For reference in the post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS3PGKUiSco
Set in the Floating Museum, Ghost in the Shell‘s penultimate scene and its featured tank battle not only subvert the stigmas surrounding alterity and being but also reconsider the contested question of existence. Regarding the scene’s setting, the helicopter pilot comments upon the abandoned, flooded building, questioning why anyone “would come to an abandoned place like this” (0:12-0:17). The pilot’s skepticism towards the location immediately paints the setting as on the margins, both physically with respect to the building’s removed location and metaphorically with respect to the Puppetmaster and his existence as the Other. The scene’s track “Floating Museum” further develops this perceived sense of alterity and Otherness. Museums typically contain objects of interest, which are stored for observation and casual learning, so the Puppetmaster’s physical presence in the museum recalls the concept of the gaze – the idea that the Self scrutinizes the Other, studying from a distance in order to understand it through its superficial, imagined lenses. The track’s eerie and haunting atmosphere contributes to this sense of difference with its mysterious and ominous tone, suggesting the alienness of the Puppetmaster and the normalcy of humanity – or at the very least, a distinction between cyborgs retaining some form of human life and those lacking human life altogether. With the camouflage’s disappearance, the scene visually establishes the hierarchy that it aims to challenge and reconfigure, situating the tank (a stand in for the Puppetmaster that it protects) at the bottom of the evolutionary tree that appears in the background (1:40).
However, the aforementioned combination of the scene’s mise-en-place, music, and visual structure only present the stasis regarding being in order to destabilize it and reconsider the definitions of existence and life. As the battle proceeds, the tank riddles the museum’s wall with bullets, destroying the fossils of marine life in the process (4:07-4:11). Similarly, the tank peppers the evolutionary tree with gunfire, notably focusing upon the word ‘hominis’ at the tree’s peak (4:17-4:23). First, the eradication of the fossils and the evolutionary tree symbolizes a rejection of human’s interpretation of evolution as the single narrative regarding the development of life, thus asserting the possibility of alternative means and modes of existence. Additionally, the destruction of the tree represents a direct challenge to the hierarchy established by humanity: the structure featuring ‘man’ at the top no longer remains valid in explaining and understanding being. Finally, the music’s transition to a more dramatic choral element and the physical transformation Kusanagi experiences reflect this assertion (5:00-5:30). Kusanagi’s metamorphosis from a slender woman to a hulk bursting from its bodily confines not only suggests the limitations of the human body but also implies a new sort of evolution: a breaking out of the human shell.
In what other ways does Ghost in the Shell establish certain norms and later deconstruct them in order to arrive at a more ambiguous understanding of being and existence?
FANTASTIC Conversation, You All!
To answer your question about the ways in which Ghost in the Shell both constructs and dismantles norms, I would say that the entire theme of cybernetic body modification, which looms heavily over the film, is very much on the side of ambiguity. What GITS does beautifully is portray the concept of cyborgs as something that is neither the answer to all ailments and bodily restrictions nor a threat that will erase any evidence of our humanity. The cyborgs of GITS are multifaceted; Batou and Kusanagi are both professionally efficient combatants and “weapons” yet they are well aware of Section 9’s view of them as simple ordinance. They follow orders, achieve superhuman acts, and still doubt themselves and their superiors.
During the dialogue-driven scene on the boat, (29:09-33:03) we are shown various examples of this ambiguous attitude to body enhancement. Batou’s discomfort with the women’s bodies is evidenced when Kusanagi undresses, showing a discomfort that lingers even as Batou and Kusanagi themselves blur the distinction between body and machine, obscuring what it means to even have a body. They muse over the cost of their elevated life, which is their service to Section 9, and Kusanagi states that without their augmented brains and bodies, “there wouldn’t be much left after that.” Yet even after saying this, Kusanagi launches on a monologue that outlines why she feels alive even as the vast majority of her body remains mechanized. When she says “All of that blends to create a mixture that forms me and gives rise to my conscious” with clear confidence in he voice (this is the English dub), it is impossible to doubt that she is anything less than fully human.
In this way, GITS portrays cybernetic life similarly to human life; an enigmatic experience spent searching for definition in the murky depths of our own consciousness and egos.
Max discusses the symbols which help to convey Major Kusanagi’s metamorphosis out of her limited “human” shell. I believe there is additional evidence in the visually rich scene that supports this analogy. Firstly, Kusanagi’s tactical outfit includes a large optical interface that masks her eyes. This mechanism not only remarkably resembles a blindfold in the dim lighting (3:04, 3:45) but actually functions like one too, preventing Kusanagi from seeing the “truth” of the situation, both because she has yet to know the knowledge the Puppet Master contains and because of her lack of ability to recognize that fighting the tank proves futile. If the tank represents the Puppet Master as Max has proposed, then it is all too fitting that once the Puppet Master defeats Kusangi and captures her in its mechanical arm, it is not depicted as killing her, but rather the only action it visually accomplishes is the dramatic destruction of her symbolic blindfold. To expand on Max’s point, I’ll now refer to movie timeline. If the method of the Puppet Master and Kusanagi merging is to be accomplished by occupying a new body together, then one would first guess that the Puppet Master might implore Kusanagi, who occupies a woman’s body, to bear a child. There are two issues with this, however. Firstly, as Kusanagi points out (1:11:30), the robotic shell she occupies does not possess the capacity to create another lifeform. Secondly, even if it did, the Puppet Master also occupies a woman’s body, and biologically the two couldn’t produce a child together. While this is never solved from a physiological standpoint (as it doesn’t need to be), the animators do resolve the problem aesthetically in how they set the characters during the merging. The Puppet Master, who speaks with a clearly masculine voice, switches from its original body into Kusanagi’s. Interesting, Batou had earlier placed his jacket on Kusanagi to cover her naked body, most likely as an innocent gesture of respect. The resulting image that is conveyed to the audience however is that of a bare naked woman lying next to a man speaking out of a body that has had its feminine aspects stripped from it, concealed from the viewer’s consideration by the jacket. The result of this merging? Perhaps the most obvious visual symbolism of all, the newly merged ghosts (man plus woman) occupy the body of a robotic child. After all, it was the only thing Batou could find on the black market at that hour.