As I have noted previously, Ghost in the Shell is my favourite anime and gradually becoming my favourite pop-culture text of all time.
The a third film has just been broadcast on Japanese television: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Solid State Society.
The whole thing is available on youtube if you look, although only torrents of the file can be subtitled (with another torrent). I am not sure if I should try to explain any of the plot or not. What I do want to mention is that it provides the clearest indication of what a ‘stand alone complex’ actually is. Let me just say that the term ‘rhizome’ is used about a dozen times in short succession (yes, RHIZOMES! as in Deleuze and Guattari’s notion) along with ‘network’ and ‘collective consciousness’. Someone needs to send Lazzarato and any other of the neo-Tardeans a copy.
From the subtitles:
This is the full scope of the rhizome formed by the collective consciousness of those elderly invalids in the network.
There is no concept of a center in a rhizome, …
… therefore the hub has no fixed position within the rhizome, or rather, the rhizome itself is constantly in flux.
Why can’t we have Deleuzian pop-culture on Australian television?
Speaking of philosophy and anime, are you familiar with the Errgo Proxy series at all? The themes that come up aren’t as explicit as the one you highlighted, but there’s plenty of post-structuralist name-dropping going on. Literary references aside, the visual style of the Errgo Proxy series is unlike any anime I have seen. Having said that, I am not a big follower of anime, but this series is quite striking and has been quite compelling. I think it’s still airing atm, so it’s not on DVD.. but you can get sub’d versions on most p2p nets. There’s sometimes little ‘footnote’ screens at the end explaining the philosophical concepts from each one, which seems a bit like a dodgy cheat sheet! “postmodernism for dummies” or something. Anyway, once again, i’m posting about phd distractions…
adam, thanks for the heads up. This looks very interesting. A robot named Derrida! lol The style reminds me of Aeon Flux a little bit, especially the movement of characters. It certainly is a different style of anime than the saturated colours of GITS.
On the english website (which apparently launches in a day and a half) they say they are going to stream the entire first episode for free. They didn’t give a date for this tho, and may not happen until the dubbed DVDs are released.
Holy crapper, that’s what the new GITS is about? I tried to watch the original series but lost interest with the whole “what is human” St. Augustine thing. Yeah yeah, when does something explode? Possibly I was too young when I saw it and I’d be able to appreciate it better now.
If you like manga, I recommend Eden for its cyberpunk ruminations on capitalist globalizing violence and the meaning of terror in a world brought to the brink of collapse. Plus a few observations on banal cosmopolitanism, though that may just be my own idiosyncratic reading of the text.
Oh, and Eden shouldn’t be that hard to find in the usual nooks and crannies online.
sarapen, finally got my hands on some eden. looks pretty cool! thanks for the tip!
Ghost in The shell is my favourite series. Would you be able to tell me when the S.A.C. Solid State Society will be availablein Australia to purchase on DVD?
@benhoh I’ve done a few posts see http://eventmechanics.net.au/?p=692 also see @Shaviro’s post http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=353