What is the background established as a genre that cyber punk like 'Blade Runner' is loved for many years?

As the boundary between humans and machines becomes ambiguous, the more advanced technologies and the near future society devastated than today are drawing " Cyber ​​Punk " is a comparatively new genre of science fiction science fiction founded in the 1980s and still highly popular. Channels talking about movies and literature · Just Write explains "How Cyber ​​Punk was born", "Why Cyber ​​Punk was established as a style beauty and loved for nearly 40 years" in the movie.

Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, and the Relevancy of Cyberpunk - YouTube


In 1982, director Ridley Scott 's movie " Blade Runner " established a new genre called " cyber punk " in the world of science fiction (SF) by drawing an attractive picture of the near future devastated by advanced technology .

The scene of the image shown above is not actually "Blade Runner", but one of cyberpunk drama " Ortade Carbon " delivered by Netflix. The visual of "Altered Carbon" is strongly influenced by "Blade Runner" and it is similar to thinking as if it is a sequel.

The most important work in the history of cyber punk is "Blade Runner" in 1982 mentioned above and William Gibsun 's novel " New Romanser " written two years later.

In The Paris Review, Gibbsen revealed, "When I met Ridley Scott," Blade Runner "and" New Romantic "talked about being composed of similar elements."

Furthermore, many of the elements that make up "Blade Runner" and "New Romantic" come from an exciting sci-fi image that was included in the 1970s French adult cartoons " . This is told in the movie that this also appears in the streets of Los Angeles depicted in "Blade Runner" and in Ciba City which irregularly spreads with "New Romanser".

At the same time, Los Angeles of "Blade Runner" and Civa City of "New Romantic" are underlining Japanese city planning, and the townscape painted with Cyber ​​Punk is taking on the atmosphere of Tokyo's downtown since then.

However, in order to understand the most important influence that cyber punk received, it is necessary to trace the genre history of detective objects.

Artificial intelligence that appears as a novelist in the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe , appears in "Alternate Carbon".

Poe is known for building the genre "mystery novel" in the work "Murderer's murder" announced in 1814.

In 'Murder Street Murder' there will be a detective named Auguste Dupin and a detective friend and incompetent police acting as a storyteller of a novel. And "Murder Street Murder" made for the first time a common framework in contemporary mystery novel "Detective grandly unravels the mystery."

In 1920, Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett made a detective story of "hard boiled style".

What appears in hard boiled style is not "gentlemanly and culturally sensitive detective" as seen in mystery novels until then, "I work for gold in a rough aura, but feeling justice and nobility in mind It is a detective with. Also, the detective being worked out is not an "interesting mystery" but the crime and conspiracy that occur in the city are a standard.

The birth of hard-boiled style is said to be closely related to era background such as abstinence law and recession.

From the 1940's to the 1950's, hard-boiled-style movies such as " Triumphal " and " Malta no hawk " are a big hit.

The cityscape reflected in black-and-white hard-boiled movies made in the 1940s and 1950s was always dark, plenty of mysterious atmosphere, devastated and dangerous place, always described as if the weather was bad. How to draw this town has something that leads to "Blade Runner".

Also, Deckard, the hero of "Blade Runner" and Takeshi of "Altered Carbon" are also hard boiled detective images like Sam Spade and Philippe Marlow .

Case of the hero appearing in "New Romanser" is selfish with outlaws, in terms of working to earn money, the influence of Raymond Chandler is seen, but on the other hand it is a hacker who does not mind crime, righteousness The point that it has no sense is the point different from the hard boiled style private detective. The character image "Rebellious hacker with the ability to compete against machines" launched by "New Romanser" is commonly seen in Cyber ​​Punk.

What is worrisome here is why the hard-boiled style established in the background of abstinence law and recession was incorporated into cyber punk in the 1980s.

In Japan which is the stage of cyber punk, a lot of cyberpunk masterpieces such as " AKIRA " and " Ghost in the Shell " such as " AKIRA " and " Ghost in the Shell " are born a little after the United States from the 80's to the 1990's, but the context until born Is different from the United States.

Cyberpunk became a boom to inherit the hard boiled blood line in the United States is that there is concern that the mighty power such as capitalism and technology which does not know stagnate human beings, body and spirit Because it was, the movie points out.

Huge advertisements and neon signs displayed in skyscrapers are a symbol of capitalism that is just bloated.

However, it is also true that this advertisement and neon sign give an attractive brilliance to the dark city.

Also, the movie insists that there is a social background in that Cyber ​​Punk is set in a devastated society. The graph below shows the incidence of murder cases in the United States from 1950 to the 2010s. It continues to increase from the 1970s, and it shows that it peaks in the 1980s. Science fiction writers of the 1980s thought that the crime rate would rise globally in the future.

Although the real world is threatened by climate change and terrorism, civilized cities drawn by cyber punk are always depicted with high crime rates. It is because the hard boiled style character with the anti-hero side aspect matched what is active in the city full of crime.

Cyber ​​punk is a genre loved worldwide, but it was also a tool to criticize certain power structure. However, no solution is presented in any work. Even "New Romantic" did not challenge the network system covering the world itself.

Cyber ​​Punk is strongly influenced by all elements of the world such as American hard boiled style, French SF manga, Japanese townscape and culture etc all around the world.

And, the contemporary new writer concludes that it is trying to renew the elements constituting the SF-like setting of cyber punk, and the movie is closed.