CHAPTER 2.2: CYBERPUNK'S HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The cyberpunk subgenre is saturated with evocative, frantic depictions of technology such as the one above. Snippets of the prose like "transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity" and "fluid neon origami trick" (Gibson 52) emphasize the complexity of these hypothetical virtual environments. They also evoke the pared back visuals of rudimentary 3D models. Describing cyberspace as restrained by a "transparent 3D chessboard" (Gibson 52) brings to mind wireframes—the underlying structure of virtual 3D objects with the surface texture stripped away. Wireframes are a rare sight for the mainstream audience to see in the contemporary era of photo-realistic Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI), but in the 1980's when Neuromancer was released, the skeletons of 3D models held as much novelty as the finished products. Like the phone booths scattering AT&T's near-future in the "You Will" commercial series, the mention of wireframes are a visual indicator of the time period that Neuromancer was conceived in. Cyberpunk is filled with these indicators.Disk beginning to rotate, faster, becoming a sphere of paler gray. Expanding — And flowed, flowered
for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of his distance less home, his country, transparent 3D
chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern
Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high
and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach. And
somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft, distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release
streaking his face. (52)
Dynamic renditions of the proto-Internet, cybernetics, and the pervasive branding of late stage capitalism were all on display in cyberpunk, resulting in a retrofuture firmly placed in the concerns and confusion of the Reagan era. Curiously, cyberpunk’s visual language and conceptual framework surrounding questions of physicality threatened by the rise of digital tech has stuck around longer than other science-fiction retrofutures. While the bulbous chrome jetpacks and spaceships of Atomic Age science-fiction is mainly viewed by the mainstream as “[being] gaudy and naive, and possessed by half-baked fantasies of power and wish-fulfillment” (Sterling), cyberpunk’s brand of neon-drenched, wired-in cynicism remains at large in our contemporary cultural conscious. Classic cyberpunk’s design toolkit has been encoded within our blueprints of the future, despite cyberpunk—in its original form, as a response to technological fear and disruptions in the 1980’s—being an outdated viewpoint.
Cyberpunk’s representation of non-Western societies, and these societies’ proximity to speculative futures, has calcified. From Altered Carbon to Snow Crash, the near-future American urban landscapes of cyberpunk are outlined in glowing East Asian scripts, especially Chinese and Japanese characters. Even though an argument could be made that this is supposed to represent the international nature of American cyberpunk cities, this does not explain why other scripts are not seen as frequently. It would be a surprise to see a string of Devanagari for example, even though it’s another writing system used on a global level. Cyberpunk’s reliance on cliched images of East Asia stems from its origins as a response to the changing geopolitical scene of the 1980s. With China and Japan both establishing themselves as rivals to the technological and infrastructural development of America, cyberpunk authors reinterpreted the countries as goalposts along the track to the future. This also has historical precedent when the practices of the West’s Orientalist gaze are taken into account. There might be a surplus of East Asian visual and cultural indicators throughout the cities that populate cyberpunk, but they are only made relevant in their relation to how they alter the Western foundation. White characters tend to dominate major examples of the genre, populating speculative futures made of collaged non-Western references—and yet strangely devoid of non-White characters at the forefront.
With the amount of attention and resources CD Projekt Red has at hand, it would have been possible for them to have created a cyberpunk setting that subverts the marginality of non-Western cultures and people. Instead, Cyberpunk 2077 seems determined to repeat tropes and cliches from the subgenre. This doesn’t only hold true for its representations of multiculturalism in Night City and the techno-Orientalist tradition of using East Asian cultural references as decoration. In the following section, we will take a look at how Cyberpunk 2077 relates itself to the fictional technologies in its setting, and how it is participating in a larger, genre-specific dialogue about how people use virtual space.