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Portrayals of Latinx Characters in 2020 Video Games Already Have Me Tiredįrom Jack London’s 1906 story “The Unparalleled Invasion,” which painted China as a civilizational terror, to the postmodern Orientalist chaos of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, Western cyberpunk is best understood as a symptom of historic attitudes toward a sinister East.
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‘Unus Annus’ is an Existential ‘Jackass’ For a New Generation.Love, Money, and Supernatural: An Elegy for Destiel.It simply cannot uncouple from the early paranoia of Western society. Despite how well it mirrors aspects of our current relationship with technology, cyberpunk is first and foremost a historical genre. But when sinophobia (a racist fear of China that has been around since America built railroads) has re-emerged as a defining feature of the COVID-19 era, this is a problem.īut as cultural conversations evolve to include better understandings of inclusion and diversity, many are disappointed to see the same historical anxieties echoed in Western cyberpunk, or at least what passes for it on a wider scale. It’s easy to see why the latter resonates with a Western audience that still champions a global pissing contest when it comes to technology. But it’s 2020 now, and cyberpunk has become a sort of catch-all term for a certain look - aesthetic shorthand to describe a gritty near-future dystopia filled with transhumanist tech, corporate overlords, gritty streetside noodle bars, as well as neon Chinese and Japanese signage. If you grew up in the 80s with a soft spot for Blade Runner and Neuromancer, you’re not alone. Second, we’ll see a lot of talk about race in the game, which, by virtue of its name, has become conflated with the cyberpunk genre as a whole. First, CDPR will release Cyberpunk 2077 to its rabid fanbase of gamers amid concerns about labor practices at the notoriously crunchy studio. This December, two things are bound to happen.
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