Oh, inverted world.
I'm actually not referring to the album of the same name by the Shins, since I don't listen to the Shins, but found their phrasing apropos, regardless. Instead, I want to talk about Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
(As a sidenote, I've just watched the End of Evangelion for the fourth time, and also I've just written something rather... exhausting... in my latest fiction project. So bear with me if I'm not the pinnacle of lucidity.)
Shirow Masamune is the creator of Ghost in the Shell. It's cyberpunk, almost, that's the closest word to what I want. Cybernetics and computer technologies are realistically advanced, and this brings to bear questions of the human soul--namely, what is it, can machines have it, and can you ever lose it? One of the primary taglines of the show is that the difference between man and machine is now academic.
Anyhow, Mamoru Oshii turned Ghost in the Shell into a full-blown theatrical feature. It's one of the major factors in the anime explosion in the U.S., Akira notwithstanding. (The feature dates to a U.S. release in 1995, a year before Neon Genesis Evangelion, what I consider to be the greatest visual work I've ever seen.)
So to a particular episode of the series, Stand Alone Complex. Many people misinterpret this as suggesting that the series "stands alone" from the movie, and while this is true, it's not the referent. Instead, the characters discuss a theoretical sociopsychological construct, the "stand alone complex," wherein any object or creation might spawn copies--and whether there is any way to tell if there ever was an original. Copies without originals is the thrust of what I'm getting at, the "main bullet" in my PowerPoint, if you get what I'm saying...
...anyhow, the episode "Eraser" was on the other night. It begins with the soldiers of Public Security Section 9 (Our Heroes) collectively viewing the recorded memories of their comrade Togusa, who at the end of the prior episode had been shot. The "raging id" of the group is a soldier named Batou. Upon viewing these memories, his first inclination is to utterly annihilate the perpetrators. (That the perpetrators are the DEA, and that they shot a police officer in furtherance of a government coverup, no matter to Batou.) He gets left behind to cool off because of his somewhat less than objective take on the issue.
The protagonist of all things Ghost in the Shell is Major Motoko Kusanagi. She is the polished height of confident control; everything about her is a reflection of her capability to handle any scenario effectively. She has a full prosthetic body because of a debilitating neurological disease that left her crippled at the age of nine (when she was cyberized). Now, to compensate for that lack of control and its fundamental impact on her existence, she resonates Control. She wears outfits that some might consider little more than blatant sexism, but without going too far into defending the choices of animators grabbing for the hormone vote, it does fit her character. That she knows she's more than capable of defending herself, and that she feels no need to portray her body as anything other than a highly-tuned machine, is in line with what we know about her as viewers. To her, the body is more a tool than is a source of self-definition. After all, just pop the braincase and she can be in a new body in half an hour, at most.
What happens in this episode is a primary example of a dramatic inversion. When Batou and the Major are attacked at the end of the episode, it is Batou--the military-trained fighter--who is sent out of battle to protect a hostage. The less-well-armored Major stays behind to fight an armored battle suit (whose sole purpose is to destroy prostethic soldiers). Batou's "raging id" and uncontrollable anger are forced to divest themselves as a protective role.
The Major draws the mobile suit's fire, and in so doing, her entire left arm is shredded to pulp by machine gun fire. The mobile suit grasps her by her skull and slams her into the ground--mouth and eyes frozen open--as the DEA agent in the mobile suit attempts to crush her metal braincase. For a moment we hear creaking, expecting to see the Major's face explode into gore, but the pavement around her head craters into dust. (Another inversion of expectation.)
There is the loud blast of gunfire and the mobile suit reels; the Major has been saved by her subordinates. Raising herself from the ground, face no longer frozen, we wonder if she was playing dead or truly incapable of defending herself a moment ago. She rears up, her left arm dripping ichor (not real blood; prosthetics have white vitae), and screams, "Fork over that weapon now!" There are cracks in her iron self-control. Armed with a sniper rifle, she points its barrel at the mobile suit's entry panel. The soldier inside screams to be let out, please God, just let me out.
The major fires. The panel caves in. She brings the weapon up and shoots the bolt with one hand (her other in tatters). Lowers the weapon and blasts another dent in the entry panel. Over and over again, her mouth a rictus of anger. All the shattered self-control comes boiling to the surface. A woman, her steel inside, temporarily defeated by a man wearing a steel skeleton on the outside; where before she was all capability and icy confidence, now she blasts dents into this entry panel until the soldier inside wheezes, "Oh God, please, I can't--can't breathe."
And she lets him suffocate in his exoskeleton.
