Ghost in the Shell Presentation by Jason Paradis
Hello everyone,
My apologies on the semi tardiness of this posting however I wanted to ensure
that whatever I posted was concise and useful to anybody using the information
posted. I was originally going to just post my presentation notes however with
recent thoughts about the approaching essay and the nearing deadline I wanted
to produce an insightful base of scholarly readings and bibliographies that
would aid in those writing their final papers on Ghost in the Shell. However
the information and notes I’m going to post will not only be useful in research
and analysis of ghost in the shell but also in any facet of the anime form that
deals with post humanism, cyborgs, the post modern city, globalization, and
national identity. I have included a bibliography with a brief overview of what
the reading deals with and also notes on the important aspects of the above
mentioned themes and along with the appropriate citations. If have any
questions you can email me at maddhatter85@hotmail.com. Best of luck Jason
Paradis
Bibliography
Appadurai, Arjun. Globalization. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2001. 279-307.
I used this a brief guide to the concepts involved in globalization
Baudrillard, Jean, and Sheila Glaser. Simulacra and Simulation. 1st ed.
Michigan: Ann Arbor University of Michigan P, 1994. 1-41.
This is useful for the exploration of what is simulation and examples of it but
also for the furthering of the concept of empire.
Baudrillard, Jean. “The Ecstasy of Communication,” in Hal Foster, ed., The
Anti-Aes-
thetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Port Townsend: Bay, 1983) 127, 126.
This deals with communication in the information age and hows its evolved but
more precisely how its affecting us.
Brown, Steve T. Cinema Anime Critical Engagements with Japanese Animation. 1st
ed. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 12-104.
The first portion of notes is on this article- dealing mostly with what a cyborg
is and posthumanism as a concept
Cazdyn, Eric. The Flash of Capital Film and Geopolitics in Japan. Durham and
London: Duke UP, 2002. 204-254.
This is the second portion of the notes and was touched upon heavily in my
presentation – it deals with Ghost in the shell in terms of national identity
in the coming of globalization
Drazen, Patrick. Anime Explosion! the What? Why? & Wow! of Japanese Animation.
Berkley, California: Stone Bridge P, 2003. 3-341.
This was a work I consulted for the presentation to gain an informal background
on Ghost in the Shell
Frederic Jameson, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 9, July, 1982, pp 147-158
This article deals with critical Eutopias and Distopias in science fiction and
science fictions ability as a genre to
Held, David, and Anthony McGrew. Globalization/Anti-Globalizati
Blackwell Inc., 2002. 25-38.
More information on globalization as a concept and also cultural implications in
regards to identity
Johnson, William. Focus on the Science Fiction Film. 1st ed. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1972. 139-142.
This is a discussion on humanism and its toes to science fiction as a genre and
its interaction with the survival of man in the face of alien invasion and the
onset of technology
Kellner, Douglas. Media Culture Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics Between
the Modern and Postmodern. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. 297-327.
This chapter deals with Baudrillard’s simulacra a and simulation, necromancer
and how they work to decode the cyberpunk genre.
Lungstrum, Janet Ward. “The Display Window: Designs and Desires of Weinmar
Consumerism”. New German Critique.76: (Winter 1999), 115-160
This article deals with modern to postmodern cities, commerce, consumption
Notes
Please note: I’ve posted these notes as a guide towards additional research and
sourcing for your research papers. If the notes presented are vague in anyway
and you’re unclear about the content then please consult the original source.
These are my summary of the these articles and are subject to error so please
enjoy but keep in mind that they aren’t to be taken as absolute truth but
rather a launch pad to help deepen the research for your papers (if they tie in
to you subject that is ).
Cinema Anime
Pg 11
• Human machine hybrids in relation to changing visions of the city, cyborg
politics and the transgression of boundaries associated with the liberal
humanist subject, and the role of technology in the negotiation and formation
of adolescent identity.
• Exploring how humans envision their relationship to technology and the
physical environment they inhabit, examining the history of modes of
subjectivity emerging from various historical junctures.
• Changes in city can be seen as equal to changes in human embodiment
Pg 92-95
• Ghost in the Shell is about cyborg subjectivity and how they reproduce
• What sense does a cyborg species have historical continuity into the future?
• Sexual reproduction is at the heart of this film- however the main character
Motoko’s body is completely mechanical and doesn’t have any organic fluids,
blood etc.
