Bryan Robinson says: “When the hustle culture drives you, you unwittingly relinquish your personal power and become a slave to internal and external pressures,” adding that 45% of the modern-day workforce brag about ascribing to this way of life. Simply put, the bathhouse runs on hustle culture, extolling the virtues of overwork and burnout. Chihiro’s productivity is crucial not just to her thriving in the bathhouse, but also surviving. Employees sleep top to tail in crowded rooms and are pitted against one another to see who can work the hardest.
The bathhouse environment may be bizarre, full of odd characters and spirits for clients, but at its core, it is a place of work. Yubaba: “I’ll give you the most difficult job I’ve got, and work you until you breathe your very last breath.” - Spirited Away Spirited Away follows the adventures of innocent Chihiro, who’s forced to become a worker at a chaotic, mysterious bathhouse for spirits while she tries to reclaim her old life and save her parents, who’ve been transformed into pigs by the bathhouse’s villainous ruler, Yubaba. Here’s our take on how Spirited Away pulls the mask off living to work and shows us the need for another dimension to life. While Chihiro may think her liberation comes from 24/7 hustling, in fact, hustling keeps her down-it’s something more intangible and more spiritual, that provides her freedom. Spirited Away shows that idea to be a trap. The Studio Ghibli classic was released in 2001 and commented on Japan’s losing its soul to capitalism in the context of the country’s “lost decade.” Yet the film is eerily relevant to our contemporary idea of “hustle culture” the mindset that to get ahead, you need to devote as much of your day as possible to working, leaving little time for anything else.Įlon Musk: “Work like hell, I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks, every week.” - Twitter Hidden in the fantastic other-worldly narrative of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is an allegory about society’s toxic obsession with work. Here’s our Take on how Spirited Away pulls the mask off living to work and shows us the need for another dimension to life. It’s something more intangible and more spiritual that provides her freedom. While Chihiro may think her liberation comes from 24/7 hustling, in fact, this is what keeps her down. The Studio Ghibli classic was released in 2001 and commented on Japan’s losing its soul to capitalism in the context of the country’s “lost decade.” Yet the film is eerily relevant to our contemporary idea of hustle culture. Hidden in the fantastic otherwordly narrative of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is an allegory about society’s toxic obsession with work.