3 ms·

Yeah but the dialog sure is a bit bookish and dry, talking a lot about weird theory.

Der_Einzige 3y ago
I mean it's cool and all that they throw Deleuze and Guattari references at you (especially in stand alone complex), but unfortunately we have wised up to how much that stuff was fashionable nonsense since then...
- aspenmayer 3y ago
  I think the reason that it's so philosophical, and the reason that it mentions Deleuze and Guattari specifically, is due to their emphasis on "the virtual," and in the context of Ghost in the Shell, this "virtual" is explored conceptually, especially as it relates to systems of control, such as cybernetics. Edit: > Like Kant, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the subject. He, therefore, concludes that pure difference is non-spatiotemporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "the virtual". (The coinage refers to Proust's definition of what is constant in both the past and the present: "real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.") While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble Plato's forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they [the conditions] form is identical to its object." A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is therefore not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze > Cybernetics: a reactionary pseudoscience that appeared in the U.S.A. after World War II and also spread through other capitalist countries. Cybernetics clearly reflects one of the basic features of the bourgeois worldview—its inhumanity, striving to transform workers into an extension of the machine, into a tool of production, and an instrument of war. At the same time, for cybernetics an imperialistic utopia is characteristic—replacing living, thinking man, fighting for his interests, by a machine, both in industry and in war. The instigators of a new world war use cybernetics in their dirty, practical affairs.[1][2] [1] "Cybernetics" in the Short Philosophical Dictionary, 1954 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio...
- johnchristopher 3y ago
  Deleuze falling out of fashion doesn't mean it's non-sense.
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/30/say-stupid-shit/ https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/30/say-stupid-sh... By Félix Guattari, describing the process of writing Anti-Oedipus "You can explain everything away. I explain myself away. But to whom? You know … The question of the other. The other and time. I’m home kind of fucking around. Listening to my own words. Redundancy. Peepee poopoo. Things are so fucking weird! […] Have to be accountable. Yield to arguments. What I feel like is just fucking around. Publish this diary for example. Say stupid shit. Barf out the fucking-around-o-maniacal schizo flow. Barter whatever for whoever wants to read it. Now that I’m turning into a salable name I can find an editor for sure […] Work the feed-back; write right into the real. But not just the professional readers’ real, “Quinzaine polemical” style. The close, hostile real. People around. Fuck shit up. The stakes greater than the oeuvre or they don’t attain it […]" It's 100% fashionable nonsense.
    - johnchristopher 3y ago
      Now do that with Deleuze.
      - Der_Einzige 3y ago
        [flagged]
        johnchristopher 3y ago
        [flagged]
caycep 3y ago
I always felt like it had a bit too much "otaku" type of flavor to the writing...not that I dislike the movie, but I would agree, it doesn't really flow as well as it should. The strengths are the visuals and the conceptual elements, I think.
dTal 3y ago
I think the voice acting in the English dub is partially to blame, as well some inexplicably clunky script changes. I had a look at a translation of the original script and imagined it being performed in a peppier way than we hear and it doesn't seem nearly so dull and longwinded. The Matrix had a bunch of philosophical "weird theory" dialogue too but it managed to sell it well, at least in the first film. I think there's room for a new and improved dub. The Major in particular stands out as a bad performance. She honestly sounds like they got the TikTok AI voice to read the script. Maybe that affect-less voice was a deliberate choice to underscore her diminished humanity, but in any case I don't think it works well. It's especially jarring during her highly reflective and emotionally charged monologue on the boat. She's meant to be mentally human, not HAL 9000. It impinges directly on the themes of the film.

I mean it's cool and all that they throw Deleuze and Guattari references at you (especially in stand alone complex), but unfortunately we have wised up to how much that stuff was fashionable nonsense since then...

aspenmayer 3y ago
I think the reason that it's so philosophical, and the reason that it mentions Deleuze and Guattari specifically, is due to their emphasis on "the virtual," and in the context of Ghost in the Shell, this "virtual" is explored conceptually, especially as it relates to systems of control, such as cybernetics. Edit: > Like Kant, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the subject. He, therefore, concludes that pure difference is non-spatiotemporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "the virtual". (The coinage refers to Proust's definition of what is constant in both the past and the present: "real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.") While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble Plato's forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they [the conditions] form is identical to its object." A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is therefore not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze > Cybernetics: a reactionary pseudoscience that appeared in the U.S.A. after World War II and also spread through other capitalist countries. Cybernetics clearly reflects one of the basic features of the bourgeois worldview—its inhumanity, striving to transform workers into an extension of the machine, into a tool of production, and an instrument of war. At the same time, for cybernetics an imperialistic utopia is characteristic—replacing living, thinking man, fighting for his interests, by a machine, both in industry and in war. The instigators of a new world war use cybernetics in their dirty, practical affairs.[1][2] [1] "Cybernetics" in the Short Philosophical Dictionary, 1954 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio...
johnchristopher 3y ago
Deleuze falling out of fashion doesn't mean it's non-sense.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/30/say-stupid-shit/ https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/30/say-stupid-sh... By Félix Guattari, describing the process of writing Anti-Oedipus "You can explain everything away. I explain myself away. But to whom? You know … The question of the other. The other and time. I’m home kind of fucking around. Listening to my own words. Redundancy. Peepee poopoo. Things are so fucking weird! […] Have to be accountable. Yield to arguments. What I feel like is just fucking around. Publish this diary for example. Say stupid shit. Barf out the fucking-around-o-maniacal schizo flow. Barter whatever for whoever wants to read it. Now that I’m turning into a salable name I can find an editor for sure […] Work the feed-back; write right into the real. But not just the professional readers’ real, “Quinzaine polemical” style. The close, hostile real. People around. Fuck shit up. The stakes greater than the oeuvre or they don’t attain it […]" It's 100% fashionable nonsense.
  - johnchristopher 3y ago
    Now do that with Deleuze.
    - Der_Einzige 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - johnchristopher 3y ago
        [flagged]

caycep 3y ago

I always felt like it had a bit too much "otaku" type of flavor to the writing...not that I dislike the movie, but I would agree, it doesn't really flow as well as it should. The strengths are the visuals and the conceptual elements, I think.

dTal 3y ago

I think the voice acting in the English dub is partially to blame, as well some inexplicably clunky script changes. I had a look at a translation of the original script and imagined it being performed in a peppier way than we hear and it doesn't seem nearly so dull and longwinded. The Matrix had a bunch of philosophical "weird theory" dialogue too but it managed to sell it well, at least in the first film. I think there's room for a new and improved dub. The Major in particular stands out as a bad performance. She honestly sounds like they got the TikTok AI voice to read the script. Maybe that affect-less voice was a deliberate choice to underscore her diminished humanity, but in any case I don't think it works well. It's especially jarring during her highly reflective and emotionally charged monologue on the boat. She's meant to be mentally human, not HAL 9000. It impinges directly on the themes of the film.