In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that occurred September 11, 2001, Oshii Mamoru’s film Mobile Police Patlabor: The Movie 2 (Kidō Keisatsu Patoreibā: The Movie 2) [1993] seems eerily prescient. In the film, a terrorist destroys part of the Yokohama Bay Bridge with a missile. Later, all planes in Japanese airspace are grounded as two seemingly Japanese fighter planes appear on radar. Subsequently, the Japanese army takes over Tokyo for its own safety, but such a rigid police state is ineffective against blimps that are flying around the city, carrying what is believed to be poisonous gas.

When discussing Patlabor 2 and the terrorist strike on Tokyo that occurs within the film, Carl Gustav Horn asked Oshii if people might take the film more seriously, in light of the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway, orchestrated by radical religious terrorists. Oshii responded, “Not quite. If people were really capable of realizing those dangers, I wouldn’t have to make my films,” going on to say that people are still not “waking up to reality” (Horn 139). Oshii’s films are a call to a seemingly sleeping populace to begin thinking critically, especially about the power structures of religion and technology.

This call to action is readily apparent in Oshii Mamoru’s four most recent science fiction films: Mobile Police Patlabor: The Movie (Kidō Keisatsu Patoreibā: The Movie) [1989], Mobile Police Patlabor: The Movie 2, Ghost in the Shell (Kōkaku Kidōtai) [1995], and Avalon (Avaron) [2001]. In this paper, I will demonstrate how the four science fiction films we are examining serve as sites of resistance against the idea of hegemony in its various forms. (Such resistance is not for its own sake or for the sake of any particular ideology, but rather is a biological imperative of survival – the homogeneity of control does not engender sufficient diversity within a population, rendering it susceptible to both biological and meme-like viruses.)

Oshii accomplishes the task of resistance in three ways. First, by utilizing the medium of animation, Oshii undermines the controlling influence of realistic cinema. I am using the term “animation” in a very loose sense here, as I am referring not only to the two Patlabor films and Ghost in the Shell, which are clearly animated, but to Avalon as well, which consists of both live action footage and realistically rendered computer animated environments.

Secondly, Oshii’s films depict a problematization of hierarchy and hegemony. All of Oshii’s science fiction films occur within an institutional setting: the Patlabor films focus on members of a police force that wear robotic exoskeletons called Labors, the protagonist of Ghost in the Shell is an elite government operative, and Avalon takes place within the structured confines of a sophisticated video game. Oshii shows, in a Foucauldian fashion, how each of these systems can serve to dominate the individual people within these groups.

Finally, through the incorporation of myths and mythology into his films, Oshii is creating brand new myths directly applicable to a modern postcapitalist society. Oshii is participating in mythopoeism, or “myth-making,” “that process by which new myths are created or old myths are extended to include new dimensions,” rather than mythopoeticism, which is “another term sometimes used to describe the metaphoric or symbolic use of mythic images in artistic literary compositions” (Batto 1992:12). Oshii is not merely referencing pre-existing myths as a stylistic device, but is also creating entirely new myths which enable us to better understand our societal interactions and our relationship to technology.

            Oshii’s treatment of religion and myth differs from previous animated and science fiction works. In his overview of Japanese science fiction, Robert Matthew states “Christianity per se does not figure prominently in Japanese science fiction” (1989: 138). When aspects of Christianity are portrayed, the images are often less than canonical, depicting the religion in terms of its “tangential trimmings” (138). Oshii, however, offers a much more sophisticated interpretation of Western religion and mythology. There are many discourses on Western mythology in Oshii’s body of work. The Bible figures prominently in three of the four movies being analyzed here, the exception being Avalon, in which Oshii breaks with his previous works and focuses not on Christian mythology, but Arthurian lore.

            Oshii’s films deal not so much with an acceptance or rejection of religion, but with how one’s personal negotiation of religious structures can serve as a liberating experience. All of the overt religious symbolism in Oshii’s films is controlled by the antagonists. By associating religious quotations and metaphors with the sources of conflict in his films, Oshii sets up an eventual confrontation with religion. However, the solution proposed is not a direct conflict with religion, nor is it a negation of religion. Instead, the main characters are able to effect positive change through their interaction with and manipulation of these mythological structures.

            The two Patlabor films are the most straightforward in their handling of the religious crises posed by the antagonists. Both films feature mysteries to be solved by the ensemble cast of policemen and policewomen, and in both cases, the motives behind the crimes are discovered to be inextricably intertwined with the perpetrators’ religious convictions. These two Patlabor films illustrate why one must be careful with religion – the antagonists of both films use their religion to justify their actions. (Unfortunately, this type of thinking has been brought to the forefront of our national discourse in the United States in recent months.)

