1. Ghost in the Shell:
Technology and Protest
Fred Bailey:
(PowerPoint/Video/Storyline/Characters/
Themes)
Dairee Hart: (Animation/Cultural Research)
Haneen Kurd: (Cultural Research)
2. Introduction to Film and
Original Source
Ghost in the Shell is a 1995 Japanese
animated film directed by Mamoru
Oshii. It is based on the manga of the
same name by Masamune Shirow.
3. Storyline
Ghost in the Shell follows the investigation of the elusive hacker
known as the Puppet Master by Section 9’s Major Mokoto
Kusanagi and her subordinate, Batou. In this film, technology has
gotten so far that cyborgs exist and people’s consciousness, or
“ghosts”, can be hacked (their actions, and even memories, can
be controlled and manipulated by hackers). After some
investigation is made, a robot is found by Section 9 with the
Puppet Master’s ghost inside. It is revealed that the Puppet
Master was originally created by the Japanese government to
affect world politics, but it developed self-awareness and went
rogue. The robot escapes from Section 9 and chase through the
city ensues. Kusanagi eventually catches up to the Puppet
Master and has a very revealing conversation concerning his
motivations. The Puppet Master is sentient like humans, but
cannot die or reproduce like they can. The Puppet Master wants
to amend this by fusing his consciousness with Kusanagi’s,
allowing him to die and produce a kind of hybrid offspring. The
government officials catch up with them, however, and end up
killing both Kusanagi and the Puppet Master before it seems like
they’ve fused. In the next scene, however, it is revealed that their
fusion was successful and the new entity has been put into a
4. Characters-
Major
Motoko Kusanagi
The protagonist of the movie, Major
Kusanagi is a cyborg who works for
Public Security Section 9 (a sort of
cybernetic police) and is given the
task of investigating the Puppet
Master. Throughout the film,
Kusanagi struggles and broods over
the fact that she is mostly made of
robot parts and is not sure if anything
human is left in her, or if everything
about her, even her memories, are
synthetic. At the end of the film it is
revealed that she did merge her
5. Characters-
Batou
• Batou is Kusanagi’s second-in-
command at Section 9. He is very
brusque in manner, but ends up
being a very loyal subordinate and
friend to Kusanagi
6. Characters-
The Puppet Master
• The Puppet Master serves as the main antagonist
of the film. Originally known as “Project 2501”, the
Puppet Master is the result of the Japanese
government trying to create an artificial
intelligence that could covertly manipulate politics
and the mind’s of its citizens. The Puppet Master
becomes sentient, however, and starts
perpetrating the crimes seen in the film. As it turns
out, the Puppet Master’s ultimate goal is to fuse
itself with another’s consciousness to form a new
entity much in the same way biological organisms
do with their genes. He ends up accomplishing his
goal through Major Kusanagi. It is also interesting
to note that the Puppet Master has a very
8. Technical Aspects
of Animation
• Ghost in the Shell is actually
groundbreaking in the fact
that it is the first film to ever
blend traditional cel
animation and computer
generated graphics in its
production. • Most of the film uses a dark,
subdued color palate. This
adds to the film’s dark themes
and tone.
9. Cultural
Understanding
• Anime is produced with a Japanese audience
solely in mind, and thus, many of the themes
and imagery presented in anime are not fully
understood by Western Audiences.
• The Japanese have a much less black-and-
white view of morality in the universe than the
West, and this is reflected in their
entertainment. Characters often sit in moral
grey areas, and the good cause does not
always win. In Ghost in the Shell, for
example, it is hard to pick out any purely
good or purely evil characters. Also, the main
antagonist of the film, the Puppet Master,
ends up getting what it wants in the end,
10. Cultural
Understanding (cont.)
• Also, unlike Western animation, anime is
not usually targeted towards children, but
rather to teens and adults: Nudity, extreme
violence, and other adult themes are
extremely common in Japanese
animation; this can be seen in Ghost in the
Shell.
• This is just the surface of the cultural
imagery and themes explored in Ghost in
11. Major Themes
• The major theme addressed by “Ghost in the
Shell” is the relationship between a human’s
consciousness, or ghost, and their physical form.
Within the film’s fiction, a human is different from a
robot only if they possess a ghost, this idea is
challenged within the film, however. Kusanagi is
constantly reflecting on the fact that she is a
cyborg and that her identity and all her memories
could all just be simulated. Alternatively, the
Puppet Master, is an artificial intelligence that has
gained consciousness and is trying to practice
more processes associated with being human
(death and reproduction). The film’s major
question and major theme really is: “What defines
human consciousness and is something artificial
really capable of replicating that?” Interestingly, his
12. Major Themes
(cont.)
• The film’s other major theme is how the ever
growing role of technology in our day to day lives
is affecting our privacy as individuals. In the future
this film presents, people’s minds and memories
can be hacked and controlled through neural
uplinks to the internet. This idea was being
exploited by the government in the film (the
creation of the Puppet Master), and is a major
issue today. As we upload more and more of our
daily lives to the internet and become more and
more dependent upon technology for
accomplishing every day tasks in our world, are
we sacrificing our privacy and individualism? If
technology ever gets to the point it does in this
film, can we trust our government or other corrupt
to not alter and manipulate our experience for their
13. Conclusion
• Ghost in the Shell is an anime film that explores
the ever increasing role of technology in our
society and the consequences that could come
with it. In a world where almost everything is
artificial, how can one ever know what’s truly real?
How can one protect their privacy in a world where
our lives are increasingly lived out through the
internet? Can we trust so much information and
power to individuals that may be corrupt? Ghost in
the Shell asks a lot questions that we may be
finding the answers to in the coming decades.
14. Sources
• Herbert, Jack. “The anime that spawned ‘The Matrix’”. Wa-Pedia.
http://www.wa-pedia.com/entertainment/ghost_in_the_shell.shtml
• “Ghost in the Shell”. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_%28film%29
• “Anime Culture Explained in 10 minutes or Less”.
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~jleek/anime/culture.html
• “Motoko Kusanagi”. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoko_Kusanagi
• “Puppet Master (Ghost in the Shell)” Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppet_Master_(Ghost_in_the_Shell)
• “Mind-Body Problem”. The Information Philosopher.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/problems/mind_body/
• Solove, Daniel. The digital person: Technology and privacy in the
information age. Vol. 1. NYU Press, 2004.
15. Sources
(cont.)
• “History”. Anime Saikai.
http://www.animesekai.net/history.html.
• Thompson, K. M. 2011. Classical Cel Animation, World
War II, and Bambi. The Wiley-Blackwell History of
American Film.
• Marks, Jessica. “Introduction into Ghost in the Shell
Historical World, as Well as Some Details Concerning
the Plot and Characters”. Permanent Socialism. 2011.
http://permanentsocialism.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/int
roduction-into-the-ghost-in-the-shell-historical-world-as-
well-as-some-details-concerning-the-plot-and-
characters/.
