Ani-Me #3: GHOST IN THE SHELL and the Aims of Adolescent Art (Patreon)

Welcome to Ani-Me! The Series Where You Make Me Watch Anime!

To be clear, you aren’t making me do anything. I’m excited for this! And after a couple of wonderful entries we continue our journey with a seminal film of the cyberpunk genre… A recent ScarJo film! I'm kidding. We're going to the original.

Today’s entry: GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995)

Sometimes you really need to watch things when you’re 14.

I really don’t want that to come off as disparaging as it sounds. After all, there’s a reason we make media for 14 year old boys! They’re already full of swelling interests in sexuality and gory violence, which is really just an expression of raging puberty, along with the terrifying notions of change and mortality that loom before them. And because they’re SO BAD at confronting sex and death in their real 14-year-old lives, they tend to embrace typically-indulgent media which provides a clear mastering of those same fears. Media where cool protagonists blow up heads and you see bewbs and you’re the one in control of the scary things! They also see this act of “mature” media consumption as a way of growing up. For it’s them putting away more “childish interests” while embracing broader “adult” thought (even though a lot of the actual pontificating is often empty philosophical babble speak). It’s all part of the adolescent instinct. 

Given all this, it’s no accident that catering to the 14 year old mindset creates some of our most problematic bits of media (especially when the adults in charge haven’t let go of the same instincts and double down on thinking THIS IS VERY SERIOUS AND FOR GROWNUPS). But I’m painting with a broad brush here. There’s tons of filmmakers who make incredible art for 14 year olds and handle all the depictions with maturity (I mean I just did this giant essay on Spider-verse soooo). But whether for good or ill, the situation undoubtedly results in movies that are formative. And if I went and saw Ghost in The Shell the year came out in theaters, I would have been at the perfect age and it probably would have become formative for me, too. 

Instead, I saw it last night.

But what’s funny is how much of this movie I absorbed without ever actually watching it. Not just because I’ve seen its images posted online so many times over the last few decades, nor the litany of allusions to it in the many films that seemed to have borrowed from it. No, it was funny because it’s style was obviously baked right into the language of foundational texts / games I’ve enjoyed like Snow Crash, Neuromancer, and Cyberpunk 2020, along with a lot of other Cyberpunk-adjacent art like Blade Runner, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy 7, The Matrix, etc. Thus, the act of watching Ghost in the Shell was a kind of personal time travel. And as such, I couldn’t help but think about how I would have absorbed it when I was a teenager versus how I was absorbing it in the here and now. 

Mostly because absorbing it in the now was… harder.

To be forthright, there’s something about the “heavily-posturing and literally-naked assassin lady” trope that has just passed me by. Same goes for the way the film nests a convoluted plot in endless streams of technobabble. Same goes for the way the film portrays all crime as both a labyrinthian maze and mysteriously powerful entities who are engaging in broad strokes high-crime like, “drugs! political engineering! terrorism!” (which is a trope that gets used by the way, as I’m currently playing Watch Dogs 2, which will be a whole other fun article). The same even goes for the film’s preoccupation with the endless existential questions, specifically in regards to A.I. consciousness. Most of these things just don’t spur any great level of interest from me nowadays.  I’m sorry, I can’t help it. But this brings us to an interesting crux because most of these ideas are at the very root of Cyberpunk expressions.

The question is why?

As in, what is the genre of Cyberpunk really after? Sure, you can read any general wikipedia article and you’ll get a laundry list of neatly presented thematic ideas about dystopia, technology, and social order. But those dry generalizations don’t answer the most essential question: “why are people drawn to it?”

For a cerebral answer, you could argue that Cyberpunk is driven by the “Techno-libertarian fantasy,” where the whole goal is to paint a picture of a future world that’s really just a sci-fi playground. One likely designed to make YOU, THE PROTAGONIST feel superior because you both like the internet and probably know how to code or something. Do not get me wrong, this is a fun feeling to explore! Also do not get me wrong, the dangers of technology that are often being explored in these properties are ASTOUNDINGLY real and worth talking about. I mean… *gestures to the rise of fascism going on around the world* 

But the thing about hacker-centric techno-libertarian sci-fi worlds is that they believe that empowering individuals with a similar lack of oversight (i.e. you’re an invisible hacker who can’t be traced and can get away with anything!) is the sole method to de-powering conglomeration. In reality, the portrayal just holds neither party responsible. It’s the exact kind of mindset that both criticizes Youtube’s broad corporate practice and yet embodies its dangerous “hands off” approach to moderation. Go even deeper and it evokes the failure to recognize how even though there are incredible open-source freedoms at the heart of the internet’s creation, still insisting that that same internet should exist as an anything-goes wild west is a big part of how we got into this mess in the first place. But such complex limitations do not fuel the fantasy of sci-fi rebellion. 

