Ghost in the Shell

Recently I finished reading Wired for War with its meditations on technologic advance and the influence this is having on society at large and conflict specifically. Inspired by it, I felt the need to revisit an older movie my appreciation of whose seems only to grow deeper with each viewing: Mamoru Oshii's film adaption of Ghost in the Shell. Only recently have I been exposed to the idea of "The Singularity": a technologic revolution that will supposedly "change nearly everything in our daily lives" and is believed to be looming on the very near horizon by many scientists. It is at once a concept which both intrigues me yet I am still skeptic of, being by its nature something which is supposed to be nearly impossible to imagine. Yet it is also a subject which many a sci-fi film has explored in the imaginary worlds they create. Ghost in the Shell is such a film, a post-singularity world if ever I've seen one, and the advanced technology portrayed in it does indeed turn many of our accepted paradigms upon their head, including one the upmost importance: just what does it mean to be human?

Please note: This article seeks to examine the work in question to a deeper extent than most reviews. Plot points and the ending will be discussed.

Taking place over the course of just a few short acts, the story of this film is actually fairly simple, a skeleton upon which the meatier concepts grow out of. All of which stem from technology's effects humanity, ethics, and constructed intelligence.

The film opens with a cacophony of voices and broadcasts from a city, which eventually give way to a conversation between diplomats in a highrise building. A close up of our main character, Kusanagi shows us whose mind we're listening in on. One of her teammates, Batou complains of all the noise in her head and we realize as we hear their voices communicating with one another that they don't even always move their lips. These are times of such high tech advancement that our main characters all have computerized brains, and not only have the equivilent ever-connected internet within, but also what amounts to telepathy to those within their network.

The situation in the building, one which pertains to international dealings, a rogue software developer, and political assylum is quickly diffused by Kusanagi who assinates the foreign diplomat and then eludes capture using "therm-optic camouflage" a devise which more or less renders her invisible. Then as the opening credits roll, we see the creation of a cyborg body, which in the end turns out to be Kusanagi herself. Just how progressive a machine it is is hard to describe. The muscles, skin, eyes, and hair all finish to give the creation a look indistinguishable from a regular human being. A potential hot-button issue for the future which has been explored in many works of sci-fi but has yet to be introduced to the real world is one of regulating robots that can pass for human. Are they to be treated as human even when they're not?

As human minds within a cybernetic bodies, the cyborgs of this film are for all intents and purposes seen and treated as human. The real psychological questions seem to be the effects on the cyborgs themselves. "Sometimes I feel like my body died long ago and now I'm just someone else wandering through this world" says Kusanagi at one point in the film.

Although the film follows the exploits of Kusanagi and her team (an extremely well equipped group of operatives who resemble both SWAT and FBI but are simply referred to as "Section 9"), the real juice of the story involves the pursuit of a "ghost hacker" called The Puppet Master, an entity literally so skilled at their craft that they can hack the computerized brains of humans and build delusions that will manipulate them far better than any hypnotist is currently able to.

A brief word about some of the vocabulary in this film: a person's "Ghost" roughly equivocates to their mind, character, or consciousness. It is possible they chose not to use those words because of how abstract or cumbersome they are. The word soul also isn't uttered, and it is perhaps because of the connotations this word has they avoided it. So why the word "Ghost"? I suppose partly because it is easy to say and specific enough that it won't confuse people (unless they were having a conversation about the supernatural) but also I suspect it's due to the cold and distant nuance it has to it, since this is indeed a chilly and dark vision of the future we're looking at. I can't remember if the word "Shell" is actually ever uttered in the film, but this of course refers to the body being used at any given time by our main characters, and like the word "Ghost", it too has a frigid, impersonal feel to it.

We see an example of the new types of contests occurring between opposing forces in an early scene. A moving hack operation (one the Puppet Master is believed to be behind) taking place at multiple terminals is being investigated by Kusanagi and her team. A game of cat and mouse involving a garbage truck (the mobile mode chosen by the hackers), and a herm-optic wearing gunman turns into a chase and then a gunfight, and after that hand to hand combat with one of the opponents invisible.



In the aftermath of all this action, the garbage men who did the hacking are interogated and we learn that one of them has indeed been "ghost hacked" himself. He believes he has a wife he is seperated from and even a daughter he loves enough to put up with filthy work to help, all of which is just an illusion. As the police explain to him that he's been tricked and taken advantage of, we begin to see the walls closing down on him and just how devastating such a situation would be. With tears in his eyes, he asks what will happen to him and if he'll ever get his old memories back, only to be told that his they'll never be fully restored, and that there may even be residual shocks from the implanted memories.

It's difficult to imagine losing everything in an instant with regards to what one accumulated in memory over a lifetime, but that possibilty apparently is very real in this version of the future. Many people in our modern world who have been the victims of identity theft express feelings of outrage, helplessness, disbelief, and a sense of violation at the experience, but this hypothetical of ghost hacking takes the situation to an entirely different level. Another question which isn't answered by the film but certainly would have to be asked should it actually occur, is just what to do with a ghost hacked human after the fact. Could they be charged for crimes they technically committed but were manipulated into? Could they be set free without being a danger to themselves or others? Would they have to spend time in counseling or a medical facility? These questions and many others are ones the film asks only passingly on its quicksilver pace.

