Are humans guilty when humans use robots for their own ends, and in the process sacrifice self-aware robots?
In the future world, robot manufacturers have secretly captured many human girls, copied their brain consciousness to hot selling robots (similar to inflatable girlfriends with consciousness), and one of the girls' parents is the company's employee, unable to rescue his daughter, he modified the hot-selling robot system in one breath, so that they committed suicide after torturing their masters.
These accidents soon attracted the attention of the 9th Class of Public Security, sent detectives Bart and Togusa to investigate the matter, after experiencing various setbacks such as gangster gunfights, brain invasions, system traps, etc., Bart and Togusa finally found the initial source of the murder, but who should be convicted of this bloody killing?
Produced in 2004, the Japanese science fiction film "Ghost in the Shell - Innocence" is famous in the international film world for its exploration and interpretation of the future human self-perception and inner contradictions, and the success of a work, especially the success of a team combat work such as a film, must have condensed the efforts of many parties.
First of all, the genius director Oshii Mori's macro control of the whole film is indispensable, and secondly, the serious theme wrapped in a wonderful science fiction shell is deafening, and finally, and most importantly, the film's high reference and application of traditional Chinese culture in three aspects, such as line interludes, story backgrounds, and movie themes, greatly sets off the story atmosphere and highly sublimates the theme of the film, thus providing a luxurious and stunning visual feast for the world audience.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >1, Lines and Ballads: From the philosophies of the Chinese sages</h1>
The film captures the time period in the future where self-aware robots are popular, and the human detective Bart and Togusa track down the beginning and end of the robot's injury, and it is very interesting that in the future world, they are full of ancient Chinese sages from thinking to talking.
For example, when Bart and Togusa went to meet the hacker Jin, who had a great relationship with the robot company, Togusa said that Jin was also a person who had experienced ups and downs, and Bart, who had long seen through the essence of Gold, responded in one sentence: "The country is easy to change, and the nature is difficult to move." ”
This sentence originally came from the thirty-fifth volume of the Ming Dynasty Feng Menglong's "Awakening to the Everlasting Word", and Barthes quoted here means to criticize the hacker Jin for completely transforming himself into a robot in pursuit of so-called power, and is an incurable greedy person.
Later, when King disguises himself as the wreckage of the electronic brain stolen from bart in order to avoid confronting them, Togusa is blinded by him, but Bart sees his ghost tricks at a glance and goes forward to overturn the wreckage in the tao: "Sleeping is not a corpse, it is not tolerated." These words are from Confucius's Analects, Volume 5, The Tenth Township Party, and are Confucius's instructions on the etiquette of sleeping and staying at home.
Sleepless: When sleeping, I don't lie on my back with my limbs open, like a dead person. Ju is not tolerant: Everyday at home, do not have to be respectful as if he is a guest, so Bart angrily rebuked gold, when sleeping, do not make like a dead person, this is neither in line with etiquette, nor does it escape all the things that should be responded to by him.
When Barthes suspects that King injected consciousness into the mechanical body in order to obtain eternal life, King says, "Unknown life, knowing death", which is from the Analects, Vol. VI, Advanced Xi: "JiLu asks about ghosts and gods." Zi Yue: "If you can't do anything to people, can you do things to ghosts?" "Dare to ask to die. "Unknown life, unknown death?" ”
Meaning: the things of the living have not yet been clarified, how to behave when they are alive has not yet been understood, where is the time to study the things of the dead?
This originated from Confucius, embodying the optimistic and positive spirit of Confucianism, and after more than 2400 years, it was applied to science fiction movies known for advanced prophecy, not only did it not violate it, but there was a wonderful sense of fit: people who only have a shell without a soul, only a soul without a shell, are they "alive", and with artificial intelligence of mind and body, can it be regarded as "alive"?
After the hacker Jin interrogated the black evidence of many robot companies here, When Togusa was still hesitant to kill the robot company's lair directly, Bart said domineeringly: "Zi Yue: "The boy beats the drum, and the attack can also be done." These words come from Confucius's Analects, Vol. VI, Advanced Xi, which means that when negotiations break down, it is time to show force.
These Confucius remarks, which even we are not familiar with, are simply heavy-handed in the movie, handy, and used just right, which plays a wonderful role in character shaping, and is even more clever in the promotion of the plot.
"Ghost in the Shell - Innocence" theme song puppet ballad, as an interlude, can be said to be a mutual achievement with the film, its weird and full of philosophical Zen machine song tunes, at the beginning of the release of the film has triggered a lot of audiovisual frenzy.
The puppet word comes from the ballad used in the sacrifice of Japanese Shinto witches, and the tune is made by modern people imitating the ancient singing voice, so it is in line with the aesthetics of modern people, the style of music is different and sad, tracing the source of Shuo, Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism into Japan, is the prerequisite for shintoism to be born.
