Jour 4551
Cyberpunk literature and media in general, deal with marginalized people in technologically advanced hierarchical societies. In cyberpunk settings there are usually powerful elites such as oppressive governments, multinational corporations or fundamentalist religions who dominate the lives of the mass population. These regimes are aided and distorted by artificial intelligence, electronic media and information technology. Cyberpunk is reckoned a postmodernist, sub-genre of science fiction with its focus on "high tech and low life." It offers a wide range for research in the boundary between literature and technology; man and machine; cyberspace and hyperreality; utopia and dystopia; identity conflicts; professional ethics and human values.
The movie Blade Runner, which we watched in class, is set in a dystopian future, and presents forbidding vision of the future. The film has a post apocalyptic sense in its setting where the sun doesn't shine on the overcrowded, neon-lit streets of cold Los Angeles where it is always raining. The cyperpunk aspects of Blade Runner lie in the dystopian world where flying cars and video phones exist. There are fake people walking around in a real environment and they are fighting against real computers. The disparities of wealth and power as well as truth and representation present the postmodern themes that exist in the movie as well. The idea of the end of nature and the artificial animals presents a postmodern idea within the plot. For example, the scene where Deckard chases a replicant known as Zhora acknowledges many postmodernist features in the movie. Zhora has been working as a snake dancer known as Miss Salome, when Deckard speaks to her in her dressing room he asks her if her snake is real, but Zhora replies that if she could afford a real snake she wouldn't have to work as dancer. This reinforces the idea of the consumed planet where real animals are rare and therefore reduced to being a product that can only be had by the rich. Her snake, like Zhora herself, is a man made imitation, and therefore an example of man playing god, having both the power to destroy the planet and create life. The link between cyberpunk and postmodern theories presents the idea of identity, truth and representation of the world.
Cyberpunk represents the far-reaching effects of life in a postmodern society. Since Cyberpunk represents the apotheosis of postmodernism, it is believed that it is quite possible that the future of both the Internet and postmodernism could be found within Cyberpunk texts and films. Blade Runner presents a plot filled with cyberpunk ideas but they incorporate ever-changing themes and disparities. The plot, which is said to occur in the near future present dystopian world where corporate interests have taken over the government. The ways in which postmodern ideas are incorporated in this future, presents the concern of this every changing truth and representation of the world.