Scarlett Johansson Nude In ‘Ghost In The Shell’? Cast Choice Has Critics Claiming ‘Whitewashing’

Will the live action Ghost In The Shell movie feature Scarlett Johansson nude, as was seen in the 1995 animated feature movie? There’s also many critics who claim that Hollywood is “whitewashing” the Ghost In The Shell cast with the choice of Johansson as the main character, Major Motoko Kusanagi. No one knows for sure the concepts that director Rupert Sanders will go with the Ghost In the Shell movie, it’s the plot which should excite fans, not the potential for ogling at the actress’ body.

In a related report by the Inquisitr, although the Ghost In The Shell release date is years down the road, we were given a glimpse of how the movie may look in live action based upon Project 2501, a graphic design project that used the talents of professional artists whose credits include movies like Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Whether or not we will see Scarlett Johansson nude in the new movie really depends on the source material used in deciding its direction. Ghost In The Shell has had multiple reboots in the anime realm, and even the manga is noticeably different. Shirow Masamune’s original manga had very graphic sex scenes in the original Japanese version. The nudity was also very much in your face throughout the first several scenes of Mamoru Oshii’s animated movie. But in 2002’s Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex there isn’t any nudity, and with Ghost In The Shell: Arise (which will be released in North America in 2015) there is very little nudity, and only briefly.

The point of the main character’s body is not that it’s seen in graphic detail. Most of the time, the Major’s body is symbolic since she has been living with a full cyborg body since she was young. To a certain extent, the Major is a tool of the military, and this tool is destroyed almost completely and rebuilt like any other machine. So although audiences get to see that body from practically all angles in some versions, we might as well be looking at a Barbie doll.

Depending on the version of the story, much of the story is focused on the philosophical implications of cyborg technology since it’s implicated that many of the Major’s memories were designed and implanted by men. As even the title art points out, “when altering one’s mind becomes as easy as programming a computer, what does it mean be human?” So if the director decides to portray Scarlett Johansson nude, then it better have a symbolic meaning, or else it becomes nudity for the sake of having a famous actress naked on screen.

The color of that skin and the shape of the face has also become a source of argument. In all of the various remakes, the Major is Japanese, Batou is Japanese, and Chief Daisuke Aramaki is Japanese. Since Scarlett Johansson is obviously not Japanese, a petition by Care2 claims that Dreamworks needs to make the entire cast Japanese for the new live action movie.

“The original film is set in Japan, and the major cast members are Japanese,” organizer Julie Rodriguez writes.

“So why would the American remake star a white actress? The industry is already unfriendly to Asian actors without roles in major films being changed to exclude them.”

To a certain extent, this complaint is ironic, since the plot of Ghost In The Shell is based upon discovering what is inside that counts, not what is on the exterior. Let us also hope that directors do not have Scarlett Johansson naked as a pointless case of fan service.

What do you think?