All that being said, the Techno-libertarian conversation is also the one I’m least interested in having because 1) it’s easy to get lost in many reflexive political discussions where we’d just make good points back and forth and 2) it’s a moot point anyway because the personal thematic stuff is actually the reason people tend to gravitate toward Cyberpunk anyway.

Personal thematic stuff, you say?

Let’s put it like this. If you’re reading the themes of Ghost in the Shell at your most generous, it’s all a metaphor for repression. I talked about this extensively with Neon Genesis Evangelion and the way that show evoked this deep existential terror by bringing us right into Shinji’s paralyzing depression and trauma. But in this film, Major Kusanagi, AKA the naked cop assassin lady is coming at the same repression but from the flip-side of behavior. After all, she’s a cyborg, which means there’s a cool detachment reaction to the same feeling. So where the young Shinji would just seize up, the Major instead goes on autopilot. Meaning the main associated feeling of the film is not suicidal depression, but anhedonia.

The allure of this depiction is the way it reflects one’s own desire to hide such paralyzing emotion, which is an incredibly common feeling for young men. It is the desire to “steel oneself through” or “not show weakness.” Which means they’re attaching to the film’s detachment. Which is also part of why they would put themselves into / identify with / blatantly ogle Kusanangi’s cool action posturing and celebrate the way she nestles her emotions down below the surface. The major basically tells us this out right when she goes diving into the water during her off-time, down into the place where she can actually “feel fear, cold, and alone.” She also tells us there are things like memory down there. But rather than this movie wanting to explore the roots of trauma and heal it all therapeutically, itl does the opposite. Because the allure of Ghost in the Shell is that it’s not your fault that you can’t express emotion and memory. Instead, it was something taken from you. 

Thus, it’s perfectly portraying the allure of being “ghost hacked human” where your very emptiness is the empowering fantasy. On one level, you get to rue what’s happened to you and lament “the system that built you,” but note the way the Major doesn’t really care to heal it, nor even fixates on it. Instead, she ultimately succumbs to the idea that she can forget the pain of her life and build anew! I mean, she’s literally giving up autonomy and embracing a character called “the puppet master” as the way forward into new synthesis. Whether or not it was all intentional, it’s a fascinating series of choices (and for the record, I honestly don’t feel like it is intentional, especially given how much of the film hides beneath its ideological surface). For all it’s questioning, it doesn’t really want to unearth. Which is why I’d argue this film is both the most accurate / most damning expression of toxic, anhedonic male teenage culture that I’ve come across in a long while… 

Which is exactly why people likely gravitated toward it.

And not without good reason. Remember, however problematic a depiction might be, there’s always empathy in looking at the root cause for such inclinations. And I’m no expert, but when you look at the artistic landscape of 1990’s Japan, you’ll see so many portraits of haunting nihilism and depression from economic collapse. There was also good reason for this. I don’t know if you’re familiar with “The Lost Decade" ideology, but if you couple this with a society that fixates on intense social pressures and troubling views of mental health (like not culturally believing depression existed until the late 90s) then you sure as hell create a system of conditions that would sure foster this exact kind of artistic expression. 

We have to ask ourselves, why has so much Japanese media centered on fatalistic questions of identity and our roles in society. Like, why do I feel paralyzed by everything? Why do I feel like I lack purpose? Is everything set on a path for us? Is our DNA programmed? Am I even real? Why do I not feel like I’m alive? How do I create any kind of meaningful connection? For me personally, these aren’t questions I fixate on, but I understand why others would. Just as I can imagine actually feeling these things would be haunting. Just as I understand why certain art would play directly into the tragic-fantasy of both taking control / giving up control in the specific ways they instinctively crave.

And if we’re being honest, it helps that Ghost in the Shell / Cyperpunk at large is so aesthetically seductive. I mean, the whole thing is just cinematic, dammit. A mix of brutalist structure, glaring neons, and noir-ish shadows. It’s water on metal, steam on faces, and ice on lips. It evokes the urban landscape in this way that is at once crooked, yet sleek, hideous, yet alluring. This film has entire sequences that play out like Michael Mann mood reels, only with Katos playing. And with that cool detachment, there’s even something a little bit Brechtian in the way it keeps you at a distance. For it gives you a whole realm of space you can project a poetic emotion onto without ever being specific. So as a piece of thematic dramatization? This is relatively empty. But as a place for you to bring in your own repressed feelings regardless of what they are? Well, then it does the job admirably. But these kinds of seductions only get you so far.

