transhumanism in cyberpunk dystopia
or, the essay that failed me my first film and screen studies assignment
(To preface, this is not an essay about film form and style. My professors said so very, very clearly. Instead, this is what I thought about two films and their portrayal of feminism, bodily autonomy, and transhumanism. Without further ado, here is the essay that failed me a unit.)
The concept of transhumanism and bodies as a capitalist target for exploitation and development are heavy themes in the dystopian films Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Blade Runner 49 (2017), exploring the concept of humanity and technology with the concept of androids and human-appearing robots. Neither of these films are widely accepted as feminist media, yet they heavily focus on the concept of the female body and anatomy, especially when it has been modified or isn’t fully ‘human’. In this essay, I will explore the relationship that dystopian film has with capitalism and female bodily autonomy.
The sub-genre of dystopian films that both Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner 2049 fall into is defined as cyberpunk, which emphasizes the looming threat of capitalism and its high-technology dependence causing the deconstruction of society. Bruce Sterling’s preface to William Gibson’s cyberpunk short story Burning Chrome (1982) defines it as “high-tech, low-life”, which Blade Runner 2049 highlights in its set design. Blade Runner 2049 also takes from the American sentiments towards the East during the 1980s in terms of development and competition, engaging orientalism in estimates that the East would surpass the West in technological but not social advancement; as seen in the East-Asian influences in the text and language in set and sound design.
Blade Runner 2049’s grungy, neon-sign-lit streets use fog and steam to emphasize the dust and dirt of the planet on which K (Ryan Gosling) lives, whilst using the scale of the advertisements to highlight the capitalist influence on the environment of the city.
He is shot small-scale against towering blocks of uniform buildings, often silhouetted against the saturated neon, rendering him unimportant - he is minuscule, and the capitalist overtones are blasted at the viewers with no intention of hiding the invasion of it into the story. K is lonely, neither fully machine nor human, and his only companion is his product girlfriend. Joi (Ana de Armas) is a projection of a woman bought by K in order to combat his loneliness.
Joi’s first appearance is in K’s sparsely decorated flat. A tracking shot follows a projector attached to the ceiling, panning down to a glitchy figure appearing to walk from the kitchen. Joi appears, twitching into focus, dressed in a 1950s dress with a pastel pink apron fastened to a blue, floral skirt. She is the only color in the apartment, even if she isn’t saturated, and immediately indicated to be the light of K’s dismal life. The CGI used to make Joi transparent when coming into contact with something emphasizes this ideal feminine companion peddled by the fictional Wallace company, whose technology controls the world - she isn’t physically real. She has no physical strength, and only a voyeuristic presence, as she is something only to be watched. Shown in design choices that American audiences would recognize as patriarchal - the 1950s housewife aesthetic - she is decorative and passive in the environment. The limitations placed on her body are used as incentives for the capitalist company manufacturing her to sell the upgrade to make her just free enough to warrant another upgrade. Her body is a product, shown through the colorful design and CGI used with the other advertisements in the world of film.
John Berger’s Ways of Seeing defines the relationship between men and women within the male gaze as a simple reaction: “men act, women appear.” Joi’s character reduces women in the dystopian, capitalist future as objects to purchase - not just as projections, but as prostitutes and hired assistance. Throughout the film, there is not a single woman who does not have a relationship to one of the male characters already depicted in the story. This lack of agency within the dystopian future implies women and their bodies become dependent on the market and on the patriarchal possession that a man may have of them. This warning doesn’t come from Villaneueve himself, but instead the genre that his film is emulating - cyberpunk dystopia rarely focuses on women through a feminist lens.
Ghost in the Shell works through the male gaze and capitalist influence over women’s bodily autonomy in a different way. The production design of his main female character Makoto Kusanagi emulates a different sort of portrayal of women than the common animated female character nationally. Traditionally, women in Japanese anime are drawn as caricatures in dominant media - Shinichiro Watanabe’s 1998 neo-noir television series Cowboy Bebop’s Faye Valentine is busty, slender, and stylistically drawn with no sense of realism in physics or anatomy - yet Makoto Kusanagi is more realistically displayed through the art style of Ghost in the Shell. This does not mean she is not sexualized, but it does give room for contention in regard to what the tone of her voyeur is depending on the cinematography.
The opening credits scene, after we watch an almost-naked Makoto jump into a green-hued tunnel of a city, reminiscient of a motherboard, and melt into the background, invisible, with only her eyes staring directly at the camera in a medium close-up, the sound track changes from ambient buzzing to the thumping of a taiko drum. The music is traditional in tone, using eery, high-pitched, Bulgarian folk-inspired vocals that blend together with synthesizers to make a haunting blend of traditional ceremony and new technology. Paired with the short shots of a robotic body coming together - the nose bridge and eyelids swinging on a hinge to rest on the top of a face, wires flowing into muscles like veins - this scene comes across as a perverted making of a human body, or an elevated one. Unsure of which came first, the opening question that Oshii proposes to his audience with blending precise, anatomical muscles and body parts with technological imitations of a body, is whether or not we are looking at a robot or a person.
This theme is present throughout the film, questioning Makoto’s humanity as it battles with the Ship of Theseus style displacement of her physical body and its technological replacements. But the capitalist theme of ownership and control is still present - Makoto is property of the government, therefore they choose how her body looks. Despite being the “ghost” inside of her new “machine,” her outward appearance is still viewed as that of a woman. Further on in her creation, we watch as the camera slowly pans over her naked body in an extreme close-up, emphasizing the same male gaze applied to Joi that the capitalist overseers of her creation and manufacturing onto her physical body. As they act - controlling the machine in which she is floating, like an embryo - she appears.
Yet, how does Ghost in the Shell’s design and cinematography present a stronger female character in terms of substance, both physical and mental? Makoto is given philosophical and psychological development - agency in how she can think, move, and choose to go on living as a “ghost” without a physical body, without male voyeurism, shown in the use of camera angles in a scene where she displays immense physical strength. The camera looks up at her near-naked form from below, using scale to show her dominance and proficiency in using her body. This clear difference from the leery cinematography from the opening credits scene shows how the difference in narrative changes when her body is being used by herself, as opposed to controlled by the capitalist government building her.
Using a matrixial lens against Oshii’s narrative, we can see Makoto’s choice as one of transcending the male gaze to look at the world with a new sort of wonder not tied to her appearance and physical form. The film presents a dystopian future where female bodies are a commodity controlled and distributed by the government and the controlling capitalist companies behind it, but it also presents the concept of transhumanism and moving above patriarchal control to assume a higher power above them.
To compare the messages wrought by both films, Ghost in the Shell gives a philosophical ideal in the nature of bodily autonomy through rebellion - Makoto defers from her orders to join the antagonist, with whom she sheds her human form to become more than a vessel and a product. Her physical body is torn apart in a ceremoniously violent fashion, using slow-motion and hyper-focused detail to give her physical body - or what was left of it - a deserving end fitting for her physical strength and a new beginning for her “ghost.”
Blade Runner 2049 shows a much more bleak outcome. There is no escape or transcendence for female characters. Rachel, the mother of the human-Replicant hybrid, is only depicted for two minutes onscreen, and used as a pawn - Deckard is offered a literal replacement if he chooses to keep the secret of their child for the government. Joi is destroyed without even leaving a corpse behind. Blade Runner 2049 offers women no escape, no physical form, and no trace left behind.