• However the opening sequence reveals that the main character still seems to
have the residual effects of human bodily systems- the opening reference to
Motoko having static in her net connection due to her being on her period
• This film is also about technological negotiated merging the organic or the
“human” with the inorganic structures of urban life
• The ‘ghost’ is all that distinguishes the cyborg/human from being a pure
android or AI
• The puppet master was originally a computer program that becomes sentient and
is then forced by its makers to abandon the net (where he was birthed amidst
the sea of information) and enter a manufactured cyborg body from the same
company that created Motoko’s shell
• This character hacks into users ghosts when they access the net and takes
control of them forcing them to commit acts of terrorism
• Kusanagi watches as the garbage collector (who is a victim of the puppet
masters ghost hacking) is informed in interrogation that all that he knows and
holds dear in his life is actually an artificially implanted identity
• This ultimately leads to Motoko questioning the authenticity of her own ghost-
is everything she knows (or he feeling of existence) also artificial
• Pg96Director Mamoru Oshii’s mise en scene: There is a linkage of bodies and
consciousness through the networks that are intrinsic to urban life- computer
networks, phones, garbage collection routes in the city act as the backdrop as
Kusangi ponders her existence. This visually underscores the link between
cyborg evolution and the city; information. Technology constitutes the city.
• Here the author presents Frederic Jameson’s concept of Schizophrenic
temporality which suggests all times past and present collapsed together in
historical references. This is used to explain the cityscape in blade runner
and its varied historical, cultural and technological references combined
together into an altogether new urban identity that’s neither past present and
future but all at the same time.
• Chapter 6 – the Animatrix Pg 113
• The Animatrix can be read as a metaphor for the complex and reciprocal
relationship between anime and global culture in general
• Pg 114 The Animatrix, explores/celebrates rather than resists the liberatory
possibilities and the positive consequences of post human life, cyborg
politics, and the transgression of the boundaries of the human form. At times,
in spite of the man versus machine theme that carries though out the collection
of shorts, to celebrate the idea of post human linkages between human/nonhuman
and revel in placing “human” in quotation marks.
• Animatrix is seen in the genre of mecha anime, with its often complex and
ambivalent attitudes towards human- machine hybridism
• Why anime lends itself more openly towards a positive representation of the
post human;
• Pg 115 Hayles argues; our concept of the post human depends upon a conception
of reality that treats the material world as a vessel that contains information
while it remains distinct from that information. The human body is this seen as
a material form that embodies, yet remains separate from its informational
“context”. This gap in info and material allows is to conceive of ourselves as
informational patterns that could be embodied in a wide variety of material
contexts.
• “posthuman” often found in relation to postmodern, post capitalism, post
gender and so on. Often equated with the term “cyborg” a category part
human/machine. It exists in liminal space between nature and technology
• Posthuman is more than simply fusing organic and mechanical materials. Post
humanism refers to an entirely new way of thinking about humans and the
widespread cultural embrace of an emergent set of paradigms and philosophical
assumptions about our very existence itself
• Thus Hayle’s defines post humanism as a process of, “envisioning humans as
information-processing machines with fundamental similarities to other kinds of
information- processing machines especially intelligent computers. Because of
how information has been defined, many people hold this view tends to put
materially on one side of a divide and information on the other side, making it
possible to think of information as a kind of immaterial fluid that circulates
effortlessly around the globe while still retaining the solidarity of a reified
concept.”
• Pg 116 Posthumanism means assuming humans primarily consist of information
that has been embodied in material form, a premise that also rests on the
assumptions that information can be transferred from one medium to another
while still remaining intact. This concept was a post WWII concept
• We are made of information that resides in a given material context operates
on the basic premise that enables is to experience more overt instances of
human-machine interfacing both real and imagined as something plausible
• Complex patterns of DNA in all living tissue constitutes “code” or “blueprint”
of life- proof of ideas’ naturalization in society
• Cyborg emerges and can only inhabit a world where distinction between
physicality and non physicality, between what is real and simulated has become
blurred
• Pg 117 Cyborgs, humans and all hybrids that inhabit cyberpunk, mecha and
science fiction, work as metaphor for our collective anxieties, hopes and
expectations concerning the posthuman condition
• See posthumanism as cultural shift in what we view the human “body” and
“humanity” itself. Thus post human bodies represent our fears/anxieties of
what’s to become of us as posthumans-usually (in anime) results in mixture of
power and control, dominance and submission, empowerment and alienation.
