Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence - Scene 11: Kim's Mansion

• August 19, 2006
• James Skemp
• philosophy, dvd / movie

[11 Kim's Mansion]

"He used to be a long-range military scout. 'Unfit as a commander, unfit to be commanded, fit only to languish by the wayside.' He bounced around between Special Forces and Electronics, and got into black market weapons. His reputation turned to shit. Wound up your garden-variety hacker."

"Sounds like quite a story."

"Yeah, but no matter how far a jackass travels, it won't come back a horse. His downfall came when his reach exceeded his grasp. Let's go."

===

('aemaeth' is written on the ground, with a girl pointing down to them.)

"Batou, the study on the top floor."

(There's a body laying back in a chair, the back of the head severly charred.)

"I guess we were a little late. Pro-active firewalls must have zapped him hacking in somewhere. In any case, doesn't look like he would've been of much use."

"'The deceased firmly declines offerings of fresh or artificial flowers or birds released in his honor.'"

(Batou throws the chair onto it's side, knocking the body onto the floor.)

"Hey!"

"'Sleep not you of the dead.' Even Confucius says you should never pretend to sleep like a corpse. I haven't got time for your stupid little jokes, Kim."

(The body begins to laugh.)

===

"Haven't seen you since that landing operation in Nemuro."

"I'm here on a job."

"Meaning Locus Solus? They came late to the robot racket, but expanded rapidly once they focused on high-end gynoids. There are whispers of links to politicians, bureaucrats, even crime syndicates. Wary of local regulators for these 'specialized' mannequins, they shifted all production to a multi-national factory ship anchored in international waters. They turn out some mighty fine dolls."

"Fine enough to commit suicide after murdering humans?"

"If that's true, it's pretty unseemly. That would mean replicating humans by breathing souls into dolls. Who'd want to do that? The definition of a truly beautiful doll is a living, breathing body devoid of a soul. 'An unyielding corpse, tiptoeing on the brink of collapse.'"

"Or reduced to a ravaged body with an e-brain... like you."

"The human is no match for a doll, in its form, its elegance in motion, its very being. The inadequacies of human awareness become the inadequacies of life's reality. Perfection is possible only for those without consciousness, or perhaps endowed with infinite consciousness. In other words, for dolls and for gods."

"Shouldn't we get back to business?"

"Actually there's one more mode of existence commensurate with dolls and deities."

"Animals?"

"Shelley's skylarks are suffused with a profound, instinctive joy. Joy we humans, driven by self-consciousness, can never know. For those of us who lust after knowledge, it is a condition more elusive than godhood."

"And this conundrum compelled you to inhabit a doll and play dead? Is that your reason?"

"'Without knowing life, how can we know death?' That's what Confucius says."

(Togusa pulls two books away from the bookshelf, and a model of the house comes out from the wall. He looks into a hole, and we see the scene from the beginning of this scene from above.)

"It is a rare human how knows death. Most meet death unprepared, armed only with ignorant familiarity. In other words, people die simply because it is inevitable."

Batou: "But death is a precondition of life for a doll."

(Continued into the next chapter.)

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Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence - Script

• ghost in the shell