When you dance, the beautiful girls are also intoxicated,
when you dance, the bright moon also shines, the
gods descend on the wedding, the nightingale Sing for the Dawn
I don't remember the age when I first watched Ghost in the Shell, but it certainly wasn't the year it was released in 1995. That year the Soviet Union disintegrated, Hong Kong hadn't returned, and I wasn't 10 years old, so I didn't buy into life The first computer, the computer network sounded as far away as the stars in the sky. Different ages have different points of attention. At the beginning, the naked woman jumped down from the tall building, then the technology that injects people into prosthetics, and then the most primitive question - what is a person.
In the abandoned museum, the armor-piercing bullets of the chariot swept the pillars, the steps, and the tree of evolution on the wall. The nodes of evolution seemed to be tangled up in the wrong way. Yes, proteins and DNA were produced in the primitive ocean, one of which provided raw materials and the other provided information, and gradually evolved into single-celled and multi-cellular ones, which were gradually speciesized by the genus and genus of the genus. Compared with a program containing ghosts generated from information resources in the information-based ocean, it is strikingly similar, magical, but terrifying. The program is like the original DNA, which can be replicated and invaded. Although it is not complete, it can already be regarded as a different form of life.
So what is life? The issue of The Ship of Theseus* is still debated until now. For the character in the film, Motoko Kusanagi, except for the brain, he has been transformed into a biochemical human. After making some modifications to their bodies, does the definition of the so-called human need to be revised? In fact, from the time the first board was replaced, the Ship of Theseus was not the Ship of Theseus in the original sense, but in the conceptual form, even if all the boards were replaced, it was still the Ship of Theseus. It's as if human beings have been eating, drinking and laxing from birth, and their metabolism has changed from a fertilized egg to a fully mature living body. How much has changed? The most primitive fertilized egg begins to become dead in the first division, and how many cells die and how many cells are born every day? The only constant is the genetic information hidden in our DNA, which is like a core program that directs how the outer layers of resources are organized, functioned, and perished.
If there really is a soul, is it DNA? It doesn't seem to be the same. According to the film, DNA is to life, just like memory is to human beings. It is a foundation that allows life to continue.
The physical replacement is one part, and the other part is spiritual. All our thoughts, memories, and the sublimation of self-consciousness are changing every second. The existing things are both illusion and reality, and they are all bound by the "self". within the range. The so-called self-reliance, sounds like a real fallacy. Equally terrifying, what if memories can be faked and all feelings are nothing but fantasy? In the film, the driver of the garbage truck is implanted with fictitious memories and thoughts, and is manipulated to invade the secret department of the telephone network. What is the cause, in order to rob the child, because of the legendary love, but after being arrested, it is discovered that all the love and the The injury is nothing but a dream, and the picture of his daughter is nothing but a picture of himself and a Basset dog. To deal with their killers, when asked about all the memories, there is nothing but a daze, the place of birth, the childhood memories are gone, and what can only the red blood represent, just a puppet without a soul. Suzi felt it, maybe she had already died, or maybe the real self never existed, everything was just an illusion, the ghost in the titanium alloy skull seemed vulnerable in front of the new concept of life.
Is it a brain placed in a culture medium with electrodes attached, or a chip with a humanoid body? Everywhere is the broken ship of Theseus, which reminds people of the things that were discussed for a long time in "Dream of Guns", so I won't say much today.
Motoko's body is the image of a woman, although she is almost unfeminine, and the primitive electronic life formed by the 2501 plan (referred to as 2501 for short) is also a beautiful woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. of female figures. The existence of life groups is nothing more than two purposes, survival and reproduction. 2501 can copy itself arbitrarily on the Internet, reach any place through data flow, invade people's brains, and manipulate them, (so he is also called a puppet master). Powerful, lonely, and incomplete - unable to reproduce. Its composition is too single, and a small mistake will lead to death. (Just like the reason why Togusa, who has hardly changed his body in Mozi tone, entered the 9th class of public security, singleness leads to destruction, and although it looks imperfect in combination, it will be more tenacious.) Women are mostly seen as production and reproduction The symbol of 2501's choice to create and enter such a woman's body is not entirely the director's bad taste, but his deepest desire, and because of his incompleteness, most of the time she is broken, with means castrated.
From Motoko's dream, you can see the entire manufacturing process of the female prosthesis, only the brain, alloy skeleton, fibrous muscles, and surface coating are preserved. Accompanied by ethereal and eerie music, he slowly rose from the cultivation pool. This is also the reason why Motoko feels reborn when he dives and ascends. The baby also grows out of the amniotic fluid of the mother and comes to the world. It seems that no matter what state human beings develop to, the most primitive attachment to the water environment cannot be changed. Although it contains fear, worry, loneliness and darkness, there may be hope. Motoko has always gone his own way, undressing in a second, and Bart will cover Motoko's nudity with clothes every time—whether in this or in the subsequent innocence. For the prosthetic person, the whole female body is good, or something else, it is more like different clothes - a shell, she does not have the physiological function of a woman, and even jokes about her period at the beginning Also so understated. Without the connotation of sex, all the naked shame is unnecessary.
Suzi and 2501 finally chose to merge, with complexity, breaking the barrier of self, and finally surviving and multiplying in the infinite and broad network, only then can I stand alone in the world in innocence. icon.
After so much chatter, let’s end with my favorite line in it, and listen to the ghost’s whisper:
“Through the mirror of nothingness, you and I will finally look at each other.”
Ps. The extremeness of the Japanese is in Oshii The guardian has a typical performance, how lively and funny the lucky star boy and the mobile police are, and how gloomy the wolf and the attack in the shell are.
Note*: Ship of Theseus: "The Ship of Theseus" is one of the oldest thought experiments. It describes a ship that can be at sea for hundreds of years, thanks to constant repairs and replacement parts. As soon as a board rots, it is replaced, and so on, until all the functional parts are no longer what they were originally. The question is, is the resulting ship still the original Theseus ship, or a completely different ship? If not the original ship, at what point does it cease to be the original ship? Philosopher Thomas Hobbes later expanded on this, and if a new ship was built with old parts taken from the ship of Theseus, which of the two ships was the real ship of Theseus?
View more about Ghost in the Shell reviews
