Dialogues with Hollywood: The Matrix

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Dialogues with HollywoodThe Matrix Ghost in
the Shell
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aesthetic cross-pollination(?)

• Exploring the anime aesthetic
• Origins
• Buddhist/Zen scroll makers
• Ukiyo-e woodblock printing
• Manga and Osama Tezuka
• (Astro Boy 1963)
• Implications
• Aesthetic borders and national transgressions

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anime style

• Ghost in the Shell

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anime style

• Akira (1988)

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anime style

• Akira (1988)

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aesthetic cross-pollination(?)

• The Matrix (1999)
• points of aesthetic intersection
• Ghost in the shell (1995)
  

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aesthetic cross-pollination(?)

• Bullet time the quiet before the anime-ted
  storm.

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thematic dialogues

• Ghost in the Shell
• Can one possess a soul in an increasingly
  technological age?

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thematic dialogues

• status of the body in Ghost in the Shell
• ningyo
  (puppet/doll)

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thematic dialogues

• status of the body in The Matrix
• Corruption of the
• body by
• technology.
• Humans become
• coppertops

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thematic dialogues

• Kusanagi seeks a path out of the self to regain
  her interiority
• Neo seeks a path back to the private self to
  regain his interiority the return to the body as
  the last resort against advancing technology.
• Reclaiming the body as a site of humanity as
  opposed to fleeing it

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a constellation of post-

• is the cyborg a creature in a post-gender
  world?
• Ambiguous sexual identity

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a constellation of post-

• Does Kusanagi become a truly post-gender entity
• Kusanagi and the puppet master marriage or
  merging?
• If the puppet master is truly genderless why does
  he inhabit a female body and speak with a male
  voice? Boundary blurring.

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a constellation of post-

• Neo post-gender/ethnic/national?
• Neo and
  Trinity as doubles.
• Androgyny
• of the futuristic

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a constellation of post-

• Keanu Reeves as Neo
• Chinese, Caucasian Hawaiian genetic heritage
  (post-ethnic/national)
• Reeves status as a passive object occupies
  cameras gaze (traditionally feminine role)

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a constellation of post-

• Kusanagi is hardly genderless but is typed by her
  role as assassin.
• She, like Neo, is at once
• vulnerable and powerful
• object and subject

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falling into a new mode of existence

• Kusanagi
• a series of dazzling sequences that track
  Kusanagis body and mind through a series of
  falls. (Napier)
• fall 1 the body (presence absence)
• fall 2 diving into the water (through a glass
  darkly)
• fall 3 dive into the mind of the puppet master
  (questioning body identity)

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falling into a new mode of existence

• Neo
• Preconscious waking in the Matrix and then in
  his pod in the desert of the real. This
  heralds
• Conscious his fall from the building as Morpheus
  attempts to free his mind
• Superconscious the apparent fall in to death
  Neo must shed his old self so that he can see in
  a new way

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The new

• The Matrix an allegory about life as we lived it
  around 1999?
• Neo is the new man who mediates the arrival of
  the future into the present. Discuss
• Fusion of humanity and technology as one of
  ambiguous value in Hollywood.
• The protagonists dehumanisation by the alienating
  powers of technology (does this change in The
  Matrix?
• Anime also underlines the ambivalence inherent to
  our relationship with technology is this true,
  however, in Ghost in the Shell?

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So where do I go from here?

• Consider the last words spoken by both Kusanagi
  and Neo.. Where are we going from here?
• What lies beyond the threshold?