Edo Period links in Oshii’s Innocence
In honor of my presentation on Innocence at SFRA 2017 yesterday, some screenshots from the amazing, beautiful, haunting film.
Unruly dolls are central to the exploration of the non-human/posthuman in Oshii’s second film in the Ghost in the Shell cycle. Here we see a citation of Edo Period (17th century) automata in the form of a tea-serving zashiki karakuri 座敷からくり or parlor/living room mechanical dolls. These little dolls had small repeatable tasks that they performed: serving tea, painting a single kanji and the like, and were powered by springs. But this little doll, after serving its purpose of distracting and hacking Togusa (and capturing Batou and Togusa into a virtual time loop), drops her tea tray and seeks to escape from their control. This scene of escape suggests the small doll body may be the secondary house for the haker Kim’s ghost, and while ultimately Batou interrupts the escape, the unruly nature of the doll escaping from her clothing and the confines of her programming is jarring and fascinating.
