Removing Blade Runner

version

Well-known member
eXistenZ 's near-future vision is set in a countryside littered with old buildings now being used for something other than their original function. This move away from the city comes out of a decision made by Cronenberg with regular collaborators Carol Spier (production designer) and Peter Suschitsky (director of photography) to remove from this world everything people would expect from a sci-fi movie about game playing. There are no computers, computer screens, televisions, sneakers, watches, clocks, jewellery or suits. The result of this multiplication of minor subtractions is perfectly subliminal: you can feel the operation of a 'look', but its exact nature is elusive.

"I removed Blade Runner, basically," admits Cronenberg. "The production design of that movie has a weird life of its own. It's almost as if that world exists. It's a very interesting phenomenon. Instead, we were replicating some of the style of some video games. If you want a character to wear a plaid shirt, it takes up a lot of memory, so it's much easier if he has a solid beige shirt. So I was trying to replicate the blandness or blockiness of the polygon structure of some games."

Game Boy: On Cronenberg's eXistenZ - https://web.archive.org/web/20180916045339/http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/149

This is something I keep coming back to. Blade Runner is everywhere at this point and more an adjective and aesthetic than anything, but it's also a very specific vision of the future rooted in things like 1980s Japan and one which has somehow asserted itself as THE vision of the future. It's gotten to the point where it feels as though plenty of people are willing it into reality, they want to live in it and are taking their cues from it.

I don't think eXistenZ is a particularly brilliant film and I do love the whole BR thing, but I appreciate Cronenberg's attempt to completely bin "Blade Runner" as an aesthetic, if only as an act of defiance. It fits in with this odd subset of films which feel as though they're simultaneously set in both the past and the future, stuff like Burton's Batman films, Barton Fink, Dark City and the Naked Lunch adaptation, this strange juxtaposition of the 1920s to 1950s with science fiction and fantastical technology.
 
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muser

Well-known member
I loved eXistenZ and had never really thought about the lack of stereotypical sci-fi settings and cliches, it's such an original execution of an idea anyway. Definitely would have taken focus away from the, very cronenbergesque body-horror, organic take on future tech if they were all in flying cars in crumbling futurescapes.
 

luka

Well-known member
I recently rewatched existenz and it hadn't aged as well as I'd expected it to but it's still a really fun film
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I never liked the film Existennz but yeah that is interesting. I think sci-fi authors do have to either actively propose and design something different to the few visions that exist - or else just go fuck it we'll set it in what is effectively Blade Runner world or, I dunno, Dune World or make it some post-apocalyptic thing. Most opt for just picking something that exists and putting their story there I guess.

It fits in with this odd subset of films which feel as though they're simultaneously set in both the past and the future, stuff like Burton's Batman films, Barton Fink, Dark City and the Naked Lunch adaptation
This could also be a description of steam punk.
 

version

Well-known member
I recently rewatched existenz and it hadn't aged as well as I'd expected it to but it's still a really fun film

I love the bit in the restaurant when he pieces the "gristle gun" together.

 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Isn't the Apple aesthetic quite influential nowadays on how we picture the future? All soft curved edges, blank or glass surfaces, minimalist design, frictionless.
 

version

Well-known member
True, everything looks like a cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Big Brother house.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
That style existed before apple. They just made their own brushed steel, smoked glass and chrome version. Sexy brutalism.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
best-pixar-movie-romance.jpg
 

version

Well-known member
A lot of the weird cyberpunky dystopian things are already here. You've got people with robotic limbs, people putting usb drives in their bodies, VR, mass-surveillance and there are cities that look like this:

201352521342991578.jpg
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
That's what I meant when I said about how there are a few visions of the future - it's like do we go for 2001, Alien, Blade Runner? It's easier than coming up with your own. I mean in films not reality... though it could also be arguably true here too, I did like what you said "It's gotten to the point where it feels as though plenty of people are willing it into reality" - it's weird people like the film but it's not exactly utopian is it? We'd rather live in a sexy cool cyber world than a nice/good one.
 

version

Well-known member
I did like what you said "It's gotten to the point where it feels as though plenty of people are willing it into reality" - it's weird people like the film but it's not exactly utopian is it? We'd rather live in a sexy cool cyber world than a nice/good one.

