ADORABLE ENTREPRENEUR/WHEN ADOLESCENCE AND MAGIC MEET BUSINESS

ALEXANDRE HAIOUN-PERDRIX - Writer, 3rd Year, Philosophy

"Because you do not always need to use or design weaponry to earn money in Miyazaki’s world."

Kiki’s Delivering Service is rarely remembered as one of the greatest Miyazaki. One could say that is because contenders include in the general battlefield Nausicaa or Spirited Away, and in the playground of films apparently more designed for young people, Ponyo and Totoro. But it could also be that this smaller popularity is due to quite a different frame. Kiki, indeed, offers an unusual approach to its protagonist. Younger than those of Mononoké or Howl’s Moving Castle, but under no parental immediate tutorship like those of Totoro and Ponyo, Kiki does not provide an adventure in the strictest sense of the word, except perhaps at its very end; it is, “paradoxically” might think some, closer to one of the most “adult” films of our director, The wind rises, when it comes to its atmosphere. Like this latter, it is the story of a young character, much more human than the main figures of many already listed works. Its essence, in that sense, is casually revealed at its very beginning: a thirteen-year-old girl gets to learn the world and how to make her living, far from her home and parents (willingly).

Were we to continue on this comparative track, a rare feature we would have to notice would be the – light – insertion of the economic realm in this film. Miyazaki’s protagonists are mostly either freed from financial obligations by their position (children, aristocrats) or find an employer (or someone that might be considered that way – mining industry, pirate fleet, sorcerer or aeronautical company). Unlike them, but just like Porco Rosso’s hero – and this one only – Kiki happens to be an entrepreneur. It precisely takes only about thirty minutes to get her declaring she wants to start her business. (Sure, the question of whether it is even just legal for a thirteen-year-old girl might be asked, but o kawaii koto.) And entrepreneurship will be one of two tools which simultaneously are crucial to developments of the history and may be sometimes simply pushed in the background as dispensable – the second one being food, a polyvalent and core element of the film which nevertheless manages to almost absolutely disappear from its last fifteen minutes.

Never too young to start a business.

Both have an essential double role: social, within the story, and scriptwise impactful – helping development. “Entrepreneur” is itself a function, a role and a means for growing up and social insertion: throughout the film, Kiki is confronted with unexpected difficulties in the course of her job, which she often has to face alone. Those hardships are on an individual level less occasions to acquire skills than moments when it is necessary for the heroine to do so. On a social level, there are crucial events, since the assistance of others does not only prove helpful, but has externalities which are positive in themselves. They are the basis on which Kiki gets inserted in the social fabric: since she is an entrepreneur (and not one of the gig economy), not an employee, clients are those she gets to know while working, not colleagues. Her job choice thus determines partly her social relations. These relations extend beyond this sole realm: although some of them are bound to remain “weak ties”, some may (and indeed do) become “strong”. But because they were born as weak ties, it is less difficult for them to originate in further social milieus and to ignore age differences.

This is how a core relationship is built, which ties Kiki with a much older lady who had at first been her client. It is her helpfulness, her desire to do well – were it to mean doing more than was foreseen, because the circumstances have changed and as an already a bit experienced entrepreneur, she is able and willing to adapt (which is easier out of the framework of any firm) – which produce a very favourable impression on the lady; it is the kindness, the gratefulness – and the will to show the latter – of this lady which transform their bond into friendship, thanks to a logic of gift and counter-gift. And here food plays the most important role, displays its wide range of social functions: it is simultaneously the product of a benevolent work, which by its length and gratuity is made more priceless, an object of paid work, which makes Kiki the intermediary of another social relation – that of a grandmother and her granddaughter, and one of the most direct ways one has to express his feelings. Regardless of whether the message is or not accepted or understood: it shows love for the granddaughter and Kiki, but is disappointedly received in the first case, with the greatest emotion in the second one – for it is a complex message presenting itself under the most simple appearance. (Although it might help that food is no abstract object but a pumpkin herring pie in the first case, and a lovely cake in the second one. Or thus would it matter if Kiki were not, like almost all Miyazaki’s protagonists, too pure not to be overflowing with joy regardless of what exactly is given her.) It is the object of human desires and sentiments as well as it is a conveyer for them. This is why it is not the sole thing traded and exchanged. (If even it is: none of the delivering operations Kiki accomplishes is a mere way to get or send the delivered object. It is probably relevant that food is not by essence the item with which her activity does – she is a service entrepreneur, just delivering; and it is that service which matters for the scenario.)