• The Matrix- those who actually live in the matrix live in artificial amniotic
pods and who have their entire experience fed to them though direct neural
linkages – the ultimate example of how a disembodied consciousness could be
enslaved and completely controlled by the ruling powers in society. Those who
escape realize the world constitutes itself on information and can in turn
manipulate the construct. Therefore the hope that post humanism will also allow
us super or post human abilities- transcend the limitations of physical body
• Pg 118& 119 Animatrix’s view on man versus machine shows humans as unfit to
run things- as aggressor- however its ambiguous in its views sometimes
• Pg 120 Renaissance Part 1 and 2
• The narrative of the progression of the war between humans and machine exposes
humans being in fault was that it had become inhumane- not that it had pushed
science beyond the natural realm. Machines are seen as much more “human” than
the humans they are struggling against. The humans are also exposed to be at
fault for not showing compassion for the sentient beings
• Pg 121 Images of massacre act as disturbing reminder of historical atrocities
– genocides and mass human extermination. This elicits sympathy for machines by
making them human and the humans inhumane
• 01 is the nation that machines create after being thrown into exile by the
forces of man. 01 as a nation takes form and the UN goes to war after it’s
unable to compete economically with the machine or come to any peaceful
negotiation.
• Pg 122 – The simulated reality of the matrix and humans whose projected
consciousness inhabit it as a metaphor that captures the experience of post
humanism (split between the embodiment of the material reality and information
and the experience of reality as information), then the live action films
appear to take a rather strong stand against this phenomenon
• Pg 125 The Animatrix’s ambivalent attitude towards post humanism; the
Animatrix thus ends with the message that humans and sentient machines are
really two variations of the same type of machine because we understand that
their consciousness is made of data
• The problem seems to lie in the fact that humans have created thinking
machines but in fact we cannot realize that we are also thinking machines. This
is a general theme of trend through all 9 mini anime features.
• Pg 133 “in all of these scenes that depict corporeal embodiment as a crisis,
we see an exaggeration of anime’s inherent tendency to highlight the gap
between characters as idea and character as physical manifestations on the
screen- this allows an amplification of the abstraction that can be achieved
with each character.
Geopolitics: VI rereading canon, body, geopolitics (242-254)
• Ghost in the shell is clearly about the body and subjectivity. The question
asked is what is an I and how may I exceed this category?
• This film is an allegory of the break up of the nation. I is to ‘cyborg’ as
nation is to the ‘global’
• The puppet master has no physical body (initially) however Motoko’s body is a
cyborg shell manufactured by a corporation – the whole question throughout her
journey in the film seems to be whether her ghost is original or merely a
corporate creation. She is in search for the puppet master so she manage her
own doubts on her identity
• There seems to be a lack of understanding of ourselves as national subjects
• Globalization forcing Japan at that current time and place to question its own
authenticity as a nation. Culturally
• Nation is the agent though which self, other and world are known
• New global order has emerged coined as empire. Relies on global monetary
systems, new global policing and military forms, and a new flexible and global
network of communications, Empire has become the political subject that
regulates the global market and global circuits of production
• Empire is not bound by limits of time and space or any linear definition
• Empire is one of the more ambitious and productive conceptualizations of
globalism
• It produces the concept of globalization and its entire set of requisites;
juridical, philosophical, cultural, economic, corporeal, and social categories
• Globalization promotes change, a change which the nation state is intent to
resist
• Capitalism could only recuperate by changing its mode of organization- hence
the shift to globalization
• Globalization has equated to more corporate mobility and power but also the
weakening of power of the nation state
• With these trans-global corporations comes the exportation of the cultural
industry (via mass media and production) and with this its attached set of
cultural codes of cultural identity or global western identity
• Berrida’s concept of the specter- a way of thinking out way out of pitfalls of
everyday life and existence and that we must search for alternate ways to
organize our lives
• For Ghost in the Shell the specter rattles for the global, for empire and for
something beyond the assemblage of nations
• This is in response to the early 90’s growth in neo nationalist sentiments in
Japan after the bursting of the economic bubble
• Break up of the individual as a desire to express the break up of the nation,
a desire that still cannot be seen
• Allegory for how individual and biological events are simultaneously social
and political events. They ask us to make the impossible connections between
these elements
• They are attempting to articulate socially and politically a statement about
contemporary global cultural codes during a time when the ideas surrounding
these subjects were very vague
“In the near future, corporate networks reach out to the stars, electrons and
stars flow throughout the universe. The advance of computerization, however has
not yet wiped out nations and ethnic groups”
• ‘Nation’ as an ideology has yet to be wiped out. Although political economy
exceeds the nation, culture and ideology are still deeply rooted in it. This
uneven development is pressed throughout the work but most acutely in the
narrative line of subjectivity.
• Characters have exceeded the human body but still are rooted in culture. A
residual human persists in its present cyborgian self; the technology of the
body has developed more quickly than the ideology on the body.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:19 am
[...] Ghost in the Shell Presentation by Jason ParadisBy hayashiHello everyone, My apologies on the semi tardiness of this posting however I wanted to ensure that whatever I posted was concise and useful to anybody using the information posted. I was originally going to just post my presentation …FA/FILM 3610 Sec D Fall 2007-08 - http://www.yorku.ca/hayashi/film3610d/blog [...]