This is the second of my reflections on the events in Ambiguously Human. The first, on Wall-E, is here.
Ghost in the Shell was a perfect movie for my film series because it deals very directly with the question I’m interested in. Its characters have bodies that range from almost entirely biological to almost entirely mechanical, and Motoko, one of these mostly-mechanical people, repeatedly questions her own humanity. Additionally, it has another character, the Puppet Master, who initially has no body and a completely digital mind. Ghost in the Shell provides a nice array of biological, mechanical, and digital aspects of both the body and mind to examine what each particular combination might mean for the status of that being as human or thing.
Togusa, one of the members of Motoko’s team, is almost entirely human. We’re told that his intelligence-enhancing technology is the only non-biological component of his body. He’s certainly regarded as human in the film, and is mostly interesting as a contrast to two examples of extreme technological integration.