The pumpkin herring pie. A little bit burnt but you know, it is the thought that counts.

This kind of service she provides is also important: it has not been chosen randomly, but because of already possessed abilities. Entrepreneurship is here a means, but is has itself its means: it requires specialisation, hence skills. The question of skills is more of an identity question in this film: Kiki has them because she is what she is – a witch, whose main talent is riding a flying broom. This capacity is – with a few banknotes – the capital with which she starts her business. The rest is essentially a history of good and bad luck, or rather of how it is possible to accept or refuse them – to make them one’s own. Food is as crucial in this context as it is contingent: it is Osono, the baker, who offers her to sleep and then live in her house, reinforcing with this proximity the role of food as a merchandise – something which encourages to work (because it is necessary to get it and live – Kiki being notably rebuked by the idea of eating only pancakes), to earn money – subsequently, to act, but also a means to do so.

However, the choice of both food and entrepreneurship is, at last, merely instrumental. This is why, when the script requires it, it may easily give way to (lose its dominance in favour of, not be replaced by), for instance, friendship, at least as important as them here. This film is about, not “finding” but “making”, “creating” one’s place – about emancipation and the building of individuality. The way Kiki is treated and how she approaches herself her job is moreover closer to the artistic realm than to usual entrepreneurship, which is of course made easier by the fact her work is accomplished with the help of magic. The words of the painter, her friend of the woods (met, her too, in the course of Kiki’s job), largely contribute to this closeness –sometimes obviously (“magic and drawing have perhaps something in common). Both of her occupations rely on skills that require a certain state of mind.

Cooking pancakes, it is to be noticed, is quite a dangerous activity.

This is why the film does not need great efforts to introduce but also get out of the question of sadness, if not depression, which does not take over that of social insertion, but is added to it. Kiki’s Delivering Service does not try to sell a naive version of emancipation and individuation – which would be even harder and more questionable in the case of a thirteen-year-old entrepreneur, subject to the ear of lacking clients made more pressing by the lack of fixed income. Magic, work and food all happen to be helpful to convey this message: loss of power, especially, is a very concrete way to illustrate it – but so is the lack of will to eat, since it has been made obvious for a moment how both necessary and great it is. The loss of power, not content with its demonstrative nature, is terrible in two ways. Firstly, it means that an essential feature of her identity is temporarily put aside: she has hardly been described, or described herself, as something other than a witch. Not only is she in front of the terrible idea that she might be just someone else than before, someone with less than the one she was before – and until she gets these powers back – but just as anxiety-inducing is the fear that her social connections may vanish: all the people she knows in that city know her as “the little witch”. Worse than all, possibly, it is an effective part of her identity, unquestionably, that has left with her witchcraft – her ability to speak with her cat, or his ability to speak with her, and to think and act partly like a human being. This is subsequently a whole being who has been put aside. Secondly, it means her job is as risk too: she has no great capital but those flying skills – her sole contribution, albeit a great one, was a process innovation, associating in an unusual way an old activity (delivering) and an even older means of transport (riding a broom). It is the way she could find herself helpful, and her means of living, that has slipped away. However, this Miyazaki is still, if not intended for, at least thought as visible by children. Work, food and magic will thus still offer a happier ending. Whereas depression had led her to almost cut some of her relations, these are some of them, made in the course of her job, that make life lighter for her, and food which happens to be a very effective means of expression thereof. And magic reappears at last when her state of mind, already healed, is restored by force of events. That is, when she is compelled to make up solutions and a strategy, basic as it may be, like her job has trained her to do. At last, working is truly just a part of social life: it is not only about learning how to set prices and accomplish tasks, but maybe principally about meeting people and acquiring skills that accompany you out on other sides of your life. Entrepreneurship may be the background of the whole film (from the moment it was introduced therein), but is still not its subject – at most, a part of it.