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The 1995 animated feature film ‘Ghost in the Shell’ by Oshii Mamoru is set in an unnamed Asian city in the year 2029 where the internet is all-encompassing and people download information directly into their brains by connecting themselves up to computers. Artificial body enhancements and repairs are commonplace and so the mind is recognized as the essence of humanity and individualism. The main character, the cyborg body for the character Motoko is created in a similar fashion, with the circular hoops scanning a 3d wireframe computer model and signifying its materialization into the physical world.
The title Ghost in the Shell refers to the characters of the story. They are police agents who during the term of their service have their minds (that they constantly refer to as their ‘ghosts’) transferred into enhanced cybernetic bodies (their ‘shells’). All vital organs in these bodies can be replaced, except for the brain. For these people the conciousness is what makes them human, the body is just a vessel.The foe that they pursue throughout the film is a sentient life form born on the Internet called the puppet master. It hacks into the brains of people connecting into the net, replacing their minds with new ‘ghosts’ so that they will perpetrate crimes in the physical world to further the Puppet Masters objectives.
The ultimate aim of the puppet master is to transfer itself from the Internet where it is under constant pursuit by the law authorities into a cyborg body so that it can claim asylum in the ‘real world’. The puppet master “a living, thinking entity who was created in the sea of information” is genderless and this is commented on when at one part in the film it transfers into a female ‘shell’ but speaks in a male voice.
The final showdown between the Puppet Master and Motoko takes place in a natural history museum. At one point a rapid burst of chain gun fire from a tank which the Puppet Master is controlling blasts up a wall depicting the various stages of the evolution of man. This is a symbolizing the coming to power of a new stage in human evolution, through cybernetics.In the aftermath of the battle between the Puppet Master and Motoko both are incapacitated from the damage inflicted. The Puppet Master, unlike Motoko will not be repaired and before it expires makes a request to merge minds with her. Motoko hesitates as she questions whether her own unique self be erased when the minds merge.In the next scene we see a shell resembling a young girl (the only one that could be found by Motokos work partner on the black market at such short notice) this new shell is the host to the newly joined consciousnesses, the child of Motoko and the Puppet Master.After making the transition from the virtual world to the physical world, the child, a combination of mindstates from both of these realities sees no difference between "the real world" and the internet. "And where does the newborn go from here? The Net is vast and infinitive." This brings to mind the scene in Videodrome where Prof. Brian O'Blivion states "The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears in the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television." < PREV - NEXT > |
