Cyberpunk: An Empty Rebellion
Cyberpunk 2077 is an upcoming Role-Playing Game developed by the Polish-based studio, CD Projekt Red, known for their critically acclaimed games of The Witcher series. The game follows the cyberpunk handbook and takes place in a dark future where society has broken down, with violent gangs running rampant and megacorporations as the only true rule of law. You play as V, a low-life wanting to make it big in the world, you lead them down whatever path you choose in the world of Night City. With its release slated for December, I would like to first have a look at the current status of cultural production that other, “rebellious” or “revolutionary” genres have been influenced by, ones that may have influenced Cyberpunk 2077 and what it reflects on our contemporary society.
For those who may not know, Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction whose themes deal with the impacts of post-industrial capitalism; advanced technology, cyberspace, income inequality, cybernetics, the rise of corporate power, rampant crime, globalization, glocalization, etc. In short, “High-tech, low-life.” Its aesthetic traditionally draws from Japanese and American culture in the 80s and 90s, with neon lights, anime, dated visions of cyberspace, old video games, action films, East Asian street life, and a whole lot of rain. The genre was a product of its time and viewed the world’s material conditions through an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian lens; though, a solution is not always articulated. When it is stated, it is often libertarian such as with The Matrix or Johnny Mnemonic (not a masterpiece, but entertaining either way).
The early Left-wing Accelerationists, Cyber feminists, and Cyberspace Utopians with their Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace viewed cyberspace as a gateway for “new lines of flight” for human liberation from capitalism and, or nation-states.
Well, the year is 2020. The headlines and the pictures today look like they were ripped straight from a cyberpunk novel. Rising right-wing authoritarianism, nation-wide unrest in America, AI, corporations having unfiltered access to private information, 5G, advancing VR, a global economic recession, DeepFakes and Fake News bringing us into a post-truth world, the ascension of a high-tech China, corporations using technology to crush dissent…OH! And global pandemic. Yet, cyberspace is not an avenue for liberation as it was expected to be, instead, it has become a corporately controlled and sanitized zone for addictive escapism, depressive inactivity, yet still being a panopticon to instill self-discipline to constantly be productive.
So what happened?
Part I: Cyber-Territory
Well, we have to go back to the 1970s to meet two French philosophers, Deleuze and Guattari with their book Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In it, they argued that capitalism acts as a deterritorializing force that progressively increases as a historical process. What they mean by a “deterritorializing force” is that it displaces or eradicates previous socioeconomic, political, or cultural systems of a population. For example, a previous system that was deterritorialized by capitalism was the communal farms in Europe that became privatized as the early modern period came about. A more violent example was the Native American tribes throughout continental America that were displaced or eradicated. Now that deterritorialization occurred in Cyberspace, with the realm for the dark future being dominated by corporations, information is controlled and funneled through the banal, corporate pre-approved color schemes. The worsening social ills are distributed on the bright blue and whites (17:25–18:07) of Facebook and Instagram.
Deleuze and Guattari’s theory can also be applied to culture as well, in its production and depictions, including revolutionary culture. Cultural production according to the theorist Raymond Williams, comes from the idea of cultural materialism, which states that the conditions that culture is produced in will create cultural meaning. So, as the modes of cultural production become more and more dictated by corporate schemas and market influences, rather than an expression of art by the artisan or artisans as it was in the past, cultural meaning becomes increasingly defined by capitalism. Moreover, it becomes victim to “Capitalist Realism”, by the late British philosopher Mark Fisher, called capitalism’s “massive desacralization of culture” (Capitalist Realism pg. 6). This phenomenon is part of a larger superstructure of Fisher’s idea of Capitalist Realist, the hegemonic ideology that capitalism is the natural status quo system for humanity, “just the way things are,” so much so that it becomes impossible to imagine any alternative (pg. 16). With that comes the trends of Deleuzoguattarian re/deterritorialization, with Fisher arguing that culture, unlike finance, is subject to reterritorialization. This is no accident, it is a feature of postmodernism, such as with American theorist Fredric Jameson arguing that, in the time of the post-cold war “End of History,” with the victory of neoliberalism, “the failure of the future was constitutive of a postmodern scene which… would be dominated by pastiche and revivalism” (pg.7). One could no longer see any alternative to capitalism by looking into the future because of this, to use Fisher’s language, the future was being canceled, so we begin to look backwards.
