AC Radio Episode 9 – Hayao Miyazaki’s pigs vs fascists
Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso (1992) is an anti-fascist fantasy about a pig bounty hunter, with Rowan Fortune and Twilight O’Hara discussing its relation to Miyazaki's shift from Marxism and the historical context of Japan, Italy, and Yugoslavia in the podcast.
24 Mar 2023
Hayao Miyazaki’s anime Porco Rosso (1992) is an anti-fascist fantasy film about a anthropomorphic pig bounty hunter living in the Adriatic Sea, catching air pirates. The title translates as Red Pig and delves into the titular’s past, as he flees the Italian fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. In this podcast Rowan Fortune (they/them) and Twilight O’Hara (they/them) discuss the film in relation to Miyazaki’s departure from marxism, drawing on other films from his oeuvre to situate this cinematic experience in the history of Japan, Italy, and Yugoslavia.
Rowan Fortune is an editor and revolutionary socialist. On their weekly blog, they write on utopian literature and imagination, why grimdark is the dystopian fiction of our time and more. They wrote Writing Nowhere: A Beginner's Guide to Utopia; edited the anthology of utopian short fiction Citizens of Nowhere; and contributed to the multi-authored System Crash: An activist guide to making revolution.
Twilight O’Hara is a psychology student and revolutionary socialist in the United States. They are at work on a book reconstructing Marxism based on philosophical idealism.