Ghost in the shell.

Ghost in the Shell

The anime film “Ghost in the Shell” has a compelling use of narrative to bring up some very important questions about what it is to be human, and how we define ourselves. It is through this scope that I’ll try to clarify the issues that are brought up with this film.

One of the biggest questions that is brought up with “Ghost in the Shell” is the question of how we identify gender. The main character, Major Kusanagi, who was once a human male, chose a female body for agility purposes. This begins to blur the gender line between male and female, forcing the audience to identify what really separates the two genders. Giving the viewer someone to identify their own gender confusion with is Batou, a former colleague of the Major prior to the body swap. Batou, throughout many different instances in the film, covers an unclothed Kusanagi, which could be interpreted as a certain fondness he feels for him/her. This begs the question, in a world where people could embed their personalities into another body without any regard to the gender of the body, what could be used to define gender in this world? If we were unable to use anatomical differences to define our own gender, what would really separate us from one another?

The other major issue tackled in the film could be considered an all encompassing version of the gender issue, rather now though we deal with the broader question: what does it mean to be human? The puppet master, the main antagonist in the film, is a completely manufactured sentient entity. It was created without the use of any human brain, or human “ghost”, yet it gained the ability to function as one. Toward the end we find that it wants to be able to pass it’s genetic identity, that it also wanted political asylum after it had acquired a body. So now we’re left to wonder what defines us as human beings when independent thought is not solely isolated to ourselves. In a world where most the populace is at the very least ½ machine what is the defining characteristic of being human? The two characters of the story that are human tend to have only one trait that the cybernetic beings lack: intuition.

So in a world where machines are capable of thought and where no one is aware of what gender they were born as we are left to cling to only one trait that identifies us as a species, the gift of intuition.*

*not that terrible song by Jewel