The Philosophic Goldmine of “Ghost in the Shell”
Amongst fans of cult sci-fi franchises like myself, there is no need for introduction to Ghost in the Shell. It inspired the Watchowskis to make The Matrix, predicted our dependence on digital tools as becoming something of a reliance for life, and has created one of the many possibilities for humanity’s future. It has even further questioned that famous phrase: “Just what is human?” Ghost in the Shell is all of these things. But, excepting its many continuities and alternate existences, there lies a gem in the 1995 movie — the masterpiece that was an adaptation of the original manga, which began serialization in the late 1980s … and it was the spark needed to ignite the flame, thrusting Ghost in the Shell into the public’s awed eyes. The movie saw release in a time that Japanese anime was making fans in America, and it embodied the medium’s strengths: using art as a proxy for storytelling, conceptual lore building, and spine-tingling action sequences. The anime sees state-of-the-art cyborg Major Motoko Kusanagi (who works for the secret Japanese Department of Defense Public Security Section 9) and her team investigating the infamous Puppet Master, who illegally hacks into the computerized minds of cyborgs. Whilst pursuing the Puppet Master, Motoko questions her identity as a part human, part machine hybrid and whether she even has a soul, called a ghost in the movie’s universe. Hence Ghost in the Shell; the fact that a body (the “Shell”) houses a soul (The “Ghost”). This leads us to believe the concept of dualism, or the existence of a being as two separate parts, the soul and the body (or the Ghost and the Shell), is a prominent philosophy in the movie’s universe.
To apply this philosophy to the movie, we must first understand what dualism is. There are three types of dualism: Substance Dualism, Property Dualism, and Predicate Dualism.
First, Substance Dualism (a theory made by the famous philosopher Rene Descartes) is the belief that substances can be broken down into two categories: mental and material. The latter does not have the ability to think, while the former does not project into the physical realm. This only applies in one way to the movie’s universe: The “Ghost” and the “Shell.” The Ghost is the mental (but intangible) part, while the Shell is the material (but unthinking) part.
Second, Property Dualism is the theory that the mind and body exist as assets of one physical substance. Put simply, consciousness is the result of matter being organized in a specific way. Most people within Ghost in the Shell have cyberbrains. Therefore, consciousness is the result of the cyberbrain (the “matter organized in a specific way” part), according to this theory.
Lastly, Predicate Dualism states that in order to comprehend the world, there must be more than one description of a predicate (a proposition’s subject). According to this theory, these predicates cannot be reduced into physical predicates. They exist only as words, and have no physical presence. For example, in the sentence “Philosophy is wisdom,” one cannot reduce the word “wisdom” into a tangible entity (the predicate). Again, a word is only a written or spoken embodiment of a thing or idea. In the same way, in order to support these claims for dualism, one must argue for the existence of it. One argument that particularly supports these theories is the argument from reason. According to the argument from reason, if our intangible thoughts are the sum of tangible causes, then we cannot believe that these thoughts are based on reason or are rational. Since tangible substances are not rational if they cannot think, but yet we as humans, who physically exist, have reason, therefore, the mind must not simply be from a material source. In other words, if we, as humans, can think, but our thoughts are based off of physical causes, which cannot think, then our minds cannot simply be from a tangible source.
The opening titles begin, striking the viewer with a message that could never be more relevant today: “In the near future — corporate networks reach out to the stars, electrons and light flow throughout the universe. The advance of computerization, however, has not yet wiped out nations and ethnic groups.” That half of the message pretty much sets up the beginning of the movie, when a foreign diplomat kidnaps a Japanese hacker to fix his “Project 2501”. When Section 6 interferes, the diplomat tries to wiggle his way out of the situation by claiming diplomatic immunity, except that is no defense against kidnapping, a crime that is a little made up for when, after claiming that his country is a “peace-loving democracy”, the Major sarcastically remarks “Of course it is!”, jumps from the top of a building, and assassinates the diplomat. Of course, Section 6 has no awareness of Section 9’s involvement with the affair, so they are just as surprised as the diplomat is when he is killed. After this incident, the “birth” sequence begins. It shows the Major floating through various machines, being created and refined through futuristic chemical and mechanical processes.
