Mamoro Oshii – Ghost in the Shell (1995)

I’ve been thinking a lot about narrative voice as a ghost (or awakening ghosts, or impersonating ghosts, or whatever) and so I re-watched Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell animated film in order to see how it approaches memory and identity through the lens of a type of ghost. Originally written and illustrated by Masimune Shirow, as a film it’s awkward – the animated characters barely move, and the dialogue is pretty wooden (perhaps it’s better in the original Japanese). Still, it’s a fascinating take on what now has become a ubiquitous concern – when we are living in the machine what will happen to our bodies?

Thoughts:

• The plot focuses on an elite terrorist-fighting police squad located in a fictional Japanese city, roughly translated as New Port City.
  • As far as scenery goes, that’s pretty much all we see – endless city.  The last scene in particular links the city directly to a data core, as its indistinct lines in the artwork make it appear to look like a series of databases. The scenery constantly changes and exposes us to new parts of the city, but we see so little green that the world’s constant rain seems like a comment on our own desires to wash the world clean.
    • Cyberpunk as relentless urbanity invokes what feel like modernist anxieties in this film.
  • This world is relentlessly crowded, and the city has had to adapt to global warming, all key elements in the cyberpunk world.
• My guess is that part of the lack of movement among the animated characters can be attributed to the fact that they are cyborgs.  The humans in the squad move a little more – still, the lack of blinking or breathing is unnerving, and helps me realize why avatars in games like the World of Warcraft appear to breathe heavily – they look more alive.
• The questions the film raises are fascinating – Shirow invokes Arthur Koestler (who I know far better as the author of a truly terrifying novel, Darkness at Noon) and his arguments about the core of identity. Koestler’s work deserves a much longer treatment, but broadly he argues that we are not simply souls inhabiting bodies but that our connections are much more complicated.
  • Shirow calls the cybernetic soul a ghost, and the term becomes increasingly more complicated as the film (and manga) proceed.  The protagonist, Major Kusanagi, struggles to figure out who she is, and the connection she finds at the end of the film to the Puppet Master (a rogue AI that to me is the kissing cousin of Wintermute in the Sprawl series) speaks to Koestler’s ideas of how we (whoever the ‘we’ is) are connected.
• The violence in the film is fascinating.  The cyborgs are the only bodies we see destroyed, with wires and tubes hanging out of decapitated limbs. Still, those bodies (and they’re gendered very specifically as female) are not only alive but able to function – and the ghosts can be transferred.
• As one can imagine, the idea of sentience becomes up for grabs by the end.

Although I’m not exactly sure how the themes in this text connect to the ones that I’m trying to identify, I’m glad I re-watched the film. It clearly hits a cultural sweet spot, and as we find ourselves ever more immersed in screens we can probably learn a thing or two from it. The artwork is damn near hallucinatory at points, and I found myself glad that the film moved so slowly, as I could spend time drinking in the arcane and stuffed world that the artwork spends time developing.

Contact

While watching an X Ambassadors live version of “Unsteady” on Youtube, I saw something that I hadn’t seen in awhile – Sam Harris, the lead singer, actually went and allow himself to be touched physically by the crowd.

That’s not the video in which it happens (you have to be logged into your Google account to see it, and I don’t want to give the bastards the hits), but near the end of this song, at a show in a club in New York, Harris goes to the barrier, sings, holds his microphone to the crowd, and then lets people in the audience touch his head, as he touches them back.

I found it a really cool and touching moment, especially since the song is a sweet tribute to vulnerability in a way that thankfully seems to have found a niche in the music market after the macho bullshit rock that preceded it. Still, it made me think of the old days…

The best concert I’ve ever seen was probably Fishbone. I saw them live at the Phantasy Theater in Lakewood, and the place was packed. It also marked what I’m guessing is a watermark for band/crowd contact, as I think since then major bands do not engage physically with the crowd, for reasons that are probably solid.  Still, I miss those days…

You may argue that Fishbone was never a major band, and you may not have liked their music. But in the concert I saw Angelo jumped into the mosh pit, complete with microphone, and start chanting “pass me to the back/pass me to the back/pass me to the back.”  It was as a pure moment as I experienced musically in the 1980s.

And we obliged, because Cleveland knows its shit.  The crowd passed him all the way to the back of the theater, and then we passed him forward.  The walls between performer and audience were temporarily gone, and man it felt good.

