Cyborgs: A Cybernetic Transcendence or Just a Mechanical Body?
As technology and humanity seem to grow ever closer to a singularity, one in which humans and machines can become part of one another, it is important to consider the case of the “cyborg,” an organism that is aided or controlled by electronics and machinery. The aspects of cyborgs have led some to believe that the human race will transcend not only their mortal bodies, but concepts such as gender and nationality. One of the most major proponents of this philosophy is Donna Haraway, whose Cyborg Manifesto explores the concepts of cyborgs and transcendence. To her “The cyborg…serves as a representational figure that embodies the capacity of information technologies to erase gender and racial boundaries and the structures of oppression which have historically accompanied them” (Silvio 54). Mamoru Oshii’s film adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s popular manga (the Japanese equivalent of a comic), Ghost in the Shell, tackles these issues in a more metaphorical sense, while weaving a tale of political intrigue in a not-so distant future. Some will argue that Ghost in the Shell’s main character, Major Motoko Kusanagi (“the Major”), does not transcend gender, but reaffirms it. In my analysis, I hope to tackle this issue of femininity within the film.
A naked, human-like form floats through various vats of liquids, while images of a cybernetic brain and a robotic face appear on the screen accompanied by the names of the production crew. At first, the form seems androgynous, but begins to take on the female form as the process continues. Layers of flesh and skin are piled upon the mechanical framework of this cybernetic body that happens to be that of Major Kusanagi. She awakes from this dream dressed in only a shirt and panties, and thus the movie begins, with an obviously sexualized female lead. The next scene with the Major standing on the rooftops of a building in
Throughout the movie, the Major is placed in the position of power compared to her male counterparts. While her male partner Togusa drives an armored van, Major Kusanagi adorns herself in battle vestments and weaponry. Even Batou, the cyborg male with the body of a superhero, is relegated to a more passive position as the Major engages the suspected “Puppet Master” in brutal hand-to-hand combat. Here, the suspect is completely defenseless to the attacks of Major Kusanagi due to her invisibility. Again, the man is placed into a position of absolute weakness in the face of the Major. Although her body possess characteristics of the female sex, the Major possess strength comparable to any man. In Sharalyn Orbaugh’s words, “[Her] body perfectly incarnates the modernist idea of autonomous subjectivity; in this sense, [she] [is] coded "male," despite the strong visual dimorphism” (Orbaugh 445). With the introduction of the “Puppet Master”, this notion of a “male” in a “female” body is taken one step further.
Project 2501 or the “Puppet Master” is a being created out of pure data. As the data traversed the net, it gained sentience and adopted a personality and agenda. It had the sole desire of uniting with a partially organic humanoid in order to bear an offspring that fuses the best of both the digital and real worlds. We first see the Puppet Master when “he” (this is what one of the scientist refers to it as) inhabits an empty cyborg body and escapes the MegaTech Corporation’s factory. The body he inhabits is that of a female cyborg, but the voice it projects is that of a male’s. “The Puppet Master…can be read as a less equivocal representation of how technology can enable one to transcend the prescriptive limits of our contemporary social environment” (Silvio 59). I believe Carlos Silvio’s words somewhat undermines his arguments and the arguments of others saying that the beautiful, female-cyborg bodies reinforce gender stereotypes. Money not withstanding, my feeling is that being given the liberty to choose a body, similar to how Project 2501 chose his body, gives people that much more autonomy to embody physically how they feel mentally, or just for vanity. It is this freedom of choice that I believe helps us transcend gender.
The issue of the identity of gender, especially in the case of Project 2501 brings us to the next and probably the most metaphorical and interpretable segment of the film. First and foremost is the Major literally ripping herself apart when attempting to rip open the hatch of a large tank-like entity. It can be seen as either her own Harawayan transcendence of the limited physical form or her victimization at other hands (
The metaphors do not end here though, as Kusanagi desires to “dive,” or connect, into the Puppet Master’s cybernetic brain in order to discern his origins. He has other plans though, as he instead dives into her mind and speaks directly in her thoughts, to the dismay of Batou who can not hear the ongoing discussion. Again, Kusanagi is at the mercy of the male as the Puppet Master has complete control over her mind. However, he desires to “merge” his mind with hers, in a process that would produce “a higher form of consciousness from the intermingling of human and machine intelligence” (Chute 87). In this way, they emulate humanoid reproduction with the offspring being a fusion of parts of Kusanagi and parts of the Puppet Master, similar to the passing of the male and female genes in human offspring. To further the cycle of reproduction, Kusanagi awakens from the whole ordeal in cyborg body of a young child, a body that Batou found on the Black Market. The new-Kusanagi even “wonders aloud, ‘Where does the newborn go from here?’” (Chute 87). It seems the Mamoru Oshii is propagating the gender stereotype of females as a means of production, even though Project 2501 states that he only needs a person who is partially organic and does not specify that it had to be a female. This implies that he could have merged with Batou, if he so chose too, but he has a vested interest in Major Kusanagi. It is with this information that one could challenge the notions of some who feel that the Major furthers certain female stereotypes.