Ghost in the Shell and Avalon, on the other hand, are more serious meditations on how myth and religion are still important in the world today. The main characters take a different approach to dealing with their foes; rather than being constructed in a “protagonist versus antagonist” structure, these two films concentrate on how each protagonist grows through her struggles. In Ghost in the Shell, the main character, Kusanagi, is a cyborg, who is searching for spiritual meaning. Her body is almost entirely artificial, yet an organic core of brain matter remains, and perhaps a soul. The main plot of the movie involves Kusanagi’s pursuit of the mysterious entity known as the Puppet Master, who communicates with her through religious metaphors. She discovers the Puppet Master is an artificial life form that evolved on the Net from a government program, and she later merges with it to create an entirely new form of life.

Ash, the main character of Avalon, is a professional video game player, immersed in a virtual reality battle game called Avalon, based on Arthurian legend. Through the course of the film, she tries to access a secret level of the game called Special A. One of her gaming partners tried to reach Special A many years ago, only to end up as a vegetable in the “real” world. Ash’s quest is to bring him back, to reunite his consciousness with his body. Through her navigation of the Arthurian structures of the game, Ash is finally able to break free from the dark game world in which she had been living and reach a kind of epiphany.

            There is a parallel in Oshii’s films between the level of mythic complexity and the level of technology being critiqued. As Oshii’s films progress, the structures of power and control become more invasive, beginning with the exterior of the body, moving to the interior of the body, culminating in the mind. In the two Patlabor films, advanced technology is highlighted by the use of the Labors. This technology is purely exterior to the human subject – as is the case in a number of works of Japanese science fiction, the Labor is worn like a giant suit of armor, amplifying and supplementing the abilities of the user. In Ghost in the Shell, technology is brought to the interior of the person – Kusanagi is a cyborg, her body consisting mainly of robotic parts, but in the end, Kusanagi’s body is rendered irrelevant after she merges with the Puppet Master, becoming one with the Net. Avalon takes the merging of technology and the body one step further. Exterior signs of technology are greatly reduced, with much of the outside world in ruins. However, the highly sophisticated computer game of Avalon takes place in the minds of the participants. Thus, as Oshii narrows his focus with each film, the technology referenced becomes more invasive.

            One of Oshii’s main themes is the nature of reality and dreams. He has explored these issues in some of his earlier works, such as Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer, in which a dream is indistinguishable from reality. In Ghost in the Shell, Kusanagi questions whether or not she, as a cyborg, possesses a “ghost,” an amorphous thing never precisely defined in the film, but which can be likened to the Christian concept of the soul. Kusanagi wonders if she is a “real” entity if she does not possess a ghost – she feels that it is a prerequisite of being alive. Kusanagi’s questions are never truly answered in the course of the film, but in merging with the Puppet Master, they create a new form of cybernetic life, lending credence to the idea that she possesses some thing like a soul. At the end of Avalon, Ash finally achieves the mythical level of Special A, which looks very much like a vibrant, modern European city, as opposed to the sepia-toned noir of the film up to that point. Ash is then troubled by the question of which is reality – is it the current city in which she finds herself, or her previous existence playing games in the wasteland?

            Oshii is not afraid to rewrite myths and religion for his own uses – in fact, he seems to be saying, that is what we should be doing with our mythologies. As Oshii demonstrated in the Patlabor films, myth can be very dangerous if taken literally or at face value. As humans, we must realize that we can shape myths as well, as Oshii shows through the characters of Kusanagi and Ash in Ghost in the Shell and Avalon. Myth is important, not for any overriding dogmatic purpose, but as a way to make sense of and bring meaning to our daily lives. The title of this paper, “Hacking Your Own Ghost,” sums up what Oshii is trying to express through his films: by seizing the concepts of technology and mythology, we gain the power to free ourselves from systems of control, even the control of technology and mythology themselves.

 

WORKS CITED

Batto, Bernard F. (1992) Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition. Westminster/John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky.

Horn, Carl Gustav (1997). “Interview with Mamoru Oshii.” In Ledoux, Trish (ed.), Anime Interviews: The First Five Years of Animerica Anime & Manga Monthly (1992-1997). San Francisco: Cadence Books, 1997. Pp. 134-141.

Matthew, Robert (1989). Japanese Science Fiction: A View of a Changing Society. Routledge: London and New York.

 

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