It's something I keep turning over in my head. This idea that we could end up in that world simply because people love the aesthetic of a particular film rather than it just sort of happening organically. It's like the aliens in Galaxy Quest basing their entire civilisation around the show.
 

version

Well-known member
When I look at stuff like that shot of Shenzhen, I can't help but think of Gibson's adage: "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed."
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
It'll all be one big Kowloon Walled City one day

Peddlers selling one hits of phrack dust for 30 sheqs to the gloobs and the blow boys. Always having to walk around the alleys with reinforced umbrellas made out of mountain bike wheels and aluminum to protect you from all manner of unidentifiable liquids and deadly objects falling down at random. Our holographic latex fantasuits programmable to expand or contract into any body shape we desire, serving the dual purpose of sanitising us against the festering infections and contagious ulcers which are now a given with all human contact. Underneath the suits we're all emaciated and pasty. Beer will be the only drinkable liquid. Price graded by how many levels of recycling it's been through. There's no governing authority to actually check. 25 will be seen as old. lukism will be the cryptic scripture which has taken the place of religion. No one understands it, all make of it what they will and it's splintered off into a million fragments, containing at max 7 people subscribing to each interpretation. You get married through an app. All organised, you have no say in any of it. Droid is the only ordained citizen. Barty the only musician who plays a tresilo laden wedding march with his own vocal imitations of bounty killa because no media exists anymore after the big tabula rasa purge by the xarworq generation. No more music for 5 years they said, 50 years later it's almost like people forgot it even existed. Except barty.
 

version

Well-known member
lukism will be the cryptic scripture which has taken the place of religion. No one understands it, all make of it what they will and it's splintered off into a million fragments, containing at max 7 people subscribing to each interpretation.

 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=14605&page=2

Social media is just one component in a broader cultural attempt to humanise the future. Depictions of the future throughout the 20th century were cold and austere, reflecting a fear that transhumanism was synomous with dehumanization. As the transhuman future’s become more impending however, there’s been an attempt to counteract this narrative by showing that rather than technology dehumanising humans, humans will humanise, and even infantilise, technology. Where Apple used the dystopian visual language of 1984 and Metropolis in their 1984 advertising campaign, Amazon’s Alexa is portrayed in domestic environments as being part of the family. Robot characters in films like ‘Her’ and ‘Big Hero 6’ are far more warm and personable than ostensibly human characters in films like Clockwork Orange and The Matrix. This humanised technology is apparent in the real world too with the likes of Siri and Russian social media ‘bots’.

Dancehall and mumble rap have been at the vanguard of this phenomenon in music. The Auto-Tuned man-child nature of artists such as Alkaline and Lil Yachty appeal to the same desire for an infantile future as Wall E. However it goes deeper than that. Technological innovations in music over the previous decades, such as drum machines, samplers and synthesisers, had been about removing the human element in music. By contrast Auto-Tune imbues a machine-like sound with humanity. In many respects, 2010’s dancehall and rap have sought to humanise the techno-logical innovations of 90’s dance music. Alkaline and Tommy Lee Sparta’s screeched, Auto-Tune whines are reminiscent of rave-era pitched shifted ‘chipmunk’ vocal samples as heard on tracks like D Force’s ‘Original Bad Boy’. Todd Edwards’ cut and paste ‘vocal science’ can be heard in the interlocking, kaleidoscope flows of mumble rappers like Migos. The faceless anonymity of 90’s techno has also been replaced. In artists like Tommy Lee Sparta, identity is not hidden, but rather obscured through incessant malleability.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I liked that Pattycakes... it could really be the blurb on the back of any bog-standard sci-fi book you could pull off the shelf in a shop
 
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