Motoko and Togusa (an ally of the Major) eventually figure out that the Puppet Master has hacked into the foreign minister’s interpreter, who is assumed to kill VIPs during the political conference brought up by the incident with the programmer. Assuming the mysterious perpetrator to be the elusive Puppet Master, Kusanagi’s team traces the hack across telephone calls, which leads them to capture a garbage man and a thug. Before they find and capture the thug, a sequence shows him running to escape Section 9 through an abandoned sector of New Port City. Small, reflective pools of water, tall imposing buildings, and eerie music highlight the isolative and visual angles the movie took up in its production. When tech has advanced this far, loneliness, crime, and depression are much bigger factors in the universe than they were before everything went digital, and this scene shows a visual representation of that. On their way to find the Puppet Master, the Major and Togusa are discussing their enemy when the latter says that the Motoko is overanalyzing him, rightly claiming that she has no evidence to suspect what she thinks about him. However, the Major says that while she indeed has no evidence, she “has a whisper in her ghost”, which leads us to believe that, superficially, it can be akin to something of a “gut feeling”. However, when we examine below the surface, we find that it can also be considered in the sense of consciousness and identity. The Major is a cyborg who constantly questions if any part of her is human and if her memories were artificial (that is, if she was a real person before her Ghost was uploaded into the Shell). This begs a question of much philosophical debate: What does it mean to be alive? The most plausible answer seems to be that Motoko’s “gut feeling” is evidence of her being part-human, or at least having some human qualities, and those qualities are bubbling up from the bottom to her conscious self. As it turned out, the thug had given over a hacking chip to the garbage man whose neural implant had been ghost-hacked (a type of hack that erases the individual’s memories and programs them to do certain illegal tasks), who in turn had been hacking access points along the garbage route with the chip. However, both the thug and the garbage man are ghost-hacked and are unable to recall anything related to their real memories or the Puppet Master. The investigation comes to a dead end. After this is also an excellent example where Motoko, with an exceptionally heavy body that probably weighs several hundred pounds, dives into the middle of a bay. Batou (one of the main characters along with the Major) then asks what it is like, being “down there”. Motoko responds by saying “I feel fear, cold, alone. Sometimes down there I even feel hope. When I float weightless back to the surface, I imagine I’m becoming someone else. It’s probably the decompression”. Ghost in the Shell has made such an impact more than 24 years after its original release that these scenes have yet to be analyzed in a way that is universally agreed upon. I appreciate the fact that even though Ghost In the Shell asks age-old questions, while watching the film, it can stimulate you to interpret them in a truly unique way. It is this ambiguous quality that causes the film to be still discussed today.
A cyborg manufacturer by the name of Megatech Body is hacked and assembles a shell, which is hit by a truck after it escapes. When Section 9 investigates, they find a ghost in it. Unexpectedly, Section 6’s department chief Nakamura arrives to reclaim the shell, claiming that the shell actually houses the Puppet Master, who by this point is implied to be an artificial intelligence. The shell reactivates itself, claims to be sentient, and requests political asylum. After it initiates a brief argument about what makes a human, a thermoptic-camoflauged agent, who came in behind Nakamura, steals the Puppet Master. Meanwhile, Section 9 does some research and discovers that Section 6 created the Puppet Master itself for political lobbying purposes, and now seeks to reclaim the body it currently inhabits. This makes sense if you think about it, because how else could Nakamura know that Section 9 had the Puppet Master?
However, in the 2017 live action version, all this changes through what I call “Americanization”: making otherwise great movies to fit the average American audience’s taste and take up the stereotypical blockbuster format that’s so popular. The thing is that it’s not a bad movie, it is just another remake of a legendary movie that really didn’t need a remake in the first place except to expose the Ghost in the Shell franchise to the American public (Let’s face it, most Americans didn’t know about Ghost in the Shell). The Major (whose name has been changed) sees herself as a disposable tool and does not embrace her machine self, which makes this version take on a completely different tone in comparison to the original. It’s also live-action, and therefore eliminates the majority of virtues characteristic to Japanese anime. Ultimately, the live-action does well in its part to expose the franchise to a larger audience instead of what was, back then, the niche anime culture of Japan.
The Major follows the Puppet Master’s captor to an abandoned mall-like building, where it is guarded by a robotic tank. Motoko engages it without backup, resulting in her body being mostly dismembered. Batou arrives just in time to connect her brain to the Puppet Master’s in order to communicate with it. If you’re like me, you always want to have a climax and satisfying, conclusive ending in a movie. Well, Ghost in the Shell has both. Many believe that the climax of the movie is the fight, but in fact the true climax is when the Major finds out how the Puppet Master became a sentient entity, and merges with the Puppet Master in a kind of digital procreation. The Major has now become one with the Net, with the Puppet Master in her. I believe this act is symbolic of the merging of human realities with the digital world. There is just as much of a possibility that society ends up how this movie portrays it, just as there are possibilities of our world that are not a futuristic, high-tech society where bodily modifications and cyborgs are common. At the very end of the movie, the Major speaks these words: “Batou, remember the words I spoke in another voice on the boat that night? I understand it now, and there are even more words that go with the passage. These words are: “When I was a child, my speech, feelings and thinking were all those of a child. Now that I am a man, I have no more use for childish ways.” And now I can say these things without help in my own voice, because I am now neither the woman who was known as the “Major,” nor am I the program called the “Puppet Master.” And after all, where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite.
