When I watched Kiki’s Delivery decades ago, I couldn’t help but notice it was a story within a story loaded with tons of interesting symbols and metaphors. Kiki is a young lady from the county moving to the big city with hopes of making a living off her art. In the film, Kiki's flying is used as her medium for art. After facing financial responsibilities associated with taking care of herself, Kiki decides to monetize her flying/art as a delivery service, which becomes the driving force behind the narrative.
Young Adults Trying to Make it on Their Own
Kiki’s delivery service becomes an allegory for young adults desperately trying to maintain a creative career in today’s world. Once young adults leave the nest to live an independent life, most realize they have to work extremely hard to get by in an economy that does not value their unique creative ability or art. In this film, Kiki struggles to find work. After some training to perfect her craft, the optimistic and strong willed Kiki decides to be an independent or small business owner and use her flying to aid friends in making deliveries.
Kiki's idea to do jobs revolving around her art is genius, but the world she lives in does not value her flying/art. If you equate Kiki’s flying to being able to paint, write, play music or photography, then you will see why art is not valued in this world. This film shows the struggle of an artist to make a living in a world that believes art is not a profession that can be studied and turned into a job or career. Kiki's uncommon job of flying is deemed worthless to most citizens in the big city with common jobs like doctors, lawyers, etc.
Many artist are faced with the tough choice that putting everything into training to be an artist may not work out for them professionally and peer pressure from their successful peers or friends to be like everyone one else just to find stability or financial security. Statistics from a Harvard case study showed only 10% of college graduates with art degrees earn a living as an artist or work in the creative services field. Instead of giving up like most artists do, Kiki finds a way to mix her passion of flying with earning money from delivering products. This is a metaphor for taking project work or the first job of your career to pay the bills.
Taking a Job You Hate to Pay Bills and Make Ends Meet
Like most, Kiki struggles on her first job and feels insecure about her qualifications because this working and supporting herself is new to her and harder than she assumed it would be. The work life struggle and set backs are what makes Kiki so relatable. Kiki’s delivery service equates to a first job where we all have self doubt that we will not do well due to lack of experience, skills or not being as interesting as our rivals in the field. After some successful deliveries, Kiki finds her groove and confidence. As Kiki’s success grows, so does her professional reputation. Soon, Kiki’s business grows to the point where she can’t keep up with the demands of her customers and suffers from creative burnout.
Creative Burnout
Kiki’s creative burnout is expressed as losing her magic which is her ability to fly. As Kiki’s ability to fly decreases, she also gets hit by the reality that most of her clients do not appreciate her art nor try to understand it. Kiki starts to feel frustrated and hopeless. She loses the desire to hangout with friends, and can’t get out of bed some days because she’s not motivated and suffering from creative exhaustion. Her feelings of futility result in her losing her ability to fly all at all and talk to her cat which serves as a metaphor for her raw emotions she cannot communicate.
Kiki’s loss of magical flying powers is symbolic of artists wearing themselves down trying to turn a passion for doing art into a job in order to support themselves. We can connect this dilemma to millennial's in today’s society with many salaried positions for people in the arts disappearing. In this tech savvy world, artists are expected to produce and create content for free to share their work via social media for little or no pay at all just to prove they are real and have talent. In this generation, if you’re not a social media data scientist with 10,000 followers most clients won’t even look at your work bc you are not an influencer.
Once Kiki loses her magical flying, it becomes a double whammy because that loss equates to career and personal failure. Kiki’s sense of self worth is based on her flying, so when she lost her abilities, she lost her identity. For the working class, most workers based their self worth on their professionalism or defined by what they do to earn income. Kiki cannot work, so she does not feel like herself. She begins to doubt herself, and she has a reckoning moment most artist face: the temptation to go home or give up on making it as an artist all together. Kiki wants to be and artist and maintain the big city living lifestyle, but she finds it hard to stay committed once her inspiration is lost and real life problems take over.
Finding Your Inspiration
At the turning point in the story, Kiki connects with a close friend named Ursula. Ursula explains to Kiki about work life balance and the need to take time for self care. Ursula informs Kiki that when feeling low on magical energy their is a way to recharge her creative batteries by doing nothing art related to help overcome the disruption in magical energy/creative flow.
Kiki takes Ursula’s advice goes on hiatus. For a while, Kiki does nothing at all but rest in routine chores. She recovers her magical powers slowly, but not over using them. Kiki stays in hiatus for a while until her friends really need her creative powers.
When Kiki’s friend Tombo gets in trouble, Kiki’s creative flying batteries are recharged, and she flies again. Like most artist, Kiki goes through a moment of crisis to understand if she could live without her art or if she loves it enough to push through the difficulties. Kiki finds her own inspiration, and she comes to remember why she enjoys flying again. She wouldn’t be herself if she couldn’t fly or express her identity in a way that comes natural.
Never Give Up and Believe in Yourself
In an age, where young people overwhelmingly expect their careers to define their identity, Kiki’s commitment to doing what she loves makes her a surprised relate-able heroine for modern times.
