"Countries and races are not yet obsolete..."
And this comes to hold true in more ways that initially designated, as the new territory of what qualifies as living or who's deserving of personhood comes to be explored, rearing around the aforementioned stretches and bounds in morality that I've lead on from in my previous post. But I'm getting ahead of the chronological assessment.
We start off with Motoko Kusanagi, our protagonist, who's essentially the former consciousness of a woman, who's encased in a cybernetic shell with enhanced, super-human abilities. We follow her on a covert operation, during which it's revealed through a series of gory events followed by a recollection of the creation of Motoko's body that while the standard human is augmented with incorporated technology in some form or another, Motoko's origin is unusual and unique.
In her opening scene, she assassinates a political leader and proceeds to vanish by utilizing the camouflage quality of her skin, meaning that she carried out her mission almost entirely naked. It's actually due to her mostly robotic nature that things like nudity for her are in no way played off as a gendered or sexual thing. It's met with little to no regard from anyone, the absolute indifference solidifying the fact that she's objectified in a completely different, and a more literally, dehumanizing manner. It's a large tip-off to an underlying issue, but I don't have much more to say about this specific issue.
We cut to the pursuit of the phantom hacker, the Puppet Master. Referred to as a him for a lack of knowledge stating otherwise, nothing is know about him. Not his age, sex , personal history, etc. You get the drift. He's causing major issues. He aligns as a severe level threat among the rank of disobedient and defecting hackers hold in a work held together by an electronic and very much so hackable system. He's wanted internationally for multiple large scale crimes. One of the more horrific and specific to this series issues is ghost hacking the augmented and artificial brain of someone, a ghost essentially serving as the consciousness inhabiting a completely artificial body. He does this to major interpreter, and is then sought out by Motoko and her extended security team.
A lot happens along the way, such as Motoko confiding in her friend Batou about her insecurities regarding her state as a cybernetic inhabiting being. We've already seen how others regard her, but with her shields as relatively down as they can be for someone so even tempered, if not somewhat detached, seeing her bring to light some self regard for her condition in both service and existing in general is a lot more humanizing. We get a look into the personal dissonance she experiences, even if it's from some off-handed comment that I'm probably over examining.
Anyways, a lot happens plot wise. Motoko's department corners and confines what they thought to be perhaps the ghost of the puppet master in a cybernetic female body, and after a series of issues ensue, including the crossing of institutions and some apparent internal corruption of rival security agencies, and the attempted retrieval of the the puppet master, its revealed that the Puppet master isn't even a ghost, but rather an artificial intelligence that achieved sentience while wandering the worldwide network.
The story climaxes at this whole revelation, as the Puppet master reveals that he's contemplated and become frustrated with the facts that he could neither reproduce nor die, and that he's chosen Motoko as the one he would combine matrix's with, creating a sort of amalgam from the two of them. This process, as well as the entire series on conceptualization he went through was astounding to me. He'd found an analogous means to reproduction in order to create an entirely new being from two subjects, which solved both the dilemma of him never generating offspring as well as never passing on in a new sort of way. That fact that he'd become sentient despite never originating from a human cerebrum, that he was essentially complex code from creation that came to rationalize its own existence, is the kind of stuff I love to see.
The movie ends with Motoko, or rather the amalgam of Motoko and the Puppet master, accepting just who they are as the combination, looking over their city.
Overall, the movie rounded all corners of what I love to see in Sci-Fi, as well as what I love to see in the cyborg and artificial intelligence trope section. Honestly, I love the conflict that surrounds the artificial and cybernetic life in works, whether it's conflict with societal perceptions to conflict within oneself, and I got to see all of that in a captivating story in beautiful animation. Good plot and execution are key to me enjoying a series, and it helps if the work is aimed at my better interests.
Of all the things that happened in the film, I will say that I didn't expect what I got out of the Puppet master, and I couldn't be happier with the surprise. I love the whole, sentient AI thing. I love the whole sentient AI coming to terms with their sentience thing. I love that rejection they know they'll be met with when they seek recognition for their state of being and personhood. What I did not expect, nor have I really ever though about, was an AI wanting to reproduce and die in the model of an organic life. AI aspiring to and emulating their creators is a given to me, but this was a new take in my frame of reference. It was a unique was for an AI to experience mortality, or the stress relating to the lack thereof. I've seen AI's that were content with their existence in spite of their sentience, and I've seen AI's that are terrified of death/decommissioning, even AI's that sacrifice themselves or want to die out due to more depressing reasons, but none that particularly desire death as something that signifies they've lived.
I could go on and on, but this post is getting a bit long, so I'll save my gushing for my presentation.
Oh, gosh, this is awesome. I can't address it all. Let me just say that if you like this, you're going to LOVE Neuromancer. It's freaky with language in a way that I think you'll enjoy (or hate. But no, I think you'll enjoy it). It's also VERY MUCH LIKE this movie.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this: " the absolute indifference solidifying the fact that she's objectified in a completely different, and a more literally, dehumanizing manner." This is an insightful comment--that a "thing" need not be sexualized. It can just as easily be taken for granted and overlooked as no more than a tool.