Overall, Major Motoko Kusanagi and Project 2501 are diverse characters who neither truly reaffirm nor deny traditional conventions. While Project 2501 seems to be the ideal representation of an entity that has transcended gender, Major Kusanagi seems to still be attached to certain gender stereotypes and ideals. I do disagree though, with the majority of critics who seem to feel that the film furthers the archetypal “ideal” female, one who possesses a sexualized demeanor. It is because of these contradictory elements that the film allows the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions to the possible ramifications of a world containing cyborgs and the possibilities of erasing social norms through the transcendence from our mortal shell.
Works Cited
Chute, David. "The soul of the new machine: Oshii Mamoru's Ghost in the Shell." Film Comment May 1996: 84-87. ProQuest. ProQuest. Georgia Institute of Technology. 28 Feb. 2008
Silvio, Carl. "Refiguring the Radical Cyborg in Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell." Science Fiction Studies 26.1 (1999): 54-72. Academic Search Complete. EBSCOhost. Georgia Institute of Technology. 28 Feb. 2008
Orbaugh, Sharalyn. "Sex and the Single Cyborg: Japanese Popular Culture Experiments in Subjectivity." Science Fiction Studies 29.3 (2002): 436-52. Academic Search Complete. EBSCOhost. Georgia Institute of Technology. 28 Feb. 2008
Sor Fern, Ong. "This busty cyborg looks familiar." The Straits Times 22 Aug. 1999 [
5 comments:
You missed an example of what can interpreted as another male power dynamic at the beginning.
Kusanagi assassinates a political representative at the beginning of the film, cloaking herself as she flees the scene. This event is never clearly explained. In a scene immediately after the killing she can be heard telling Batou that she has been having a lot of 'noise' in her ghost lately.
By the end of the movie, after learning about the Puppet Master's ability to hack cybernetic people and his designs on the Major, it seems likely that the Puppet Master hacked Kusanagi's ghost at the beginning of the film either to neutralize a person he had a problem with, or to test her to see how she would react to him controlling her.
Thus the Puppet Master, man or woman, is in many ways the person exerting the greatest power in the film. And the fact that he had a male voice, but was seeking to 'enter' a female body adds an interesting layer to your critical analysis.
Thank you for the interesting analysis.
Yet there is one thing that keeps turning up in my mind that I would like to bring to your attention.
When considering the possibility of a "transgender" society, due to the advance of cyborgs, one must wonder:
Is the Major truly a woman?
Motoko surely is a female name, which seems the only real indication to the Majors sexuality, because one has to understand that the Major is a full cyborg. In the movie Motoko runs into an identical copy of the body he/she occupies, a pointer that the body he/she possesses is not her original body and no means of identification.
The dream of the cyborg being created was not a dream at all but a memory of the Major's body being created.
There is little to no indication that the "ghost" of Motoko is actually a woman. The Major explains that the only thing that makes up a person is its own personal memory and how they are perceived by society, but Motoko even starts questioning that exact notion. This erases all the times the Major is referred to as "she" in the movie.
One does not even know how old the Major is. For all we know, Motoko could be far more than 100 years old. Again, the Major personally wonders "Am I maybe just the recovered memory of a long dead person?".
So, when the "puppetmaster" says it doesn't matter which body it will merge with, it did not mean that it might merge with Batou, but it might be an indication that Motoko's gender is harder to define and is truly unimportant.
For me personally, the reason why the director gave Motoko such a feminine body was to make the viewer question the transparance of sexuality and gender. At all times the viewer is confronted with a very sensual and beautiful female body and yet always is reminded that they are not looking at a woman, but a cyborg.
At the beginning of the movie, the viewer is furthermore shown for a brief moment all of Motoko, nude and is made aware of something very important: Motoko's body does not possess female reproduction organs. In a movie of such violence and nudity, I believe it was not a form of censorship, but a pointer that the Major, in all her female beauty, is not a female after all. She reminds me of a Barbie doll.
This notion links up the idea of the "puppetmaster" (eg. Barbie doll= puppet) and the fact that finally the puppetmaster convinces the Major to merge with it by the promise of offspring.
Motoko is not drawn in the movie tas 'sexy". In fact shye was supposed to look a bit eerie on the uncanny valley edge.
She is a bit androgynous too in her look.
She also is not "female" or male" ( although her ghost MAY be female but at some point she is asked "why she chose a female body" ).
The explanation she uses a super militarily modified "normal looking" cyborg body ( a scene in the movie shows like 5 such bodies one even being inactive staring lifeless in a shop's window ).
In the movie she is never shown having sex so it's not even sure if the cyborg body even HAS..uhm.."genitals", be they male or female.
the major is seen nude at the start of the film and is shown not to have genetles eg she is asexual as is 2501 this is a way in which they mirror each other
Communist bullshit. The nerds that 10-20 years ago deemed females as suppressed in reproductive stereotypes grew to be suicidal wankers. Marxism and the frankfurt school are dead memes in 2022. Besides they've all sold out to big pharma by now...
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