Part II: Nothing New Makes It Out Of the Future
This revivalism and reproduction of previous styles and aesthetics, are trends that you are probably aware of. Whether it is reboots of blockbusters of the 80s and 90s, the carbon copied formats of popular music, films dedicated to references or homages, the reusing of trite and cliché themes and tropes, and the constant output of sequels, reboots, prequels, and spin-offs of even the most recent franchises. This is not a moral judgment on people watching or enjoying the mass-produced, popular culture, it would be hypocritical and unproductive for me to do so. Yet, there is a clear and continuing practice of a certain lack of cultural creativity within this corporate hegemony over culture production, which has become more and more dominant. You probably have had the sense that nothing seems new anymore. The old modernist themes and motifs that were adopted in the pop-culture of the 80s and 90s, being that of income inequality, the power of the state, etc. become nothing more than frozen and empty symbols, neutered of any revolutionary or subversive potential. This is the process of capitalist recuperation (or incorporation) of culture.
However, we are now facing a new phenomenon, “precorporation”, in which capitalism no longer needs to neuter the subversive potentials of media (pg. 9). Instead, it now does “pre-emptive formatting and shaping of desires, aspirations, and hopes by capitalist cultures,” meaning that material from the get-go is lacking any subversive or revolutionary potentials, they are, in a way, born sterile. Mark Fisher examines this phenomenon by using the case of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Despite their style being “alternative”, they were still very much inside the mainstream and in fact could be designated as the mainstream alongside other “alternative” or “independent” artists in the 90s, as Fisher explains. He continues by commenting that, “Cobain seemed to give a wearied voice to the despondency of the generation that had come after history, whose every move was anticipated, tracked, bought, and sold before it even happened. Cobain knew that he was just another piece of spectacle, that nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV.”
The same phenomenon applies to Cyberpunk, with the upcoming piece of its cannon being Cyberpunk 2077, the developers play the same themes, tropes, and motifs of the genre. Despite displaying those aspects in a fun, engaging, and well-produced format (one that I am excited to break the bank to play), it still has two key flaws as a medium of art in line with what I have been discussing; firstly, it most likely will not say anything new, and secondly, it will lack any revolutionary or subversive potential to make us critically consider the Cyberpunk future that I assert, we are careening towards, at an accelerating pace.
Part III: Back to the Future
Firstly, Cyberpunk 2077 will most likely not say or provide anything new about the subgenre based on what has been shown in the trailers and promotional materials. One clear example of this is the recycling of the standard tropes, but I would like to go deeper to discuss its allusions and references that the designers use for content. One such allusion that is ripped from William Gibson’s Count Zero is the use of Haitian Cyberpunks, with the in-game gang, the “Voodoo Boys” and their association with AIs existing in Cyberspace, akin to wildlife existing in their habitat, but viewed in a religious light by them. Everything that I have listed in the backstory and descriptions of them derives directly (or indirectly with its first usage in the original tabletop game) from Count Zero. This is not an accusation of CD Projekt Red (the developers) for plagiarizing, just criticism for their lack of originality. However, I honestly believe that there will be some original concepts or ideas in the game, such as discussions on transgenderism and LGBTQ+ issues, but from my avid consumption of the trailers and gameplay clips, I find it to be wanting, since it relates to what Jameson said earlier about the prevalence of “pastiche and revivalism” in culture, how there is nothing new.
My second point is that the game itself would lack any revolutionary potential, as in, the game will not provide an alternative to the brutal system of megacorporate feudalism or the exploitation and violent tribalism of the gangs in Night City. I do not see V (your character) and Johnny Silverhand going to establish a better or new system and uniting the exploited cyborg proletariat in a popular uprising against Arasaka and Militech. But why is this the case? Well, I argue that precorporation not only satisfies our anti-capitalist desires while paradoxically being presented as apolitical, both of which do nothing to critique or challenge the status quo of Capitalist Realism.
Firstly, anti-capitalist art thrives under capitalism. Whether it is the ecological side of things as presented in Avatar and Wall-E or having CEOs and corporations be the bad guy such Umbrella Corp in the Resistant Evil Series, Weyland-Yutani from the Alien franchise, or Nolan Sorrento, the evil CEO from the Ready Player One film. This phenomenon is called by Robert Pfaller, “interpassivity”, in which a piece of media performs our anti-capitalism for us, “allowing us to continue to consume with impunity” (pg. 12). Pfaller was talking about films in his case, but in the case of video games, it is even more interactive than the passive silver screen, so much so that I call it “masturbatory politics”, indulging in the fantasies of a particular ideology without even having to leave your room.
