Lecture 17: Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk

Sub-genre of science fiction that blends high tech with working class culture

• Responding to:

• The information age

• Punk movement and hacker culture

• Dense and disenfranchised urban populations

• Concerns regarding genetic engineering

Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner and William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer were

influential in defining this sub-genre

The information age

Era in which information is infinitely accessible and increasingly

unstable.

• Information can be manipulated.

• Information empowers us and leaves us powerless.

• Any single truth seems less real than the illusions and subjective points of view through which we view the world.

• This leads to debates about embodiment, identity, and the nature of truth itself.

Blade Runner

Director: Ridley Scott

• Composer: Vangelis (Evangelos

Odysseas Papathanassiou)

• Loosely based on Do Androids Dream of

Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick)

• Set in Los Angeles, 2019

Vangelis

Composed the Blade Runner Score

Ridley Scott

Directed Blade Runner

film noir

Film Noir: Stylish Hollywood crime dramas, cynical

and often sexualized (a period in Hollywood that

lasted between the 1920s and 1950s).

• Stylistic characteristics include low-key lighting,

black-and-white film, dark mood, the centrality

of a detective or policeman, flawed and

alienated heroes, convoluted story lines,

conspiracies, urban setting, moral ambiguity.

• Musically, tends to employ slow jazz (sign of

the urban) and crooner music (like Sinatra).

Orientalism

Orientalism: the imitation of aspects of the global

East within art or literature. (Edward Said)

• “Imitation” is key in this definition—this is a

Western depiction of the East, which is

patronizing and essentializing.

Hybridity: A cross-cultural mix of musical markers

(styles, timbres, etc.)

• Usually Western + Asian/Eurasian (Japanese,

Chinese, Indonesian, Indian, Arabic, etc.).

musical symbolism in Blade Runner

Musical Symbolism:

The use of music to depict some extra-musical

meaning. This could be a broad idea, a specific

character in a film, a visual or narrative motive

that recurs through a film, etc.

• Examples: Harp to signify the divine; piano to

signify domesticity; hymn to signify the religious;

trumpet signal to signify an announcement

The use of synthesized vs. real instrumentation to highlight human v. non-human character traits.

ambient sound

• background noise that helps to define setting, mood and location

ambient music

gentle, largely electronic music with no persistent beat; often used to create or enhance mood or atmosphere