It always comes down to the thesis point, as in what the hell is this movie trying to say? 

With Ghost in the Shell, all the pieces drift around and eventually build to a fatalistic point of synthesis that… gives me some pause. So I’ll start with the most cynical reading possible. Yes, the film goes for a big, broad philosophical finale about robots wanting to have existence and create new diversity just like us to move forward. You can practically see that the film wants to be MORE than the bewbsgunz surface, but for all the highfalutin pretension about the merits procreation, the puppet master is a character I can’t connect with and his final wish can essentially be reduced to: “I want to bang you before I die.” Yes, I worded that crassly, but that’s still the metaphor, complete with the seeming tragedy of them being unable to do actually it (AKA the tragedy of him dying a virgin). 

Again, I know this is a deeply cynical reading, but it’s hard not to be cynical with a film that’s too emotionally detached to tread any deeper than that, nor points to anything more psychologically therapeutic. Just as it’s easy to be cynical with a film that follows that sequence up with Batôu's whiplash-inducing line about how her new child’s body is “a little young for my tastes.” I mean, I don’t think this film has any real malice, but the psychosexual readings of this movie are relatively clear in just about the presentation of all of it: it’s the anhedonic fantasy about hopefully finding procreation (read: sex_ in a cold world. It just expresses that want coldly, cerebrally, and in a way that doesn’t fully admit that core motive either, but tells it all in what it shows with reckless abandon. Which is all exactly how some young people want it to be.

But this is exactly what gives way to the least cynical reading: which is simply taking some distance from this portrayal and recognizing the systemic conditions that created it. Because anhedonia is hell. And craving indulgent forms of anhedonic relief makes sense when you don’t know any alternatives. And when the core driving emotion of a film is essentially just the desire “to feel like you exist,” then I can think of no artistic expression more heartbreaking, especially for those adults who are still absolutely trapped in the sensation. I have sympathy, but this is ultimately the difference between sympathy and empathy. 

Because for adult me, Ghost in the Shell can’t help but feel like an impersonal story. While I certainly suffer bouts of anhedonia, there’s a marked difference between those bouts and it being your “fixed state of existence” when walking through life and perhaps don’t even realize that anhedonia is the word for it. But now, my emotional systems have come super online in these later years, along with complete engagement with my various forms of mental illness. Which is part of why Neon Genesis Evangelion snuck right inside of me and curled around my spine so tightly, almost attaching itself to me like a constant anxiety attack. It was so powerful in the ways it hit me. But with Ghost in the Shell and a lot of other detached media like it, I just can’t connect to its portrayal of disconnection… But this is not to cast any doubt on those that do.

Nor those who once connected to it and look back with conflicted feelings.

The truth is we’re always having a changing relationship with the 14-year-old in us, just we all have our own relationship to new media that is designed for that youthful part of us. I mean, you’re talking to the person who adores Your Highness for Pete’s sake, which is a movie that delights me because every single time it has an opportunity to go for something more grounded, it’s opts for the more crass. Hey, perhaps I like that kind of self-effacing approach. Perhaps I have problems with something taking itself too seriously. Perhaps I need something to “un-posture” itself. I don’t really know, but it’s a part of the inherent push / pull of the constant development between our older and younger selves.

So what I do know is that I liked cyberpunk when I was 14. Just as I still like cyberpunk. But now I like it in a way that’s a weird mix of nostalgia and a genuinely loving sense of playful irony (which is why I’m deeply curious to see how Cyberpunk 2077 works for me). And now that I’ve come along and finally watched Ghost in the Shell, this formative genre work that somehow passed me by, it became an act of visiting along the different timelines of my life. A flashback to a time when I was repressing myself, a time when the internet was new and scary and all the dystopian ideas seemed like prescient fodder for escape instead of the grim reminder of that which is sinking. Thus, it was also grounding me in my present, where a whole list of different adult concerns keep nipping at my heels. So in the end, what I actually know about Ghost in the Shell is pretty simple…

There’s no going back.

…. Also I had no idea where to put this in the essay, but anytime their bodies got all swollen, the subtitles called it “moist stretching” and I can’t get it out of my mind.

Now you can’t either.

Sorry.

<3HULK