Cyberpunk
"High tech, low life."
"The street finds its own uses for things."
We all know the quotes and the books. But cyberpunk is more than a neon-soaked, cybernetic aesthetic, or a gritty dystopian science fiction genre. It is a subculture composed of two fundamental ideas: PUNK, and CYBER.
The PUNK: antiauthoritarian, anticapitalist, radical freedom of expression, rejection of tradition, a DIY ethic.
The CYBER: all that, but high-fuckin'-tech, ya feel? From DIYing body mods to using bleeding edge software to subvert corporate interests. It's punk for the 22nd century.
This is a community dedicated to discussing anything cyberpunk, be it books, movies, or other art that falls into the genre, or real life tech, projects, stories, ideas or anything else that adheres to these ideals. It's a place for 'punks from all over the federated Net to hang out and swap stories and meaningful content (not just pictures of city nightscapes).
Welcome in, choom.
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I like Blade Runner (and 2049) a lot, but I always felt like they put much more emphasis on the 'cyber' part then the 'punk' part.
Not much commentary on socioeconomic issues, or engagement with themes of anti-athoritarianism and anti-capitalism, or the dystopian nature of the world, all of that is just background dressing to a much more standard science fiction exploration of "what it means to be human", which is something I could find better explored in classic golden age science fiction like Isaac Asimov's Robot and Foundation series, like Caves of Steel.
That's why, out of all visual media, it's really Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Robocop that made the genre click for me, believe it nor. It's the former that made me finally go out and get all the cyberpunk literature I could and start reading it. That's probably informed by my queer, anarchist, and punk leanings outside of cyberpunk, you know?
Blade Runner hits those themes, but it pushes the discussion around Replicants, which are stand-ins for The Others in society. Those movies don't hit the POV of street level, which is different than most cyberpunk works.
I was going to say. All the cyberpunk stuff exists in Blade Runner, but because the pov characters are a Cop hunting replicants and the Replicants themselves we only see it in the periphery.
Right, like I said, it exists as a backdrop
But the "What it means to be human" is only a problem because of the corps, and their destruction of everything they touch. If the corps hadn't ruined society, the environment, and designed replicants to be slaves and have short lives, then none of the events of the film would have happened. The entire film is a condemnation of that capitalist mindset of milking everything you can for the most amount of money possible. Why did the corps ruin the environment? Because doing so made money. Why do they use replicants for slave labor? Because doing so is cheaper than having well-compensated or even poorly-compensated workers. Why do replicants die young? Because it prevents them from properly organizing a revolt against their masters.
What do they care if they only live 4 years? Once it's been r&d'd it's cheap to just plop out a new one. The corps' inherent cruelty is the reason the replicants are hiding amongst the populace. It's the reason they lash out against humans. It's the reason that Blade Runners are "necessary" to hunt them down and kill them. IMO it's a very punk movie.
Fair enough, I see your point. But like I said, that's background worldbuilding, instead of being dealt with directly by the narrative.