Heady stuff. I suggest the next time you're able, watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It's rather unlike anything you'll find on the air of American origin.
(As a sidenote, I've just watched the End of Evangelion for the fourth time, and also I've just written something rather... exhausting... in my latest fiction project. So bear with me if I'm not the pinnacle of lucidity.)
Shirow Masamune is the creator of Ghost in the Shell. It's cyberpunk, almost, that's the closest word to what I want. Cybernetics and computer technologies are realistically advanced, and this brings to bear questions of the human soul--namely, what is it, can machines have it, and can you ever lose it? One of the primary taglines of the show is that the difference between man and machine is now academic.
Anyhow, Mamoru Oshii turned Ghost in the Shell into a full-blown theatrical feature. It's one of the major factors in the anime explosion in the U.S., Akira notwithstanding. (The feature dates to a U.S. release in 1995, a year before Neon Genesis Evangelion, what I consider to be the greatest visual work I've ever seen.)
So to a particular episode of the series, Stand Alone Complex. Many people misinterpret this as suggesting that the series "stands alone" from the movie, and while this is true, it's not the referent. Instead, the characters discuss a theoretical sociopsychological construct, the "stand alone complex," wherein any object or creation might spawn copies--and whether there is any way to tell if there ever was an original. Copies without originals is the thrust of what I'm getting at, the "main bullet" in my PowerPoint, if you get what I'm saying...
...anyhow, the episode "Eraser" was on the other night. It begins with the soldiers of Public Security Section 9 (Our Heroes) collectively viewing the recorded memories of their comrade Togusa, who at the end of the prior episode had been shot. The "raging id" of the group is a soldier named Batou. Upon viewing these memories, his first inclination is to utterly annihilate the perpetrators. (That the perpetrators are the DEA, and that they shot a police officer in furtherance of a government coverup, no matter to Batou.) He gets left behind to cool off because of his somewhat less than objective take on the issue.
The protagonist of all things Ghost in the Shell is Major Motoko Kusanagi. She is the polished height of confident control; everything about her is a reflection of her capability to handle any scenario effectively. She has a full prosthetic body because of a debilitating neurological disease that left her crippled at the age of nine (when she was cyberized). Now, to compensate for that lack of control and its fundamental impact on her existence, she resonates Control. She wears outfits that some might consider little more than blatant sexism, but without going too far into defending the choices of animators grabbing for the hormone vote, it does fit her character. That she knows she's more than capable of defending herself, and that she feels no need to portray her body as anything other than a highly-tuned machine, is in line with what we know about her as viewers. To her, the body is more a tool than is a source of self-definition. After all, just pop the braincase and she can be in a new body in half an hour, at most.
What happens in this episode is a primary example of a dramatic inversion. When Batou and the Major are attacked at the end of the episode, it is Batou--the military-trained fighter--who is sent out of battle to protect a hostage. The less-well-armored Major stays behind to fight an armored battle suit (whose sole purpose is to destroy prostethic soldiers). Batou's "raging id" and uncontrollable anger are forced to divest themselves as a protective role.
The Major draws the mobile suit's fire, and in so doing, her entire left arm is shredded to pulp by machine gun fire. The mobile suit grasps her by her skull and slams her into the ground--mouth and eyes frozen open--as the DEA agent in the mobile suit attempts to crush her metal braincase. For a moment we hear creaking, expecting to see the Major's face explode into gore, but the pavement around her head craters into dust. (Another inversion of expectation.)
There is the loud blast of gunfire and the mobile suit reels; the Major has been saved by her subordinates. Raising herself from the ground, face no longer frozen, we wonder if she was playing dead or truly incapable of defending herself a moment ago. She rears up, her left arm dripping ichor (not real blood; prosthetics have white vitae), and screams, "Fork over that weapon now!" There are cracks in her iron self-control. Armed with a sniper rifle, she points its barrel at the mobile suit's entry panel. The soldier inside screams to be let out, please God, just let me out.
The major fires. The panel caves in. She brings the weapon up and shoots the bolt with one hand (her other in tatters). Lowers the weapon and blasts another dent in the entry panel. Over and over again, her mouth a rictus of anger. All the shattered self-control comes boiling to the surface. A woman, her steel inside, temporarily defeated by a man wearing a steel skeleton on the outside; where before she was all capability and icy confidence, now she blasts dents into this entry panel until the soldier inside wheezes, "Oh God, please, I can't--can't breathe."
And she lets him suffocate in his exoskeleton.
Heady stuff. I suggest the next time you're able, watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It's rather unlike anything you'll find on the air of American origin.
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