In a contrast to the action which preceeds and follows, the mid point of the film is marked two scenes of quiet contemplation: a conversation between Kusanagi and Batou on a boat, and an existential sort of interlude which is comprised only of images and music and lacks any dialogue.

The talk between Kusanagi and Batou occurs after she goes diving in the bay, an activity confounding to Batou considering her cybernetic body could sink like rock if anything were to go wrong. We begin to see that Kusanagi has indeed been puzzling out her identity and the kind of existence she's gone into by shedding her natural body for one artificial. "Man sees a chance at new technology and simply achieves it" (seemingly without any thought for what complications it brings on) she explains. It's almost as if she's asking the questions for us in audience. She also quotes a passage to Batou in a strange voice that doesn't seem to be her own, in a foreshadowing of things to come.

The musical passage that follows is both poetic and peaceful but at the same time ominous and foreboding, perhaps in order to encapsulate the conflicting feelings we all have on the future bright but uncertain as it is. We see Kusanagi staring out the window of a restaurant at a boat passing by in a canal, only to see another person with the same face as herself standing on the deck staring back at her.

The activity resumes with Kusanagi coming to headquarters as a cybernetic body has been brought in which appears to have a ghost or something resembling one within it though there are no human memories. As members of a rival section appear to inspect the body, The Puppet Master makes a sudden and startling appearance. Speaking through the body they are analyzing under its own power, it claims to be a consciousness born in the sea of information and a living being even though it lacks a physical body it can actually call its own. It also demands assylum as it has now been confined in a shell and thus is in a situation of danger of perishing. A whole can of worms could be spent here disecting just what it would mean if such a thing happened and whether such a creature would be entitled to any rights in the physical world that man occupies or even the electronic one he's created. All of this, however, is bypassed by a surprise attack on the base and the Puppet Master is stolen by camouflaged soldiers. There are people apparently, who'd rather not deal with the thorny issues he has just opened by announcing his existence to the world. Fortunately Togusa, a member of Kusanagi's team, has noticed something amiss and Kusanagi and her team are able to follow and then chase down those who have stolen the Puppet Master.

There is a sort of third and final musical interlude here (after the opening and mid-section mentioned previously) while they track and pursue their quarry though it is shorter than the others. What is kind of interesting to note about these interludes is that the first contains a very traditional sounding Japanese music, the second a combination of that and more modern sounds, and this final one almost entirely is comprised of contemporary music. A symbol of the transition from lingering past into the future perhaps?

What ensues next is a spectacular shootout in an abandoned museum between Kusanagi, armed with explosives, automatic weapons, and therm-optic camouflage and her opponents, who unbeknownst to her have hidden a tank in that location. One point in this scene I'd like to mention involves the tank shooting at Kusanagi which ends up firings upon an old model of species' family tree engraved into a wall. The bullets stop just short of the top, the short of "hominis" (humankind), a symbol as rich with meaning as you'll ever see. What does it mean exactly? That we have a habit of killing all other life but somehow always manage to stop just short of killing ourselves off? That our machines are the ones now pushing for our extinction?


Kusanagi fails to neutralize the enemy, but is saved at the last moment by Batou showing up in the nick of time with antitank weaponry. Though both of them are aware that unknown (and presumably hostile) helicopters are heading in their direction, Kusanagi decides she must "dive into" the ghost of the Puppet Master to see what's really inside since it might be her last chance to ever do so without supervision or tampering. It's very telling to me that the true climax of this film is not another chase, shootout, or fight, but rather a scene with no action whatsoever. The climax to this film is instead a conversation between two minds; one human and natural, the other artificial and unlike any other; and the stunning revelations of the Puppet Master on the future of humanity and machines.

The Puppet Master speaks with the frigid, calculating confidence of a being who never doubts their actions for a second because in the end he has only the cold, hard logic of a computer. There appears to be no sense remorse or sympathy or any other human emotions within him and yet he does still have ambitions and desires. "I am a living creature, yet I lack two things that any other living creature on this planet has: dying and reproducing" he states to Kusanagi. Her response is to question why he simply does not copy himself, since in the end, doesn't his existence amount to computerized data which can simply be duplicated. His reply, that aside from not being the same as natural reproduction, is that copying is inferior to natural replication of genes since "clones do not give rise to originality" and "an effective virus could destroy an entire crop" of clones. Many people with experience playing computer games can probably attest to the truth of this statement, as oftentimes with computer opponents the first time you fight one it may give you some difficulty, but usually learning an efficient way of winning when it comes to dealing with one means you can defeat any number of others since the same strategy usually applies (e.g. they all fall for the same tricks because they are programmed to respond to things in the same way). In the film itself, Kusanagi actually mentions something very similar to Togusa at an earlier point in the film when he asks her why she requested someone like him be transfered to the team. Her response is that his differences are what make him valuable; that since his body is almost entirely human he thinks and reacts differently, providing the group with much needed variety it would otherwise not possess. We see the wisdom of this in action earlier in the course of the film as Togusa does indeed provide an interestingly old-fashioned idea when the time comes to track those who steal the Puppet Master's body from Section 9. "Overspecialize and you breed in weakness. It's slow death" Kusanagi says. And while it might seem strange that she would say something so similar to what the Puppet Master believes, this does actually lead into the next point I'd like to make.

