ENVIRONMENT

When immersing oneself in either the film Blade Runner or the excerpt from Trouble and Her Friends, you automatically feel dirty. Both futuristic worlds are grim; the setting never sees a sun—the sun just a forgotten nugget in the no-longer new frontier. Both futuristic worlds just drip with trouble, we could say. Everything is always wet and the landscape never seems to dry; think of when you have a wet sock, your feet cannot rest until you take off your shoe and the sock entirely. These environments—to put a visual spin, inspired by the current dirty laundry piling up in my bedroom’s corner—wear like an unwanted, unhealthy wet sock that you could live with, but in the end, you want to go back to the naked and dry foot. For any medium using cyberpunk expression, the idea of rain and perpetual wetness (and being an irremovable wet sock and shoe) being fixed settings for these environments reveals that this is a world unclean and, most importantly, this is a world that needs cleansing.

In addition to lands that spit darkness, both environments look and sound like wastelands—or, look like we are frequenting inside a heavy (slimy) garbage bag. First examining TAHF, machines and outdated technologies are thrown out all over the place; "feeling at the moment only the cold, and turned back to the dismantled machines" Cerise sees machines cast out all over the place.  In contrast, Blade Runner and its backlog of old technology is more subversive. While Pris literally engulfs herself in a corner of garbage (a replicant/machine cast by a dumpster), it is the buildings themselves laying almost like empty caskets (J.F. Sebastian's place in particular) that explore the outmoded. These leftovers in both the film and the literature are physical sites of the past, having a mirror for the future to ask where are we now and where were we then. The representation of the world as a giant garbage can/wasteland illustrates why technology and innovation are problematic; to move ahead or rather to advance a breed of technology means something will become extinct and useless, thus, the excess of trials are left on Earth.  Ultimately, they provide a warning sign to the present, chillingly showing how if stagnant the present will never be your future and your inevitable past. 

With everything so dark and empty and simply creepy, the characters still find it suitable to worm through worn cobble-stone alleys, like Cerise and the scene of her fight or in BR, when not flying through the skyscrapers (which literally seem to scrape the thick skies because the air in these environments take on their own character, p.73, Scott describes her steps through the "teeth of the wind". These environments are so battered they are forced to have feelings and fight in them as well… eluding, maybe, a posthuman produces a postenvironment? ), everything feels to take place in a backalley. Through the weave of alley and dark and dreary buildings, there are always these overhead voices commanding their environments, p. 67 "the blare of the announcer's voice filled the room." There is always some conscious outside of them reminding them of the laws or what is in rule and need (like the Coke commercial/Asian lady building in BR).

However, no matter how dark, these environments has always some sort of simulated light. From soaring buildings painted in lifelong neon pixel in BR to light from the hacker screens in TAHF, light is an important function of the environments in both mediums. What does this light mean? Is it a good light in which sheds light in the darkness or is it as deceiving and untouchable like the green light of Gatsby? In somewhere as dark as BR and TAHF, it is important function we will explore in the thematic concerns.

Man, who has heard of keeping their glasses half full? Not these cyberpunk-cinged dystopias.

TIME

I think within both of these story frames it does not matter what the specific future year we are in, because from the evocative nature of the environment, we know we are in some sort of future setting. What is determinant in making the future of both BR and TAHF is the present of which the story is being written or created within. Blade Runner was created in 1982, in the heyday of the Regan administration and on the cusp of the end of the Cold War. Trouble and her Friends was written in 1994, moving from Reganomics to financial surplus of the Clinton years in a push of a saxophone button. These different presents thus concerned themselves with different questions for their futures. Blade Runner is years before the Internet boom; therefore, it deals with age-old sci-fi conventions of societal structures in question: can man make machines (out of molds of fellow men) and keep them under their control? My guess: a statement against communism. Melissa Scott and her world deal with societal conventions as well, but they are less governmental (they are there and important, look at the discussion surrounding the Evans-Tindale plan) but its heart is the fight between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Therefore, the argument could be made that in BR Deckard and the replicant of his eye redefine love as well. In the end, though, we can still make note that the eyes behind the lens have different vantage points and thus issued different perspectives when addressing cyberpunk and their thematic concerns. Because of the time each film and story was created, Ridley Scott's film defines something more meta and general opposed to Melissa Scott exploring the unseen minority of the hackers and their work.

