Cyberpunk is a subgenre science fiction that is rooted in a concept that right now is impossible to go out of style, simply because it is our daily bread: high technology, but low standard of living. A contradiction that is usually shown in an immense difference between the rich, who are becoming more so, while the lower-middle class loses purchasing power.
The cyberpunk style has been felt not only in literature or the audiovisual world but also in music, video games, fashion ...
Yesterday's cinema recommended today
On a social level, the cities that are portrayed in dystopias unflattering, they show great economic differences in impoverished social structures although visually they are very attractive in which the suspicion towards large and powerful corporations it breaks the confidence of the individual.
The term was coined in the 80s and continues in use because there are many productions that continue to delve into cyberpunk. However, the first film he started with is from 1965, by the visionary Jean-Luc Godard, who probably drank in his Alphaville tape from a very interesting and recommendable source: the novel "A Happy World" by Aldous Huxley.
The emergence of the subgenre came from the hand of Blade Runner, since Ridley Scott generated a tremendously attractive and visionary fictional universe.
Philip K. Dick It has been one of its most intense sources, as in other titles in which cyberpunk has been an authentic reference such as Minority Report, Paycheck or A look into the dark.
Points in common: the individual in struggle against the system, aesthetics countercultural, the city as a character as powerful as any other of flesh and blood and the future shown as a direct threat to private freedoms.
Other great productions that we cannot fail to mention would be Tetsuo, the iron man, Gattaca, the Matrix trilogy, Robocop and even Pi, faith in chaos, that dense film of Darren Aronofsky that his genius as a filmmaker revealed to us.
Cyberpunk + Anime = Movies
Anime has collected in its films the cyberpunk style and the futuristic design since Akira, which we can consider the first reference through such interesting films as Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Silent Möbius or Ghost in the Shell.
In its retrofuturistic variant called steampunk (Victorian uchronic period linked to science fiction and fantasy) we can also find great examples like many of the works of Hayao Miyazaki in the vein of Howl's Moving Castle or The Curious Steamboy directed by Katsuhiro Otomo.
Postcyberpunk a new label or is it that we have changed so much?
In the 90s a new term began to be used, the postcyberpunk to refer to a variant of cyberpunk in which technological developments in societies are also shown in the near future, focusing on global telecommunications, genetic engineering or nanotechnology and their effects on society.
The differentiating characteristic is that individuals are no longer directly overwhelmed but are an active part that tries to improve social conditions or protect themselves against increasing decline. A ray of hope? Yes something like that.
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