The Puppet Master tells Kusanagi his plan to "reproduce": by merging his intelligence with her own to create an entirely new and different entity. "A complete co-mingling of our beings... both of us will undergo change, but there is nothing ofr either of us to lose" he claims. The idea of an artifical creature envying us and wanting to be like us is as old as stories like Frankenstein and Pinnochio, but Ghost in the Shell has now just provided us with a very new concept of where and how humanity might converge with machines. In the act of computerizing our own brains, becoming more machine-like ourselves, it is quite possible the lines are blurring indistinguishably between what we are and what we've created. When asked why he chose her, the Puppet Master responds by saying he has long been "aware" of her and that they are more alike than she knows.

We realize here that the Puppet Master has indeed been following Kusanagi for some time, watching her, and many smaller details in fabric of the film's plot hint at this. We realize it was most likely his voice that spoke through Kusanagi wen she spoke so cryptically to Batou on the boat earlier, and that an off-hand remark by one of the men with Section 6 regarding the way the Puppet Master keeps "hanging around" Section 9 because he "has the hots for someone" is actually quite accurate. Also, a second glance Kusanagi takes at the shell of the minister's interpreter much earlier in the film suggests that she can actually feel his presence as well.

The idea of a machine transfixed on a human is intriguing, but the point I really want to make relates to the Puppet Master's rationale for choosing Kusanagi. That they are similar makes us wonder if he has indeed chosen her in the way many of us would chose our own mates. He claims to have been watching her for some time and it's hard not to wonder if it was her way of thinking that drew him to her. Is he attracted to her similarities or her differences or both? Whatever the reasons, given Kusanagi's somewhat eratic behavior to try and reach him, it's difficult not to feel the sentiment was in the end a mutual one, as is generally the case whenever a coupling between any two organisms takes place within our world.

The Puppet Master speaks of new beginnings and crossing frontiers and then, just as we see angels descending upon him and Kusanagi from their points of view symbolizing the merge, bullets from high-powered guns destroy their bodies. The hostile helicopters have arrived. Batou is able to block on of the shots at the last second, however, and save Kusanagi.


The epilogue of the film shows us Kusanagi, repaired but now mounted in a child's body (the only thing available on the black market, Batou will explain later). Batou comes in and explains the end situation to her. The political dealings for the most part "ended in a draw" with most of the evidence being destroyed and certain key figures resigning to avoid the messy legal battles that would otherwise ensue. "Is he still with you?" he then asks Kusanagi to which she answers in the affirmative. "I am no longer the woman who was called Kusanagi or the program called the Puppet Master" she tells him. The full impact of this line is difficult to assess.

The first time I heard it, it was difficult for me to discern whether something horrible had happened or not. On the one hand, the Puppet Master is a criminal when it comes down to it. He manipulated people and destroyed lives. On the other hand, he was just a program, doing what he was designed to do, and those were the designs of people who were selfish or (if you really want to call them that) evil. The Puppet Master himself, however, is perhaps more ambiguous than this. He could've lived forever within the net, omnipresent and untold times more powerful without being confined to a body. Yet he chose a desperate gamble to "reproduce" that in the end isn't all that difficult from trout swimming upstream or newly hatched turtles scurrying for the ocean absolutely vulnerable to predators. Looking at his actions, the Puppet Master does indeed come out looking much like an organism as he claims to be earlier. It's a profound thought too, a near immortal wishing for and contemplating their own death, but the Puppet Master is such a character who has no delusions of grandeur despite the power he wields, and it's attributes such as these that make him so much more interesting than the one dimensional villains of other, similar stories.

The story concludes with Batou offering to let Kusanagi stay at his safe house for as long as she'd like, with her deciding not to more or less immediately. The final shot of the film has her staring out upon the city, musing to herself "Where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite."

* * *

Unlike similar movies with futuristic settings, Ghost in the Shell is more cerebral. It contemplates not only how technology has transformed warfare but also the identity of individuals, groups, and nations. Beyond all of this it imagines for us a very unique idea of how an artificial mind might think and feel, embodied in the character of the Puppet master. The ending is left open and somewhat inconclusive reflecting the uncertainty of our own future. The child-like body of rebuilt Kusanagi provides us with a very appropriate metaphor for this concept. It couldn't be more symbolic of the new creature she's become and just what possibilities lie in the future are as open as a lifetime spread blank and unwritten in front of an infant.