Lost for Words: Constructing Human-Nature Relations through Color in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Abstract

Because of the failure of both academic and literary language in providing a comprehensible account of the contemporary, environmental crises of the Anthropocene, this paper explores alternative, non-linguistic storytelling methods characteristic of animation for bringing awareness and understanding of ecological issues to a broader public. It will do so by focusing on Hayao Miyazaki’s film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), in order to investigate how color, as a visual narrative tool, can provide a powerful medium for portraying the complexity of transcorporeal entanglements, and consequently problematizing the human/non-human binary.