One thought on “The GLORIO Chat Episode 219: Cash Rules Everything Around Me”

1. I think the big difference between the way this version of Ghost in the Shell portrays the police and how your average (mainstream) police procedural does it, is that the latter at least tries to sell you on the (mostly a) fabrication that the police are there predominantly to do objectively good things like solving murders, catching dangerous criminals and preventing terrible things from happening, whereas in the former it’s abundantly clear that the Major and co. are kind of just arms of the state, solely interested in maintaining the status quo and defending corporate interests, seemingly exclusively because it gives them the right to gleefully exercise extreme violence.

   That is, of course, a completely valid and even necessary way of depicting cops, especially in a setting like this, but what does irk me about GitS specifically is the fact that such a harrowingly cynical portrayal of law enforcement is combined with this nihilistic brand of libertarianism, where occasionally the characters will just turn to the camera and essentially say “this is just how the world is, man, if you don’t like it, that’s your problem; maybe you should find something better to do than to whine about how unfair it is that we get to shoot whoever we want and you don’t”.

   Of course this doesn’t mean that I think the writers endorse the way these characters think or the way the world they live in works, but it also makes me just not give a single flying sod about what these assholes have to say about morality and what it means to be human and the like, which is another important part of what I want from a piece of cyberpunk media.

   Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.