Among the windings of the violins...
URGH...my aching head. Didn't get too much sleep the night before. Haven't been getting enough sleep. My processor's not working properly. A dull hurt, reverberating around my cranium...like a dull tom-tom, hammering, crashing through my head from inside-out.
Was out last night with some of the ladies to catch Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence at Shaw Towers. FIRST CLASS, TOP NOTCH film!! If you don't like Anime, or you don't like philosophical movies...this movie may just change your mind! Being unlike a usual dumbed-down Hollywood creation, the anime smacks of literary and philosophical discussions and allusions. My favourite had to be the director's rendition of Descartes' Dream Analogy - where the case is argued whether one is really living, or merely dreaming of his own existence. The protagonists, a Cyborg cop and his human partner, seem to be having the recurring experience of approaching a huge bizarre mansion, complete with a giant musical box. As the approach Kim, the owner of the mansion (a cyborg), their own images are reflected on his face. He first appears as himself - a dilapidated, disease-ridden being on the brink of destruction. After 'dying', he appears again with the human cop's face (albeit with a mechanical mouth), and in the third reincarnation, with the Cyborg's image. Though later, it was explained that there had been a virus hacking into their minds which caused them to see the bizarre replicant images of themselves, I found the significance of their constant 'waking' and dreaming of the same scene striking. This especially so, since they kept seeing themselves - a sort of Lacan-ian portrayal of the infant self, unborn and unknowing, till the infant sees its own likeness of image in the mirror?
Also, the recurrent motif of the eyes and their significance. Realised all the cyborgs in the movie - no matter good or bad, all had no eyes/unfeeling eyes. Like some philosopher (Descarte, or Plato?) said, "eyes are the windows to the soul", the reason for having this shown in the movie ties in with the question: whether it is greater to be alive and feeling, or to be dead and emotionless - given that both entail a corporeal physical experience necessary for change?
Yet, the over-arching question which seems to be posed to the audience throughout the film, "why do humans have an obsession of recreation themselves?" is a haunting reflection of our own lives. From our need to own pets which seemingly empathise with our moods, to the creation of dolls to satisfy the need for mother-hood or even sexual pleasure; the parallel that the director drew between the protagonist's pet-dog and the dolls smacked of introspective philosophy.
The director of the film Mamoru Oshii says "As humans have become more 'mind-oriented' and the environment has become more urban, they have forgotten the idea of the human body. As far as they're concerned, the human body does not exist anymore. The reason that people of today choose to have dogs is that they're looking for a substitute for the human body". Perhaps we'll never know if we really are mindless dolls ourselves, being created in mass factories for masters to use us? Or perhaps, we may be dogs - living, yet not totally living our own will - serving merely as mirrors of our infant masters as they impose their image onto ourselves.
Think.
Was out last night with some of the ladies to catch Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence at Shaw Towers. FIRST CLASS, TOP NOTCH film!! If you don't like Anime, or you don't like philosophical movies...this movie may just change your mind! Being unlike a usual dumbed-down Hollywood creation, the anime smacks of literary and philosophical discussions and allusions. My favourite had to be the director's rendition of Descartes' Dream Analogy - where the case is argued whether one is really living, or merely dreaming of his own existence. The protagonists, a Cyborg cop and his human partner, seem to be having the recurring experience of approaching a huge bizarre mansion, complete with a giant musical box. As the approach Kim, the owner of the mansion (a cyborg), their own images are reflected on his face. He first appears as himself - a dilapidated, disease-ridden being on the brink of destruction. After 'dying', he appears again with the human cop's face (albeit with a mechanical mouth), and in the third reincarnation, with the Cyborg's image. Though later, it was explained that there had been a virus hacking into their minds which caused them to see the bizarre replicant images of themselves, I found the significance of their constant 'waking' and dreaming of the same scene striking. This especially so, since they kept seeing themselves - a sort of Lacan-ian portrayal of the infant self, unborn and unknowing, till the infant sees its own likeness of image in the mirror?
Also, the recurrent motif of the eyes and their significance. Realised all the cyborgs in the movie - no matter good or bad, all had no eyes/unfeeling eyes. Like some philosopher (Descarte, or Plato?) said, "eyes are the windows to the soul", the reason for having this shown in the movie ties in with the question: whether it is greater to be alive and feeling, or to be dead and emotionless - given that both entail a corporeal physical experience necessary for change?
Yet, the over-arching question which seems to be posed to the audience throughout the film, "why do humans have an obsession of recreation themselves?" is a haunting reflection of our own lives. From our need to own pets which seemingly empathise with our moods, to the creation of dolls to satisfy the need for mother-hood or even sexual pleasure; the parallel that the director drew between the protagonist's pet-dog and the dolls smacked of introspective philosophy.
The director of the film Mamoru Oshii says "As humans have become more 'mind-oriented' and the environment has become more urban, they have forgotten the idea of the human body. As far as they're concerned, the human body does not exist anymore. The reason that people of today choose to have dogs is that they're looking for a substitute for the human body". Perhaps we'll never know if we really are mindless dolls ourselves, being created in mass factories for masters to use us? Or perhaps, we may be dogs - living, yet not totally living our own will - serving merely as mirrors of our infant masters as they impose their image onto ourselves.
Think.
posted by Nian Long at 5/01/2005 09:37:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home