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So I read Snow Crash years ago and loved it (although endings aren't Stephenson's strong suit) but I'm not sure how well this will hold up today on screen. Cyb
by cletus 6y ago
So I read Snow Crash years ago and loved it (although endings aren't Stephenson's strong suit) but I'm not sure how well this will hold up today on screen.
Cyberpunk was thinly-veiled xenophobia about the Japanese and this was really the zeitgeist of the 1980s. Granted the ideas of virtual reality, what we now know as the Internet (to be fair, the Internet already existed in the 1980s in nascent form) and personal enhancement were fairly new ideas at the time but we're now living in that future and it is of course nothing like the dystopia predicted.
It's really no coincidence that the heyday for all this was the 1980s (Blade Runner, Neuromancer and so on). I wouldn't be surprised if this is what the project is stuck on: interpreting and translating this story to the small screen in a modern way.
- dleslie 6y agoThe concern was about the superiority of Japanese technology and corporate structure; it's not xenophobic in the sense that they represent a corrupting force, it was concern for a potentially dominating force. It's not unlike the British being concerned about the rise of the American Empire; it's not xenophobia so much as it is fear of losing.
- liability 6y ago> Cyberpunk was thinly-veiled xenophobia about the Japanese I'm surprised by this point of view since, in my opinion, Japanese cyberpunk media is easily the best.
- monadic2 6y agoAny recommendations? I have only seen “ghost in a shell”.
- liability 6y agoThe ones that come to mind first are Akira, Serial Experiments Lain, Patlabor (particularly the first movie), and Paprika.
- Legogris 6y agoI love the others (especially Lain is underappreciated!) but haven't heard of Patlabor so will check it out, thanks for the recommendation!
- ChoGGi 6y agoIn no particular order: Roujin Z, Manie-Manie Meikyu Monogatari, Tamala 2010, Memories, Trava - Fist Planet, REDLINE, Cyber City Oedo 808, Dallos, Genocyber, Noein, Texhnolyze
- InTheArena 6y agoEndings aren’t Stephenson’s thing - except for Baroque Cycle which absolutely nailed it.
- monadic2 6y agoI always viewed it as a critique of capitalism—sure you can get a bionic arm, but you had to sell it in the first place. All inherent value has been exploited and resold, including at times reality itself.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago> Cyberpunk was thinly-veiled xenophobia about the Japanese This comment might apply to Gibson's works (although I'd dispute even that, Japan is generally presented in a positive light), but Snow Crash doesn't really feature Japan at all. The setting is American through and through, and the main character is part-Japanese mostly just to make "Hiro" a plausible name.
- cletus 6y agoI like this quote [1]: > Since the late 1970s, a key idea in Western science fiction has been that Japan represents the future. Japan's "weird" culture is a figure for an incomprehensible tomorrow. which I found here [2] (titled "Cyberpunk Cities Fetishize Asian Culture But Have No Asians"). Cyberpunk cast (Asian) megacorporations as the architects of a dystopian future with American cowboys (essentially) fighting back (see [3]). [1]: https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-do-westerners-fetishize-japans-futuristic-weirdness-5428322 https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-do-westerners-fetishize-japans-f... [2]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mb7yqx/cyberpunk-cities-fetishize-asian-culture-but-have-no-asians-blade-runner https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mb7yqx/cyberpunk-cities-f... [3]: https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/57/nixon57art.htm https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/57/nixon57art.htm
- dleslie 6y agoAnd yet the streets of Bladerunner were full of asians; and for many written works, the ethnicity of those on the street were whatever you imagined them to be. When reading Vice/Gizmodo/Kotaku/etc: assume they are projecting.
- spookybones 6y agoI recall reading long ago of Gibson overtly expressing that he used Japan as the Other. He knew that if he actually studied the culture and learned the language that it would become as prosaic as anywhere else. He wanted to keep the dream that it was a place of the future. If anything, I don’t think it was xenophobia as much as it was embracing cultural alienation.
- Legogris 6y ago> Cyberpunk was thinly-veiled xenophobia about the Japanese In both Stephenson (Snow Crash doesn't even feature Japan or Japanese much from memory) and Neuromancer, it really strikes me as more of fetishization than xenophobia. At the time, Japan was seen as (and maybe was?) ahead of the curve in sociotechnological development so it's natural to have them prominent in near-future sci-fi at the time.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Cyberpunk was thinly-veiled xenophobia about the Japanese No, it was a not-at-all veiled dystopian vision of neoliberal capitalism as both domestic and global policy trend, along the lines of Thatcher, Reagan, the evolving WTO regime, etc. > but we're now living in that future and it is of course nothing like the dystopia predicted. “Nothing like” is a pretty big exaggeration, though certainly Cyberpunk largely didn't address how the retreat of state control over corporations would turn the state into a powerful vehicle for corporate power, preferring to paint corps as overtly replacing the State. Plus, the technology was too optimistic in lots of ways.