[extropy-chat] Ghost in the Shell

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Set in 2032, "Ghost in the Shell" shows us the cyborged future, in
which humans and machines struggle for identity amidst the forces of
merger and convergence. And the film makes clear that humans who have
thought they were spending too much time with a machine - alongside an
assembly line, in front of a TV, or staring down at a "crackberry" -
should think of those experiences as mere beta-tests for what's coming
next. The "ghost" in the movie's "shell," for example, is the
lingering bit of humanity still remaining in some "sexroids." So sad,
so weird - so inevitable.


To be sure, "Ghost" has links to the past. Like much of the cyberpunk
genre, its plotline is film noir-ish. The lead character, Detective
Batou, the loner who patrols the mean streets and is dirtied but not
stained, owes much to Rick Deckard, the Harrison Ford character in
"Blade Runner". But of course, even the great "Blade Runner" offers
humble homage to every noir ever made; Deckard talks like Humphrey
Bogart at his Spadiest, and Sean Young's character, Rachael, channels
her hair, clothes, and smokes right out of the early '40s, too. Yet
"Ghost" is nothing if not eclectic; other influences include Japanese
manga from the '80s and '90s, notably "AD Police" and "Bubblegum
Crisis."
So is "Ghost" director Mamoru Oshii guilty, after all, of the same
retro-mindedness as "Sky Captain" director Conran?
No, not at all. "Ghost" director Oshii is on a mission to instruct. In
an interview with The Washington Post, he observed, "People are very
different from animals. We don't accept our original bodies. Humans
wear clothes, have earrings and tattoos, do cosmetic surgery, take
vitamins. If they are sick, they get organ transplants. And now we
have radios, telephones, microphones, watches, computers, microchips
outside the body now, but soon we will utilize these machines inside
our bodies and then we will be part cyborg. This is inevitable. The
process has already begun..."


http://www.techcentralstation.com/092204D.html