Part IV: Fuck Off, I’m Gaming!
Secondly, the maintenance of the status quo by making media with neutered or sterile “revolutionary” themes appear to be apolitical. This can be found in the discourse surrounding politics in video games. Since the 2010s, there has been an effort by a community in online video game discussions (particularly on YouTube) to “keep politics out of video games,” most notably with the “GamerGate’’ controversy and its muddy and toxic discourse. However, these “politics” or discussion of games through cultural-political lenses, are almost always derided for being done “ crazy far-left radicals”, “ Triggered SJWs”, “radical feminazis” and so on. Whether it is having minority representation or looking at a game through a lens through queer or feminist theory. This assumption that a game is apolitical and discussion or demonstration of politics (real or imagined) is framed as leftists trying to corrupt the game by inserting their own politics and undermining the essence of the game and making not fun. With this in mind, let’s go back to Cyberpunk, we already discussed the politics behind the themes and tropes of it, and how it is an anti-capitalist critique, despite these depictions, discourse around 2077 is still about how it is apolitical. Their beliefs were supposedly confirmed back in June when Quest Designer Pawel Sasko was asked whether the game would say anything about the recent BLM protests, Sasko responded by saying that the game “is not a political statement”. The article lacklusterly points out the incongruity of this by noting the depictions of economic inequality in the game, but some fans, video commentators, and cultural figures in online video game discourse were elated and praised the developers for not making the game political or how the company “REFUSES To Bend The Knee” to BLM as the title of TheQuatering video goes.
Why is this the case? The game has obvious anti-capitalist depictions that even the anti-political proponents acknowledge and accept them to be there. However, any overt mention of left-of-center contemporary political discussions is considered unacceptable, even as a discussion through a lens that is used in academic and critical analysis of art and culture. Why? This links directly back to re/precuperation, the “revolutionary” elements are not able to challenge the Capitalist status quo, if it cannot challenge then it is inside of the status quo, and people consider things inside the status quo “apolitical” because they are not aware that by not engaging in political change they are accepting the status quo. These calls for “apolitical games” are acts that are driven by, in the words of Slavoj Žižek, “pure ideology”. An ideology of a right-wing status quo, willful ignorance or active avoid of the real questions from the left that society must answer.
This framing of Cyberpunk 2077 as apolitical both for the specific case of BLM and the wider political themes and their implications, is cynical. CD Projekt Red absolutely, does not want to alienate any wallets, so framing it as apolitical is matter of “covering their asses” and not being the target of any potential negative PR from online communities. Additionally they are corporation, they do not want to give the idea to their fans about how 2077 plays into our reality in who controls power and what to do with them, it is possible that this is even an unconscious effort because of how engrained into superstructure, Cyberpunk and various other anti-corporate themes in media, have become. The game in which you role plays as a rebel against the evil corporate and violent gang system without providing an answer as to what a society without them would be, screams interpassivity, or what I call “masturbatory politics,” indulging in fantasies without actually doing anything to change the system (especially without having to leave your room). This is exactly how the superstructure survives in the cultural space, by having you continue to talk and posture of an anti-capitalist revolution from your couch or arm-chair.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that I am personally excited to play, however, looking at the cultural production of the game, I hypothesize that the “revolutionary” themes will be lacking of any potential to influence or critique that capitalist superstructure. That very superstructure is what Cyberpunk sought to initially critique but it seems to have be unable to escape becoming embedded into it. In order for us develop cultural pieces to critique neoliberal capitalism, that is slowly sucking the life out of the world’s working class, we must initiate a cultural insurgency. Creating enclaves of creative-thought to develop appealing aesthetics that strike out against superstructure. Balancing the liberty of unorthodoxy and avoiding ideological dogmatism, but also being vigilant against the parasitism if the encompassing superstructure. Lastly, it must not be reliant on the aesthetics of cultural material sof previous revolutions or seek refuge into fantasy. It must expand outward to unite and to embolden the downtrodden of the Earth, for the future may be cancelled, but a created future, we shall make.
Ad Astra Comrades