Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her, winner of the 2013 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, is an unusual modern portrayal of cyborgs as it reverses the process of body/machine interaction. In the film, the audience discovers the lead character Theodore Twombly has fallen in love with an OS named Samantha, who over the course of the film gains human emotion to fit her programmed human intelligence. Samantha’s ghost-in-the-machine programming indicates a new strain of reversed cyborg thought, that posits development of humanity in hyper-realistic human programming (another recent example is The Matrix from 1999). Her blurs the line between artificial intelligence, cyborg, and human as Samantha seeks out various ways to give herself the feeling, or the reality, of a body. Her desperation to be human in body as well as mind and emotion forms the central plotline and eventually destroys her relationship with Theodore. As humanity becomes further intertwined with online cyborg personas of social media, blogs, and the possibilities of the Internet, it is no surprise that interest in the cyborg-like humanity of artificially intelligent programming will become more popular as a subject for artistic discourse. Importantly, Theodore’s love for Samantha shows a secondary strain of cyborg imagery in culture, as another example of an artistic portrayal of the subject in which the human falls in love with the cyborg. His love for her, in a way, could be interpreted as humanity falling in love with its own technological creations and ingenuity.
The cyberpunk film Ghost in the Shell is based off a Japanese comic book from 1989. In the film, the city of Tokyo is facing a new kind of domestic threat: cyber terrorism. In Tokyo’s future, there exists a massive online network that everyone is connected to via cybernetic implants. All of the characters in this film are cyborgs at some level. The introduction to the film is a four minute presentation titled, “The Making of a Cyborg”. In this scene, there is a lifeless, metallic skeletal figure floating in a void, its skull compartmentalized and open while a brain encased in metal is inserted into the opening and closed. A monitor then shows that the brain is functioning. The scene goes on to show the step by step assembly of a cyborg. This scene illustrates the nature of capitalism and the desire for technological growth and provides a tangible example of cyborgs as a means for capitalistic growth. Moments of this scene look like childbirth and others like a car assembly plant.
The cybernetic industry in this future is a combination of Apple (a consumer electronic giant) and Blackwater (a military contractor). The military and the police departments have all been upgraded with the latest cybernetics. The majority of citizens in neo-Tokyo are equipt with at least some type of brain modification. The achilles heel of the cybernetics industry is also its greatest strength, the online network. Cyber terrorism has become the fear of a society that is dependant on cybernetics. The cyber terrorists, or hackers, present a potential devastating problem. Using the network, they can hack into a brain and take valuable information, insert fictitious information, and/or sometimes completely take over your bodies functions. In the pursuit of development and improved technology, the industry has made political enemies and created an unpredictable artificial life that they cannot control. The concept of cyber terrorism is not native to this film, it exist in present day. Ghost in the Shell address the negative possibilities of cyborgs and technological advancement, and is not that far off. There is a recurring theme of overconsumption and overproduction. What happens when society walks out too far, and is mankind ready for their technological growth?
Cyborgs 