Us – Jordan Peele

Us, directed by Jordan Peele, has already generated a ton of theory-mongering, which makes sense since Peele’s last film (Get Out) generated a bunch of its own.  Those theories show a willingness to engage with the film’s content as well as simply enjoy a good scare, and they’re backed by the box office revenue the film generated in its first weekend – $70 million, according to Variety. My thoughts on the film are below the trailer:

• The idea of an entire underworld of doppelgangers evokes what I think is one of the ultimate fears of most of us living in a corporatist world – the ease with which we can be replaced.
• Few of the scenes in this film are made scary by effects. There are no greyed out screens or stop-motion photography (unless it’s done as an homage, of which more later). The fact that the film relies on its story to carry the fear is pretty cool.
• I lost track of the number of films that Peele references, but some of the clearest are the slasher movies, especially A Nightmare on Elm Street. Building on the filmic codes established in early films often saves director’s work, but this film doesn’t use the expectations generated by those common references as shortcuts – instead, it interrogates them.
  • As an example, the killers in Us use scissors as their weapons of choice. The choice of killing implement in horror is iconic – it’s not the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for nothing, after all, and Freddie Kreuger’s knife hands still make me shudder.
    • Peele though I think is using the scissors not just as icons – they carry weight, both narratively and visually.  The gold color, the variety of purposes, the idea of matching pieces of metal joined by a bolt, implying duality and connection – that’s more than the average horror weapon.
• Using the idiocy of the Hands Across America is a beautiful metaphor for ridiculous corporate gestures made by an economic system that is about to run head over heels into extreme income inequality.
• The arguments about race are far more muted in this – My guess is that class is his focus.  Still, it’s not a surprise that the black family surprises, and that mom has them immediately head to Mexico, a la Sarah Conner. And of course the assumption that this doppelganger phenomenon is not happening in Mexico is probably true – Mexico has its own problems, but this tethering-to-our-shadow is uniquely American.

 

Bird Box

Bird Box the film (dir. Susan Bier) and Bird Box the novel (written by Joseph Malerman) were very similar, with almost none of the exposition present in the novel explaining what the film explains visually. Thoughts below:

• The conceit is an interesting one, as the aliens are barely present, and even then in shadowy, more-seen-than-felt form. This solves the problem with a lot of these types of stories, in which a plucky group of humans defeats the aliens using what are essentially rocks and sticks in the face of overwhelming technology, and it also reduces us to organisms that might not be all that interesting to the aliens…depressing!
• The conversations Malerman presents as humans try to figure out what these things are also struck me – several people surmise that perhaps they don’t even know they’re here, or hurting us, and that our own fears that lead to us violently murdering each other come from us.
• The elimination of sight I think alludes to our overwhelming obsession with the visual, and the fact that even seeing something indirectly through a recording could trigger the reaction was pretty interesting.
  • Where, then, does this type of intensely psychotically violent behavior reside?  In our visual processing systems?  Are the connections so tight that any issue in one directly affects our central nervous system?
• Finally, the book made me think of how often dystopias and horror cross generic lines…

Free Solo

We drove to Cleveland to see Free Solo last night, and wow…

I am going to give a big spoiler immediately – he lived…

Other thoughts:

• Yosemite, as Alex says in the film, might be the most beautiful river valley on the planet. I personally am a bit biased towards the Grand Canyon, and my bias shows how US-centric I am, but I hear his argument.
• Selfishly, I thought of the times when I felt pushed to the edge physically – duckying the Upper Gauley always comes to mind.
• I also thought though of a time when I (we) just nailed it, in particular R2ing the Upper Yough on a crisp summer day…
• Other than that, I got nothing – just see this film…

Kavanaugh and yelling

On the eve of the confirmation hearing for an elitist preppie know-nothing of the sort who populated too much of my undergraduate days, I offer a reminiscence of earlier work experiences and a couple of thoughts on bar fights and masculinity.

The Senate hearings were a particular nightmare for those who have suffered sexual assault. I’m lucky – I have avoided that situation somehow in my life. It was also a showcase for what men get away with, and I hope it’s one of the last places in which I was lucky in that I never had to work for a yeller.

The Customer

The one time in my corporate experience I had someone yell at me happened with one of my programmers. He came back from a meeting with a customer, and he looked sick.

“What the hell happened” I asked, with my usual ability to quickly judge the obvious.

“That guy is out of control – he yelled at me for ten minutes about the bill we submitted.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t want to pay a bill that has anything other than three zeroes at the end.”

I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but I made sure that the next bill we sent was very large, with at least three zeroes on it. I’m not sure he got it though, because after I went in and talked to him, the situation got worse.

“You need to stop yelling. This is unprofessional, and treating people like this just shows what an asshole you are.”

