Why the iden­ti­ty cri­sis in Ghost in the Shell still res­onates today

Thanks to the con­stant devel­op­ment and expan­sion of the inter­net, we have now reached a point where we are able to project iden­ti­ties and per­son­al­i­ties that do not tru­ly reflect the lives we lead. But what if tech­nol­o­gy advanced to the point that our minds could roam free, no longer shack­led by the lim­i­ta­tions of a human body? That is the cen­tral dilem­ma of Mamoru Oshii’s clas­sic 1995 ani­mé, Ghost in the Shell.

Our hero, Motoko Kusana­gi, is a cyborg police offi­cer tasked with lead­ing an anti-cyber ter­ror­ism unit in a futur­is­tic Japan­ese city, where every­one is con­nect­ed to a mass elec­tron­ic net­work. Peo­ple can access this data field through their arti­fi­cial bod­ies, oth­er­wise known as ​‘shells’. One of the few remain­ing bio­log­i­cal aspects of these bod­ies is the brain, which retains a con­science that is known as a ​‘ghost’. Motoko and her team are on the trail of the Pup­pet Mas­ter, an elite hack­er who has the abil­i­ty to access the minds of oth­er cyborgs in this world and use them to do his bid­ding. His emer­gence, and the idea of enter­ing anoth­er body, piqué Motoko’s inter­est while pro­vid­ing the film with its nar­ra­tive drive.

In order to analyse the iden­ti­ty cri­sis at the heart Ghost in the Shell, it is impor­tant to con­sid­er the sur­round­ings in which the sto­ry takes place. Thir­ty min­utes in there is a four-minute sequence that guides us through the city. The orig­i­nal cityscape still stands but has been left to ruin in the shad­ow of impos­si­bly huge sky­scrap­ers, which look more like machines than build­ings. The feel­ing of con­stant change lingers long after this scene, as the peo­ple con­tin­ue with their dai­ly lives prac­ti­cal­ly obliv­i­ous to the cul­tur­al con­flict that is hap­pen­ing around them.

Dur­ing this scene, we see Motoko trav­el­ling on a boat through the city’s canal sys­tem. She gazes at the build­ings and those around her, not with con­tempt but melan­choly. At one point she spots anoth­er girl, who is the spit­ting image of her. They observe each oth­er with­out reg­is­ter­ing an emo­tion­al reac­tion. This is the only hint that Motoko might be a mod­el assem­bled on a fac­to­ry pro­duc­tion line, defined only by her mind. It is only a pass­ing moment but one that con­veys a strong sense of lone­li­ness and detachment.

Motoko lacks any dis­cern­able per­son­al­i­ty traits and shows no real under­stand­ing of human emo­tions. She often appears nude in front of col­leagues, which sym­bol­is­es her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty while also empha­sis­es the fact that she has no con­cept of what it means to expose one­self pub­licly. Her part­ner, Batou, averts his eyes on more than one of these occa­sions and even cov­ers her up with his coat. Motoko doesn’t wish to cause Batou any embar­rass­ment nor does he want to feel like he is exploit­ing her body.

Gen­der is anoth­er issue with­in the com­plex work­ings of Ghost in the Shell. Despite hav­ing a female body and an effem­i­nate voice, it is unclear whether Motoko iden­ti­fies her­self as a woman – or even as a human. Dur­ing the stun­ning open­ing cred­its sequence, we wit­ness the for­ma­tion of her body and see that she has no gen­i­talia. At one point she jokes about it being her ​“time of the month” but we are well aware that she lacks the func­tions to men­stru­ate. That moment, along with a few admit­tances of show­ing emo­tion, tells us that she desires to be human. But that changes when she final­ly meets the elu­sive Pup­pet Master.

When she first encoun­ters him, he is occu­py­ing a female shell – not out of choice or neces­si­ty but pure­ly for its func­tion­al­i­ty as a tool. The Pup­pet Mas­ter then claims that he is a form of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence that has become self-aware. With that rev­e­la­tion comes a pro­found piece of think­ing: the Pup­pet Mas­ter tells Motoko that search­ing for one­self is impos­si­ble because indi­vid­u­als are con­stant­ly chang­ing, there­fore try­ing to obtain a per­fect iden­ti­ty is irrel­e­vant. He encour­ages Motoko to merge with him and aban­don her search in order to cre­ate a high­er life-form that isn’t restrict­ed by the bound­aries of body and mind.

Motoko’s evo­lu­tion is a mul­ti-lay­ered explo­ration into the very essence of exis­tence. The divi­sions that sep­a­rate ghosts and shells are metic­u­lous­ly dis­sect­ed in the film, lead­ing to an avalanche of metaphors and dense dia­logue. The scope of Oshii’s film knows no bounds and new ideas are revealed in repeat view­ings. There may be more con­cise inves­ti­ga­tions into iden­ti­ty in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, yet Ghost in the Shell remains the among the most fas­ci­nat­ing and rewarding.