a delicate balance, just like there is when it comes to creating art. Are you creating something catering to people’s tastes? Is it something you love? Are you doing it the way you want to? There’s being stubborn and then there’s being smart. Using technology to assist in your work and even automate some of the more rote tasks is smart, using technology as a crutch, or to do things you’re not good at, to make it look like you’re good at it? That’s another thing altogether.
Balance is key.
Cracked Palace, the sixth and final book in the Trystero series, is available now. If you’ve yet to start the series, Broken Ascension is the place to start. It’s a space opera/adventure series built on the foundation of these struggles between creation of art, “market pressures,” parenthood and operating within a found family during turbulent times.