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So
in the original 1995 anime, you do indeed see Major performing a lot
of her action whilst el bollocko with many of these scenes having
been recreated by the now sadly clothed Johansson. In the original,
the reason that she's naked is because she's essentially a robot with
a human brain and so who really gives a shit about the body? In a
world in which you can have any aspect of your physical being
enhanced, then why would you distinguish it as being different to
clothes, and why would you feel any shame in hiding it away for the
sake of it? On the surface, you might assume that Major is naked
because sometimes Japanese animation is just pervy and weird, and in
the case of those cartoons that involve squids and characters that
look uncomfortably young, I'd say that was probably true. However in
the original Ghost In The Shell, Major
doesn't expose herself with the regularity of an old man at the gym
for titillation, but to emphasise the theme of the movie i.e. the
distinction between the body, the mind, and what exactly it is that
makes us human. Of course there are plenty of ways in which you can
highlight an issue like that in which nudity isn't required but at
the end of the day, these are the same animators that probably make
their money from the squid porn and so perhaps muscle memory just
kicked in when they started doodling.
However
the lack of nudity in this remake of Ghost In The Shell
doesn't in any way add to the
theme of the movie and it is in no way done for the sake of taste.
Johansson keeps her clothes on because the studio has a shit tonne
of money invested into this movie and so they want to keep its age
rating down in order to get more people through the door and paying
to see it. If we lived in a world in which age-ratings didn't exist
then they'd definitely have Johansson jumping guff first through a
window to get more people buying tickets. This is therefore a problem
that runs through the rest of the movie in that the original film was
brimming with ideas, philosophical musings, and existential angst.
The live-action remake recreates scenes almost identically from the
original in an attempt to appease the fans, however it then dumbs down
all of the ideas that made the original so special in order to have
it appeal to a wider audience. Essentially the film is trying to have
its cake and eat it, whilst in reality it only has something that
looks like a cake and now it has the shits.
For
example, in the original we have a scene in which Major contemplates
who she is by sitting quietly and staring into space. The audience is
required to empathise and read the scene in order to understand
what's happening and what Major is thinking. In this remake we have a
moment which is visually identical and yet here we have an extra
character explaining everything to her and therefore us instead. In
the way that we have subtitles for the hard of hearing, this movie
spells almost everything out for those in the audience that are hard
of fucking thinking. Therefore my basic argument as to why we should
have seen Johansson naked is not because I want to see her tits..
that's just a coincidence. But actually by hiding Johansson's boobs
from the public, this film is essentially pandering to the assumption
that society is as thick as two short planks that have been welded
together by pig shit. If more films found ways of expressing deep
philosophical discussions by showing Johansson's tits would we now be
living in a world with President Trump, I wonder? I don't know for
sure. But even if we did at least it would be a world in which we'd
also seen Johansson's tits a bit more often too.
As
for the white-washing however, the director of the original film has
gone on record to state that the character of Major doesn't have to
be Japanese, however we should of course always trust the tale rather
than the teller. Let's not forget that George Lucas also thought it'd
be okay to have the Galactic Empire brought to its knees by a gang of
teddy bears that look as though their mothers were on an experimental
drug throughout pregnancy. The issue with this live-action Ghost
In The Shell wasn't exactly
helped either when it was revealed that the studio had paid a
special effects team to perform some tests in which they changed
Johansson's race in what can only be considered the digital
equivalent of 'blacking up'. I have no idea what this process would
have involved but I'm imagining that sequence in which Bond is made to
look Chinese in You Only Live Twice in
which a complicated operation led to the reveal of a yellow painted
Sean Connery with his eyes pinned back.
Regardless,
I personally don't think that Johansson being white is the real
problem with the character. In fact, there's even a bit of back story
that is pivotal to the plot in which the race issue is touched upon.
The problem is that in the original anime, that character is
constantly looking towards the future, whereas here the character is
constantly looking towards the past. I appreciate that you're going
to get a larger budget for your sci-fi film if you cast Johansson
over a lesser known Japanese actress, I therefore admire the way in
which the story has tried to hide the blatant racism of Hollywood by
writing the character's race into the story. However a character that
is focused more on an upcoming ascent is a lot more interesting than
another fucking amnesiac. Wolverine couldn't remember who he was,
Jason Bourne couldn't remember who he was, the Winter Soldier
couldn't remember who he was. After his daily second bottle of wine,
my own Dad hasn't got a clue who he fucking is either. So essentially
the film probably has cast Johansson in an example of white-washing,
and so in an attempt to hide and justify this, it has altered what
made the original character so interesting by resorting to cliché.
It's also another example of how what was originally a deep and
interesting story has been moulded for public consumption.
Essentially the studio has been given the recipe for a gourmet steak
and somehow they've managed to turn it into whatever the fuck piece
of mutant cow it is that McDonalds has conned the world into eating.
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