CHARACTER

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In the name of the sci-fi and cyberpunk game, there is always the marginalized minority. Here Cerise and Pris are examples. Cerise is a part of a secret hacking group in the world TAHF; she is a part of a people who are battling against the continual regulation being placed on their nets and their implants, the brainworm. Pris is a replicant, who like Cerise is unhappy with the way she is being governed and restricted of her freedoms. Both want to live the way they desire (for Pris, to extend the small life she was programmed and for Cerise, to allow technology and advancement to run its course without unfair regulation in her mind). The difference here however is that Pris wants to be a real girl and Cerise wants to keep the “modification of human body” (thanks to other ol’ wiki, Wikipedia) afloat. The replicants of BR want to reverse their livelihood; they want to be human. Cerise seeks for human to have the choice of posthuman. 

THEMATIC CONCERNS

With any cyberpunk text or film, there are certain characteristics that they must engage in to wear the cyberpunk badge of honor. Nihilistic environments, futuristic times, rebellious characters are these thematic concerns that anything under the cyberpunk umbrella (and that umbrella is of course shitty and black) finds its definition in these characteristics. However, like the spits of lights throughout the film, it cannot be all dark. These are dark worlds not hell. They always say you have to let the bad in with the good…

Love. As much as the debate of man v. machine can be debated within these films (where to draw the line and the plausibility of its design), like in the Ship Who Sang, robots, cyborgs and humans want love or more or less want a sense of community and inclusion and all in the way they feel is necessary. In The Ship Who Sang, she chooses her captain on emotion. In Blade Runner, the film last shot is on the Deckard running to save his lover replicant. J.P. of Blade Runner, a builder of Tyrel Corp, built himself friends. The replicants themselves were coupled off. In Trouble and her Friends, Cerise is a scorned ex-lover of Trouble’s that just cannot get over that Trouble has left her. These people are fighting for physical technologies, whether it a part of themselves or a part of their work, but most importantly, they are fighting for life and love. Maybe, ultimately, regardless of their support of cyborg and posthuman, the human part of themselves is what makes them live and what gives them their fight.

In conclusion, I think cyberpunk is keeping human life in check. As a frisky race as we are, we are always looking to improve and cyberpunk admits the need for technological evolution, but in the end, it asks for the price. How will the world look? How will we humans feel? Can both the posthuman and the human coexist? And can’t we all just get along, man? With big governments and corporations being fought by the little cyborg guy…cyberpunk is the great defender of freedom and democracy, no? Ok, I am done with questions. But I am keeping you thinking, just like the ol’ cyberpunk.

OTHER

This compare/contrast is a battle of the Scotts (Ridley Scott v. Melissa Scott).

A few things noted…

The dove held by the squishing-Tyrel’s-face-inside-out-replicant man in the end cements the power of love within cyberpunk. The white dove (the contrast of the white dove on the black world puts itself the light/dark discussion) is symbolic of hope and it is being cradled in technology and future’s hands. The dove can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Since he dies, hope may die with him. Or the dove can fly away and thus hope can be found if the dove can be held and found again. In a nutshell, these worlds need hope and light and love. It is their only salvation.

Also in BR, the shots are kickass at the beginning and appear very Citizen Kane like. I think that is very telling of the tone of this film and how happy the ending shall be. Citizen Kane was  a man of great passion of love but something always got in the way of fully achieving such dreams (ie the mess of technology and its needs).

Ok. I am realllly done now.