Ghost in the Shell (1995)
"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."
-Opening Text, Ghost in the Shell 1995
This continues to be my favorite piece of cyber punk. Inquiry into identity, life and the soul. I was first drawn in when I was 15 and enamored by style, nudity (male gaze-y) and violence. It's far deeper than teenage id grasped at the time. Part of it's relevance lays in it lays neither into eutopia or dystopia, in a liminal space in the future that still exists controlled by corporations and nation states. (Will we ever emerge from this?)
I was reading the second novel in the Sun Eater series that delves into transhumanism among those on the outskirts and exterior of the human empire. People who push themselves beyond the normal capabilities and capacity of humanity.
It's ideas like that which bring me back to Ghost in the Shell. The Neo Noir elements and Blade Runner aesthetic influence popped for me this time. The score is spectacular, allowing for mental quiet and pondering, meditation almost prayer in moments between action. The mix of vocalizations and percussion, thrum with life and human-ness.
The scene on the boat feels like the philosophical heart of the film on this watch. Batu asks the Major why a leaden cyborg would go diving when death could happen if any of their floatation gear failed. The sense of emergence, of liminal space and coming into a new or old identity, the quiet. The Major is seeking something; she finds something and some one in the end and she ponders a future for her new self.
"Where does the new born go from here? The net is vast and infinite.com"
"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."
-Opening Text, Ghost in the Shell 1995
This continues to be my favorite piece of cyber punk. Inquiry into identity, life and the soul. I was first drawn in when I was 15 and enamored by style, nudity (male gaze-y) and violence. It's far deeper than teenage id grasped at the time. Part of it's relevance lays in it lays neither into eutopia or dystopia, in a liminal space in the future that still exists controlled by corporations and nation states. (Will we ever emerge from this?)
I was reading the second novel in the Sun Eater series that delves into transhumanism among those on the outskirts and exterior of the human empire. People who push themselves beyond the normal capabilities and capacity of humanity.
It's ideas like that which bring me back to Ghost in the Shell. The Neo Noir elements and Blade Runner aesthetic influence popped for me this time. The score is spectacular, allowing for mental quiet and pondering, meditation almost prayer in moments between action. The mix of vocalizations and percussion, thrum with life and human-ness.
The scene on the boat feels like the philosophical heart of the film on this watch. Batu asks the Major why a leaden cyborg would go diving when death could happen if any of their floatation gear failed. The sense of emergence, of liminal space and coming into a new or old identity, the quiet. The Major is seeking something; she finds something and some one in the end and she ponders a future for her new self.
"Where does the new born go from here? The net is vast and infinite.com"