Ghost in the Shell: Gender Subversion Subverted

When imagining the potential subversion of gender roles possible with the advent of certain technologies, the question might come to mind how existing technologies have presently supplemented the desire to extinguish or reconstruct the ever-present and dominating nature of gender roles. Cybernetics is presented in the anime Ghost in the Shell as one of the technologies capable of subverting our understanding of gender identity and the present reality of gender roles. In this endeavor, Ghost in the Shell makes an admirable attempt to do so. In understanding why Ghost in the shell fails at this, it is important to examine the tools employed in its narrative and the current state of technology in deconstructing gender roles. Ghost in the Shell fails to convey a message of positive progressive change for the same reason new emerging technologies have failed to create that change. The failure to escape gender roles can be seen in the human desire to work within gender specific contexts. While it may seem like this proposition infers gender can not be discussed, (It does not.) this proposition instead proposes finding a route of ideological exodus within gendered contexts. This ideological exodus is often where attempts at subverting and reconstructing gender roles often fail. Ghost in the Shell's main blunder in doing this does not emerge in it's hyper idealized representations of the masculine and feminine forms; as well, not even in its over employed representation of nudity of the feminine form. Ghost in the Shell and present technology fail to subvert what are our base preexisting notions and biological perceptions of Gender.

At its best, Ghost in the Shell works to change gender standards, but fails to change gender concepts. It attacks the most base notions of the female gender as vulnerable by use of the main protagonist and the supporting characters. The Major is represented as an organic lifeform encapsulated in a cybernetic body. The Major's gender is identified as female only through the external nature of the cybernetic body her (I will assume for the purposes of this paper.) mind inhabits. Still, there are no actual discussions of the Major's initial biological gender throughout the film; she could have been biologically male before cybernetic augmentation. If this is the case, however, it does not negate my argument. The film firmly establishes the major's gender role as female specific during her merger with The Puppet Master. (A character whose gender is also semi-ambiguous.) Even though the process undergone is a merger of identities to form a new and independent mind, the Major is described as the “bearer” of The Puppet Master's child within the film. This does a great deal to reverse the films attempts to deconstruct gender roles. If it were truly a genderless formation of life, it would not be refereed to in gendered terms.

The film failed to achieve the ideological exodus required to reconstruct the nature of gender roles. The lines dividing gender were obfuscated through the uses of the film's narrative, but not redefined. This is not entirely the film's fault. To subvert or deconstruct the nature of gender, you have to escape fundamental biological desires and current perceptual understandings of what it means to be human [that have been] taught to us since birth. Like the film, technology often supplies us with a route to subvert gender roles, but technology is often only used to simply obscure and at the same time reinforce existing gender roles.

And now my head hurts.