Continued screaming.

I walk out. And the next day my bosses canceled the contract with his firm. We left them in the lurch, and probably hurt our ability to do business in the Boston area for a couple of years, but the guys I worked for weren’t having their employees treated like that.

Even in the early 90s we knew that yelling at others was not the way to make business happen.

The Bar Fight

Suddenly, the bar fight has become a marker of masculinity. Lots of folks are coming out of the woodwork with elaborate tales of bar fights they have managed to survive, and we now know that they are, truly, men.

Bullshit. As my brother says, getting in a bar fight is just stupid. None of us have any idea what the person who wants to fight has on them, in the form of weaponry, tolerance of pain, MMA cards, or whatever. Who wants to risk their future on a situation that they can’t possibly have any control over, and which can even accidentally go very, very wrong?

I’ve been in a bar fight once. Since then I’m always quick to either de-escalate or get the hell out, pulling friends with me. So many factors out of your control, and so many possibilities for very bad consequences, makes being in a bar fight seem like a stupid risk to me. To all the suddenly macho men who are bragging about multiple bar fights, I’d encourage you to find another way to prove your manliness. Perhaps you could take up rugby, a sport where foes actually do drink beer after matches, unlike the movie scenes of bar fights in which guys beat the shit out of each other and then drink afterwards. Try boxing, or MMA, or even a mosh pit, places where there are rules and referees and in which men can truly test their own strength and ability to take a punch or two.

Soon-to-be Justice Kavanaugh did the bar fight right, at least.  He didn’t actually fight – he just taunted someone else until his friend (according to stories it’s Chris Dudley, who played in the paint in the NBA, a place to prove one’s masculinity like no other) did the actual fighting.  My guess is that he’s a coward in all the truest senses, and I can only imagine the horrors he will be a part of as a Justice who has promised consequences as retribution to his political enemies, but perhaps one of his biggest accomplishments will be a negative one (from his perspective) – young men will no longer grow up to think that getting into a bar fight proves that they are macho.

 

Observations of Akron

It seems like Akron’s become my adopted home town (with much weeping for Berlin and Edinburgh and Rome)…

• There are large numbers of folks who grew up here and still care deeply about this city, wanting to stay here to build.
• There are large numbers of folks who have moved here and who are determined to make this city something special.
• And, of course, there are large numbers of folks who have moved away from here and won’t move back.

Riding in a bus back from the Akron Portage and Paddle with a bunch of native Akronites is what prompted these thoughts. I was especially interested in the contrast between the well-meaning young folks who have moved here and want to build a creative hipster mecca and those who have lived here all their lives and see Akron as simply a place that they can’t imagine leaving, whether for family or for other reasons.

It’s odd in a sense to see the ways that Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt condemnation of boosterism has been turned.  I’m a huge fan of The Devil Strip and its ethos, especially in the age of a culture that seems celebrity-mad, and yet there is the cynical, Gen-Xer in me who wants to adopt an attitude more like Scene did in the 1980s and 90s – obsessed with its focal points, as happy to hammer on local corrupt politicians and corporations as it was to celebrate (often reluctantly) the indie music scene and local artists like Harvey Pekar and Derf. The Devil Strip is here to promote Akron as a livable, working, sustainable city, one that doesn’t need the glitter and glamor of living on the coasts, and that approach requires a certain amount of what sometimes feels like blind optimism.

I’m not saying I’m anything but nostalgic for a vestige of my own young adulthood in wanting this. Cities and regions are immensely complex, and can’t be understood with either my wannabe cynicism or a bright-eyed boosterism that sees no flaws. Take, for instance, the concert we saw last Friday night – Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys. There were thousands of folks there (not all from the region of course), ranging from the young guy with the combat boots and Irish flag who came straight from 1997 to the middle-aged woman with her pink union thug button mocking Republicans to the alt-righters who are a little bit confused by who these bands are (think Glenn Beck and Muse). And then, of course, there are those like the guys sitting beside me (not that we sat), who came for “Shipping Up to Boston” alone, watched with amusement as I recreated my Warped Tour dancing days from the 90s, and left as soon as the Merphys played that song.

By the way, that’s not “Shipping Up to Boston” in case you’re wondering. It’s instead a song that I think fits with the general gist of this essay, I’m hoping…

I’m also hoping that there’s a lot of room for both of these attitudes – the type of optimism that drives the community garden movement, that fuels a local music and art scene, that causes Akron to have listening sessions, that drives organizations like the Womb and the HIVE. and yet allows us to think clearly and look critically at what we do. After all, no one wants to become a babbit, do they?