From the 5th to the 8th century AD, Chinese Buddhism was introduced to Japan through Baekje on the Korean Peninsula and gradually expanded throughout the country, during the Edo period (1603-1867), Confucianism became independent from Buddhism and developed rapidly, and the Japanese scholar Yoshikawa only absorbed Confucian theories, especially the Zhu Xi Theory, and founded the Shinto school of Shen-Confucian harmony.
Therefore, the puppet ballads of the birth and Shinto ritual songs, the beautiful and poignant quite chu words, the wind of detachment, and full of Buddhist Zen machines, so that the audience in the audiovisual senses at the same time, germinated a deep thinking about the problem of life to stay.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >2, Environment and Background: The Mysterious X-Jun's Eastern Cyberpunk World</h1>
Hong Kong has always been an important city that constitutes a cyberpunk worldview, and what it has in common is multiculturalism, which is presented in the pioneer of cyberpunk cinema, Blade Runner, with the oriental cyberpunk streetscape.
When Oshii Mori led the team to Hong Kong to collect materials, the biggest feeling he got was "now", which directly led him to graft the scene of Hong Kong's Kowloon City Walled City and Yau Ma Tei into the background of the movie's story.
Japanese director Shuji Terayama has successively grafted the characteristics of Chinese style in the movie "Shanghai Alien Prostitution Hall" and Shunji Iwai in "Swallowtail Butterfly", the former mainly reflected in architecture, clothing, and art, and the latter is mainly presented from language and writing exchanges.
The "Chinese style" in "Ghost in the Shell" inherits the above grafting and fusion method at the same time, but also sets the voice of the characters in the second half of the film into Cantonese, and is very verbal, which is perfectly integrated with the atmosphere environment in which Bart was at that time into a mysterious and strange cyberpunk world with ancient Chinese style.
Oshii's generation of Japanese, who experienced various anti-American student movements in modern times, were anti-security, that is, opposed to the Japan-US Security Treaty (because it stipulated the status and privileges of U.S. troops stationed in Japan), and the opposition and protests of the Japanese people, especially students and intellectuals, reacted most fiercely.
The movement led to ideological confusion, and even the formation of the Red Army and the leadership of Mao Zedong Thought at one point, this red utopian romance has become another Chinese trend, Oshii Mori has always been keen on the student movement in high school, such an experience is not unrelated to his "Ghost in the Shell - Innocent" lines, ballads, background to add a large number of Chinese elements.
As an aside, hollywood's latest animated film "Ghost in the Shell" live-action version, also chose the filming location in Hong Kong, which is not only a tribute to Oshii Mori, the same line of cyberpunk films, but also a re-affirmation of the indispensable importance of Chinese style elements in the film.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >3, the inheritance and redevelopment of the Confucian spiritual core</h1>
In the setting of Ghost in the Shell – Innocence, China became the biggest winner of the war after the nuclear war, and the whole of South and Southeast Asia was incorporated into the sphere of influence.
In this context, japan's political forces calling for getting rid of the US-Japan Security Agreement and joining hands with China to divide Asia have become louder and louder, so the grassroots level in the shell worldview has formed a form of mutual integration of china, Japan and Southeast Asia.
The ubiquitous Chinese characters in the film, the shantytown modeled after the Kowloon City Walled city in the theatrical version, and the chinese style elements in the theatrical version of "Innocence" that integrate the beliefs of the three princes in the Fujian-Guangdong region of China, the Japanese Shinto sacrifice and the wonderful sacrifice of the Southeast Asian elephant totem are lined up one after another, and while sighing at the Chinese style elements of this mysterious Qijun, I am unconsciously infected by the positive attitude of life with oriental realism held by the people in the play.
Life is short, the more you think about the uncontrollable future, the more it will aggravate the pain of greed from human nature, and it is better to pay attention to the state of being still alive at present, manage life well, balance desires, and know that migrating greed and evil behavior to robots cannot eliminate the guilt of human beings themselves.
Whether it is Suzi, who finally jumps out of the cycle of birth and death, or Togusa, who returns to ordinary family life, or Bart, who insists on his own way of survival and lives with the Bagidoo hound named Gabriel, everyone in the movie story is actively looking for the meaning of survival, maybe they all have a shackle that they can't break free of, but they face it calmly in the face of life and death, as well as the various disasters in the process of human evolution.
"Life and death come and go, the puppet of the shed head, when the line is broken, the fall of Lei Lei." The four puppet ballad lyrics that appear repeatedly in "Innocence" should not only be related to the tragic encounter of the robot that is injected into human consciousness in the movie, but also the film borrows the mouth of hacker Jin: "Unknown life, knowing death." " is the best note.
One of the great things about Confucius Confucianism lies in the pragmatic spirit of actively joining the world, opposing the blind worship of ghosts and gods, and even more opposing spending time, energy, and money on worshipping ghosts and gods, advocating the humanistic spirit of people-oriented.
The success of "Ghost in the Shell - Innocence" is largely due to the appropriate reference and application of Chinese elements, advocating Sinology, and regaining the classics should be the most important thing of our generation, and promoting Chinese culture is also our unshirkable responsibility and obligation.