Cyberpunk isn't all neon and corporations. The key to what makes good cyberpunk is an understanding of technological growth, of social evolution, social restraint, and neoliberalsim run amok as governance falls to the side of corporate control. But most of all, it is how tech threads its way through all of this. Popularized by Willaim Gibson's kinetic novel Neuromancer, cyberpunk has been on the rise since the late 80s, culminating for many in The Matrix, the cultural high water mark for the genre. The Matrix itself was less an original work than it was a blockbuster amalgamation of multiple different cyberpunk works, Neuromancer (with its wild west internet literally called the matrix) being one of the bigger ones, but at its heart far more like Ghost in the Shell.
Ghost in the Shell started life as a manga I have not read despite it glaring at me from my bookshelf, and as such you can probably expect a revisit to this film sometime in the future. As it stands, the manga was adapted into a wildly acclaimed anime film of the same name in 1995. Ghost in the Shell, the film, followed a government assault team called Section 9, partially led by Major, a cybernetic woman. In this world, technology has developed to where a person's whole body could be replaced with cybernetic parts. One part in particular allowed for the brain to be cradled within this body and connected to the net. The consciousness (sometimes referred to as a soul by certain people) is referred to as the "ghost", the last knowable proof of humanity within a cybernetic "shell".
Major and the rest of Section 9 are after a mysterious and dangerous hacker known as The Puppet Master who is targeting political officials, but has somehow evaded capture or even identification. The Puppet Master has an insidious trick up his sleeve, able to implant memories that aren't real in his unsuspecting victims to get them to do what he wants. The search for The Puppet Master leads to copious amounts of espionage, informed by the fractured state of the Japanese government that is unable to communicate with itself, and seems to be desperately seeking stability after a recent revolution. The plot itself is virtually impossible to talk about without spoilers, thanks in part to how tightly the themes, action, and story developments all intertwine into a solid whole. Their search for The Puppet Master becomes a frightening reflection of existential concerns the characters and film are tortured over, coming to an interesting head that talks technology, philosophy, and the limitations of self.
Without getting into spoilers for this review, the primary concern for Ghost in the Shell is what being human really is, anyway. After so many cybernetic modifications, at what point does the person cease to be human and simply become a robot? This isn't just a thought whispered between action scenes, it is the driving force for their characters' concerns. Many of them have been so heavily augmented that retirement is paramount to suicide since they are required such expensive upkeep to keep their bodies from breaking down the way mechanical devices do. Their tech is military grade, and cannot be simply found on the black market, thus their work is also a sense of self preservation. Not that they are necessarily complaining. The true concern the characters have is whether or not their "ghost" is enough to distinguish them from machines. They noticeably never actually say "human" when referring to who they are, preferring to consider the essence of being over the biological sum of DNA and its follow through. The tech and the biological are less interesting in themselves than what defines the self entirely. As Major mentions at one point, it is not her brain that makes her who she is, it is experience, memories, and the ways in which she perceives the world - and this includes her perception through the tech in her head. Her personality and sense of self has long ago abandoned the solely biological. To remove some of the cybernetic features from her perception is to remove a part of who she is, and that is the complexity of the issue Ghost in the Shell wants to tumble over.
Technology isn't just a means to an end in Ghost in the Shell, it is a place and a perspective. It is integrated with the self, with society, with a person's understanding of the world around them. You would remain a person if you never had a phone or the internet again, but you would not ever be the same person. That may sound ridiculous, but it is technically true. So much of your interaction with the world is through this pocket computer and its connection to the internet, and simply taking that away fundamentally changes the way you perceive and consume the world around you. And that is part of the point with Ghost in the Shell. It isn't simply "tech is bad", its "tech makes everything different". The irony is that while you would probably assume that turning away from the uber-modernity is as simple as turning of a phone, the reality is that your brain has morphed to coexist with this technology. The "weakness" some perceive in those who are so reliant on gadgets and convenience is a conditional weakness. There are strengths to the reliance as well, particularly in the literacy of technology and the ability to adapt with new avenues of information and interaction. It isn't a flat pro and con, because our species did not get to where it is because of our intelligence and adaptability alone, it was because of the way we were able to create, use, and integrate technology into our lives. That is what fundamentally changed us, and that is what led us not only into the 21st century, but to some sort of evolved being where our creations and ourselves have become intertwined. Evolution, it should be said, is not perfection. It is adaptation, it is changing with time as time requires. Ghost in the Shell doesn't just bring up these questions, it searches through them with intensity and focus. The film is insanely short for how many thoughts it has, and could have done with another half hour at least to really get into things, but even at its length there is a lot to unpack here. One of these days I will have to do a spoiler filled review so we can tackle all there is involved in this plot, as well as the ending, but for now consider this a very high recommendation.
9.0
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