Hello everyone! Last semester, I focused a lot of my efforts into covering horror film character’s because I was interested in how they developed. Given that horror films are much more focused on the horror occurring to the characters rather than how a complex character reacts to atrocities beyond their comprehension, a change was needed. I wanted to shift my work this semester to broaden my horizons outside of horror, starting with Ghost in the Shell (1995), an animated science fiction film concerned with relinquishing the physical and mental self to keep the peace (by force.) The original animated film Ghost in the Shell was released in 1995 and was directed by Mamoru Oshii. The film is an adaptation of the manga that goes by the same name, though their similarities aren’t extensive and won’t be covered here. Ghost in the Shell follows Sergeant Major Motoko Kusanagi through a world full of cybernetic enhancements and political strife. The major herself is part of a specialized police task force that takes on various threats, though in the film we see the task force assassinating a foreign politician in their introduction to the story. Their involvement in this assassination causes them to encounter “The Puppet Master.” This character analysis contains spoilers for the film Ghost in the Shell (1995) and (2019.)
One of the major plot points surrounds what the antagonist of the story can do to other people. The Puppet Master is able to control those who are cybernetically enhanced by replacing their real memories with fake memories, which causes these people to carry out his will, usually involving crime sprees until they get caught (though the motives of the crimes are largely unknown for most of the film.) This is an interesting detail to include because Major Kusanagi spends the movie questioning whether her memories and her identity are truly “Her’s.” We know this because around midway through the movie, she spots an exact copy of herself eating at a café while her real self is on a moving boat, which alludes to the Major not being convinced that she is a unique individual person. During Major’s monologue after the diving scene, she explains that “there are many parts to make a human a human” of which she includes both “a face to distinguish yourself from others” and “the expanse of the data net [her] cyber-brain can access.” This firmly places data or what we could consider anything digitized or on the internet as a functional replacement for memories and interactions that normal people have every day.
This conversation sets up how The Puppet Master reflects these ideas from the opposite direction. The Puppet Master is a program that became sentient seemingly on accident and he views humanity as the collection of data, which aligns with how the Major thinks about humanity. I struggled with this idea initially because I wasn’t sure if this meant that the Major was mentioning data as a way to define yourself to signal to the audience that she has already begun wondering what her humanity is. One of the main reasons that The Puppet Master is interested in her in the first place is because he saw that she started questioning what being a human means. He is currently a ghost that began without a shell, which is something that shouldn’t be possible given the current notions of what being a human is.
What complicates this more is the mention of the Major’s body (and everyone who has a government issued cyber-body, characters like Batou are included in this) is returned to the government when they decide to retire, including all of the memories and knowledge they gained while in those bodies, which raises another question: was the Major ever a pre-existing entity before acquiring her body? Are any of her memories fake? How would she even know? I think this is why Major even bothers asking what she is in the first place. The mind/body dichotomy that occurs in this film acts as the main question the movie is trying to answer when there isn’t any action on screen. It reminded me of a class I recently took that focused on studying Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his ideas of phenomenology, especially phenomenology of the body. The mind/body connection has and still is a reoccurring conversation in the philosophy world, so to make a complicated conversation short by explaining very briefly how Merleau-Ponty approached this, we know that we are ourselves because we cannot exit our bodies; our bodies are a permanent fixture to us. Our consciousness, our mind, cannot roam freely and sit in the corner of the room to spectate a conversation we are having with someone else. There are so many factors that go into the creation of an individual that ultimately it is impossible to have a replica of another human body and mind. Ghost in the Shell asks us what would occur to humanity if we managed to digitize the soul and make both the mind and body a sellable and retractable commodity on a normalized product level.
I think the weaving questions about what the self is throughout this murder mystery story is probably overdone given that the detective noir genre exists in the way that it does, but this movie really clicks for me in a way that others don’t. Ghost in the Shell is very upfront about its ideas of life through the technology it presents in its world. By the end of the movie, Kusanagi is forced to merge with the Puppet Master to birth a new type of humanity, which seems confusing until the Puppet Master explains the decision as akin to having children. The joined souls may just be the simple addition of mixing one person with another and the outcome of this creates something that isn’t entirely Kusanagi or the Puppet Master individually, but rather something completely different. This rebirth is also represented by the fact that both Kusanagi’s and the Puppet Masters’ bodies get destroyed in the process and are transferred to a shell that looks like a young girl, which further cements the metaphor. It is an interesting conclusion because it doesn’t disagree with Merleau-Ponty’s idea of never being able to know what it is like to be someone else because these two characters literally merge into one person. It depicts this as creating someone else rather than having one character in control of the other like a split personality would.
Overall, Major Kusanagi’s character is complex and worthy of an even deeper discussion than I’ve done here. Someone who is more well-read on philosophy might make sense of the different notions being made about humanity than I’m able to decipher. It also reminds me that the live action Hollywood Ghost in the Shell (2019) exists as a complete opposite compared to its source material. Fundamentally, the movies’ events remain the same across both versions, but the live action film removes nearly all of its philosophical questions and developments. Major Kusanagi (played by Scarlett Johansson) struggles with knowing if her memories are real or not, but the live action film uses this as the main plot thread instead of it being the backdrop for the action and philosophy. It plays the plotline straight by having her memories being artificial as a way for the shell manufacturer to have control over her, and the Puppet Master actually ‘saves’ her by giving her clues that lead to her discovering her past life. While it isn’t an awful movie as far as action films go, it completely disengages its original and complicated ideas on the self, which makes me not enjoy it as much as its predecessor. It works fine as an action movie set in the world of the original Ghost in the Shell for those who want the cyberpunk aesthetic with none of its philosophical flair. If you somehow read through this without watching this film, I suggest viewing it now that you know what direction it takes. It might be one of my favorite films of all time with its unique blend of philosophy and aesthetics combined with police action.
– Harper Saglier, Blog Editor
Harper Saglier – Blog Editor, Prose Editor & Layout Editor : Harper is a junior at Lewis University majoring in English with a concentration in Writing. They are currently employed at the Howard and Lois Adelmann Regional History Collection. When they aren’t reading academic material, they enjoy watching movies and reading books from their endless growing backlog of recommendations. They hope to use the analysis and writing skills gained from Lewis to further drive their interest in literature beyond graduation. Some of their favorite authors include Neil Gaiman and Oscar Wilde.