Superflat and Post-Gender: A Case Study of female bodies in Ghost in the Shell and Paprika

Abstract

This article studies the representation of female bodies in two anime films: Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Satoshi Kon’s Paprika (2006) to study how the post apocalyptic cyborg and the dream realm’s alter ego both subvert the gender oriented paradigms by becoming Superflat bodies in a postgender space. Takashi Murakami’s Superflat manifesto talks about the bricolage of multiple flattened layers superimposed onto one another to create a composite surface of multiple focal points where meaning exists on the surface itself rather than the interior. In both Ghost in the Shell and Paprika we see the melting of the outside into the inside. The post apocalyptic Niihama City and the unstable kaleidoscopic dream realm both are examples of what Susan J Napier terms “fantasyscapes” where the body goes through the Guattarian “a-signifying semiotic” process to create unlimited intersections of signs, identities, images and self-images. This contributes to the Superflat “delimiting” (Looser, 2006: 108) of the body where its symbiosis with both technology and the cybernetically created alter ego takes place. It also blurs the boundaries between body and commodity. Thus the bodies of Major Mokoto Kusanagi/The Puppet Master in Ghost in the Shell and Dr.Chiba Atsuko/Paprika in Paprika become examples of Superflat bodies in a post-gender future.