Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- I Introduction: Science Fiction Double Feature
- 1 From “Multiverse” to “Abramsverse”: Blade Runner, Star Trek, Multiplicity, and the Authorizing of Cult//SF Worlds
- 2 The Coy Cult Text: The Man Who Wasn't There as Noir SF
- 3 “It's Alive!”: The Splattering of SF Films
- 4 Sean Connery Reconfigured: From Bond to Cult Science Fiction Figure
- 5 The Cult Film as Affective Technology: Anime and Oshii Mamoru's Innocence
- 6 Whedon, Browncoats, and the Big Damn Narrative: The Unified Meta-myth of Firefly and Serenity
- 7 Iron Sky's War Bonds: Cult Sf Cinema and Crowdsourcing
- 8 Transnational Interactions: District 9, or Apaches in Johannesburg
- 9 A Donut for Tom Paris: Identity and Belonging at European SF/Fantasy Conventions
- 10 Robot Monster and the “Watchable … Terrible” Cult/SF Film
- 11 Science Fiction and the Cult of Ed Wood: Glen or Glenda?, Bride of the Monster, and Plan 9 from Outer Space
- 12 Visual Pleasure, the Cult, and Paracinema
- 13 “Lack of Respect, Wrong Attitude, Failure to Obey Authority”: Dark Star, a Boy and His Dog, and New Wave Cult SF
- 14 Capitalism, Camp, and Cult SF: Space Truckers as Satire
- 15 Bubba Ho-tep and the Seriously Silly Cult Film
- A Select Cult/SF Bibliography
- A Select Cult SF Filmography
- Index
5 - The Cult Film as Affective Technology: Anime and Oshii Mamoru's Innocence
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- I Introduction: Science Fiction Double Feature
- 1 From “Multiverse” to “Abramsverse”: Blade Runner, Star Trek, Multiplicity, and the Authorizing of Cult//SF Worlds
- 2 The Coy Cult Text: The Man Who Wasn't There as Noir SF
- 3 “It's Alive!”: The Splattering of SF Films
- 4 Sean Connery Reconfigured: From Bond to Cult Science Fiction Figure
- 5 The Cult Film as Affective Technology: Anime and Oshii Mamoru's Innocence
- 6 Whedon, Browncoats, and the Big Damn Narrative: The Unified Meta-myth of Firefly and Serenity
- 7 Iron Sky's War Bonds: Cult Sf Cinema and Crowdsourcing
- 8 Transnational Interactions: District 9, or Apaches in Johannesburg
- 9 A Donut for Tom Paris: Identity and Belonging at European SF/Fantasy Conventions
- 10 Robot Monster and the “Watchable … Terrible” Cult/SF Film
- 11 Science Fiction and the Cult of Ed Wood: Glen or Glenda?, Bride of the Monster, and Plan 9 from Outer Space
- 12 Visual Pleasure, the Cult, and Paracinema
- 13 “Lack of Respect, Wrong Attitude, Failure to Obey Authority”: Dark Star, a Boy and His Dog, and New Wave Cult SF
- 14 Capitalism, Camp, and Cult SF: Space Truckers as Satire
- 15 Bubba Ho-tep and the Seriously Silly Cult Film
- A Select Cult/SF Bibliography
- A Select Cult SF Filmography
- Index
Summary
Oshii Mamoru's animated Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004, hereafter Innocence) is indisputably an sf film, but does it constitute a cult film as well? Is it a cult film for all audiences, or only those outside Japan, fascinated by the world of anime? Perhaps we might better ask: can an animated film for adults, created within Japan for a Japanese audience, be considered anything but cult when it circulates in a non–Japanese context? This essay will explore these questions en route to a consideration of the connections between the “cult” elements of the film and the science fiction–esque issues that Oshii explores throughout his oeuvre. By using Innocence as a case study, I want to argue that, for Oshii, film is a kind of performed philosophical speculation, and many of the same elements that allow us to define his work as “cult” also function to highlight and enact his theories regarding technobiopolitics—theories typically linked to sf. To define Innocence as “cult” here is not a secondary designation; rather, “cult” is a fundamental element in producing the meanings of this sf film.
Oshii Mamoru is not a director of animated film, but rather a director of anime, with all of the technical and stylistic differences that designation implies. In an interview with Ueno Toshiya significantly titled “Anime begins from zure (disjuncture): on the border between 2D and 3D,” Oshii links the concept of zure —disjuncture, divergence—with his beliefs about what anime is, and especially what it can do that other cinematic forms cannot. The distinctive mixing of 2D and 3D animation styles in one film is only the most obvious of the various zures Oshii exploits to thematize his post–anthropocentric, anti–humanist philosophy.
This examination will begin with some arguments for designating Innocence as a cult film, at least as it circulates outside Japan, from both a phenomenological point of view, concentrating on its reception, and an ontological one, identifying the cult elements of its production—visual, narrative, and technical. Then we shall turn to a discussion of the ways that cult functions in this film beyond a simple genre designation.
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- Science Fiction Double FeatureThe Science Fiction Film as Cult Text, pp. 84 - 97Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2015