Assignment: Cyberpunk and Cinema

Cyberpunk is a genre of storytelling that has directly influenced the face of cinema. Its’ power to compel audiences continues and thrives in today’s communication technology dependent culture. Although the images presented in Cyberpunk depict a science-fiction based reality, there is a direct link to our own reality. Our modern society continues to be so immersed in technology that the realities presented in Cyberpunk, despite their fictional properties, could easily become the world we will inhabit in the future. The cyberpunk genre centers upon the relationship of humanity to technology. Its significance is that cyberpunk literature and film creates anticipatory fictions which are based upon existing and upcoming technologies.

William Gibson, born in 1948, is widely acknowledged as the ‘father’ of Cyberpunk (Weir, 2003). He had his short stories published in the early 1980s and then moved onto writing novels, with one of his most influential works being Neuromancer, published in 1984, which is considered a landmark of the Cyberpunk Literary Genre (‘Cyberpunk’, 15/05/08). Gibson, who coined ideas such as "Cyberspace", allowed for the mainstream acceptance or cyberpunk as a legitimate mainstream genre (Weir, 2003).

As best surmised by Hafner & Markoff, ‘Cyberpunk revolves around high-tech rebels that live in a dystopian future, in a world dominated by technology and beset by urban decay and overpopulation. It’s a world defined by infinitely powerful computers and networks that create alternative universes filled with electronic demons. Interlopers travel through these computer-generated landscapes and some of them make their living by buying, selling and stealing information, with information being the currency of a computerised future (1995, p.9).’

Cyberpunk can be simplified to the struggle between man and technology for the control and manipulation of information. As Gibson himself puts it, we are ‘rushing headlong towards some unthinkable degree of interactivity, of connectivity, of the speed and breadth and depth of information’ (Gibson, 1994, p.278). The fear examined and defined in cyberpunk is based on our dependency on technology and is forecast as our downfall (‘William Gibson Biography’, 22/05/08). Our personal connections and interactions crumble and fall by the wayside because of our reliance on technology. Gibson ‘exploits our fear of and fascination with the modern world, especially its enthrallment to the personal computer and the ‘freedoms’ of ‘cyberspace.’ (Bennie, 2007). Cyberpunk literature is unfairly grouped in science-fiction because of its seemingly fantastical elements. However, because Cyberpunk ‘not only deals with possible, not just the probable, but technology that man already has (Walchak, 1993), there exists a reality-based fear that is expressed in cyberpunk literature and motion pictures.

Cyberpunk was born from the need to rebel against the rise in reliance on technology. Cyberpunk stories serve as cautionary tales for technology based communities and ‘increasingly prophetic of the way the world is changing’ (‘What is Blade Runner?’, 12/05/08) Cyberpunk presents stories of individuals or groups that try to revolt against the status quo present in the current society, to undermine the authority that exudes its power over the people. The authority is either in the form of technology itself or multi-national corporations’ control over technology, like in the film Blade Runner (Scott, 1982).

Visual presentations of Cyberpunk themes were inevitable. Cyberpunk Cinema has been forged from earlier works of science fiction and cyberpunk literature but in turn helped to redefine and influence Cyberpunk literature. William Gibson once said about the film Blade Runner,

‘About ten minutes into Blade Runner, I reeled out of the theater in complete despair over its visual brilliance and its similarity to the "look" of Neuromancer, my [then] largely unwritten first novel. Not only had I been beaten to the semiotic punch, but this damned movie looked better than the images in my head! With time, as I got over that, I started to take a certain delight in the way the film began to affect the way the world looked. Club fashions, at first, then rock videos, finally even architecture. Amazing! A science fiction movie affecting reality!’ (Loud, 1992)

This cements the argument that the most succinct and demonstrative example of Cyberpunk in Cinema is in fact Blade Runner, made in 1982 (Scott, 1982). Blade Runner was adapted from a novel by Phillip K Dick titled ‘Do androids dream of electric sheep’, which was published in 1968 (Dick, 1968). After being shown some preliminary footage of the film version of his book, Dick said: ‘This is not like anything we have ever seen…. It isn’t like anything that has ever been done.’ (Spinard, 1990, p.64)) It depicted a dystopia where Globalised companies and technology have obtained control over society, and where the lines between man and machine have been blurred. Those who do not have the control are forced to live substandard existence in the relative slums. It has been stated that ‘Blade Runner cannot be understood without comprehending the deeply felt moral, philosophical, ecological and sociological concerns that are interwoven throughout the story’ (Whitehead, 2002), and therefore succeeds in representing the themes vital to Cyberpunk.

Motion pictures attempt to harness a movement of self reflection for society, to challenge how far technology has taken us and how further it will go in the future. As popular Cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling puts it, ‘Say goodbye to your stale old futures. Here is an entirely realized new world, intense as an electric shock.’ (’Cyberpunk’, 15/05/08). It challenges how humans relate to each other and with technology. Cyberpunk cinema gives the viewer an inescapable view of the perils of over-reliance on technology, and the removal of power that inherently comes from giving control of society over to technology.

It will always be a relevant sub-genre of story telling because the themes it represents are timeless. The connection between humanity and technology is becoming even more relevant topic with the emergence of and dependence on new communication technologies. Cinema is a vital component in the transfer of themes and ideas of Cyberpunk to a mainstream audience. Cyberpunk Cinema gives the audience an insight into the possibilities of our own future, in most cases a bleak and damned state of affairs. By having a visual presentation of the themes that exist in Cyberpunk, the viewer is able to fully grasp the possible consequences of a technology predominant existence.

Cyberpunk and Cinema Bibliography

Bennie, Angela (September 7 2007), A reality stranger than fiction, The Sydney Morning Herald.

‘Cyberpunk’, http://hem.passagen.se/replikant/cyberpunk.htm (Accessed 15/05/08).

Dick, Philip K (1968), Do androids dream of electric sheep, Ballantyne Books, New York.

Gibson, William (1994), Neuromancer, Ace Books, New York.

Hafner, K. & Markoff, J. (1995), Cyberpunk: outlaws and hackers on the computer frontier, Touchstone, New York.

Loud, Lance (October 1992), 10th anniversary of Blade Runner, Details magazine.

Scott, Ridley (Dir) (1982), Blade Runner (Motion Picture), The Blade Runner Partnership.

Spinard, Norman (1990), The Transmogrification of Philip K. Dick, Science Fiction in the Real World, Southern Illinois University Press.

Walchak, J. A (1993), Where the Street Finds Its Own Use for Things: Cyberpunk Fiction and the Philosophy of Technology. Humanities and Technology Conference, Atlanta.

Weir, Robert (2003), Text, Analysis of a Subculture Group: Cyberpunk http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/analysis_of_cyberpunk_subculture.html, (accessed 20/05/08).

‘What is Blade Runner?’, http://www.brmovie.com/What_is_BR.htm, (Accessed 12/05/08).

Whitehead, John (2002), Blade Runner: What it means to be humans in the cybernetic state, Gadfly online. http://www.gadflyonline.com/02-18-02/film-blade_runner.html, (Accessed 25/05/08).

‘William Gibson Biography’ (2007), http://www.antonraubenweiss.com/gibson/biography.html, (Accessed 22/05/08).