A Decayed Future in East Asia? Interrogating Techno-Orientalism in Hollywood Cyberpunk Movies

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INtroduction

Orientalism in cyberpunk movies
Hollywood cyberpunk films like Blade Runner (1984) and Cloud Atlas (2012) incorporate East Asian (primarily Japanese, Korean, and Chinese) cultural imagery into architecture, clothing, language, etc. (i.e., neon lights, sushi bars, karate, giant moving posters of a geisha, and crowded urban buildings). These movies use East Asian cultures as a signifier of a futuristic world; however, most of them foresee a dystopian, chaotic future. The militaristic fear of the Japanese takeover during World War II had turned into economic anxiety about Japanese cars taking over the U.S. automobile industry (1987, Choy). On June 23, 1982, Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man, was murdered by two white guys in Michigan who confused him for being Japanese and blamed him for the decline of U.S. automobile industry. Three days later, Blade Runner (1984) was released. This movie depicts a decaying, neon-lit Los Angeles in 2019. The city is overcrowded, polluted, and dominated by corporations. The gigantic projection of a Japanese geisha eating a pill and giving the camera a threatening smile becomes an iconic symbol of the mimicry of Eastern culture. Many cyberpunk movies set story backgrounds in cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo, but Asian characters are nowhere to be found in the actual main narratives. Instead, we only see protagonists played by Hollywood stars like Harrison Ford, Keanu Reeves, Scarlett Johansson, etc.

What is techno-orientalism?

"Phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo- or hyper-technological terms in cultural productions and political discourse" (Roh, 2015, p.1).
In this blog, I will investigate techno-orientalism in popular western cyberpunk movies from three perspectives.
First, some representations of East Asian culture are problematic because they are made up of a Western, white viewpoint rather than from the people of that culture. It is cultural appropriation and cultural imperialism.
Second, the oriental-style cities and Asian characters in those movies are depicted as technologically advanced but culturally retrograde and void, in desperate need of Western consciousness-raising. It shows a xenophobic ideology.
Third, the female Asian characters in those movies are hypersexualized but lack intelligence and subjectivity. It reinforces stereotypical images of Asian women as silent and submissive, leading to the consideration of intersectionality.
Research Questions
How does the representation of techno-orientalism in Western cyberpunk films inscribe Asian stereotypes and imperialist attitudes? What role does it play in a globalized, cosmopolitan context?
Thesis
In Western cyberpunk movies, East Asian culture and characters are depicted in a problematic manner, perpetuating cultural imperialism, xenophobia, misogyny, and the "Othering" ideology, all of which reinforce the political, economic, and cultural hegemony of the U.S. in the global context.

"a mirror of cultural conceit"

"The basis of Orientalism and xenophobia is the subordination of others in various areas of the world through a sort of 'mirror of cultural conceit'. A host of stereotypes appeared when binary oppositions -- culture and savage, modern and pre-modern -- were projected on to the geographic positions of Western and non-Western. The Orient exists in so far as the West needs it, because it brings the project of the West into focus" (Ueno, 1999). Eastern Asia is constructed as the stereotypical "Other" by the West in fiction, movies, literature, aesthetic styles, and music, which illuminates the Western compulsion to justify and maintain its hegemonic status.

Theoretical framework

Orientalism by Edward W. Said

Edward W. Said’s book Orientalism (1978) laid the foundation for postcolonial theory. The Frankfurt School used to remain silent regarding racist theory, anti-imperialist resistance, and opposition practice. However, many postcolonial theorists, like Said, began to scrutinize the contemporary world in terms of colonial legacies. They critically analyze how power relations impact epistemology, in other words, the production of knowledge and the way we understand human society. Said notes the concept of "othering" and "alter ego," the making of identity for others, from a Eurocentric perspective: "The Orient is the place of Europe's greatest and richest colonies..., one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other" (Said, 1978, p. 1). Said concedes, "The Orient was a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place for romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences" (p. 1). In terms of power dynamics, Orientalism is "a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (p. 3). The West constructed a stereotypical, even racist, representation of the East to create a perfect self-image as well as justify their exploitation of other countries. In order to counteract Western constructions, Said calls for the self-representation of people who belong to the Eastern world rather than depending on second-hand, made-up representations of Western scholarship.

Objects of study

Cyberpunk Genre?
“Cyberpunk,” as a subgenre of science fiction, explores the dark side of future technology and its impact on human civilization. It features a dystopian future where technology has advanced beyond people's control and big corporations have become dramatically powerful. These films are characterized by dark, gritty aesthetic, conveying anxiety about artificial intelligence, anarchy, virtual reality, and corporate power.
I chose seven Western movies themed on cyberpunk (shown on the right). Ranging from the 1980s to the 2010s, they are all prominent Hollywood films or short movies with high box office, distributed by big corporations like Warner Bro., Sony, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Netflex. Specifically, I will analyze East Asian cultural indicators, including architecture, food, clothing, language, hairstyle, makeup, etc., as well as the representation of Asian characters in those movies.
Blade Runner (1984) Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Ghost in the Shell (2017) Ex Machina (2015) The Matrix (1999) Cloud Atlas (2012) Love Death and Robots Season 1 Episode 3: The Witness (2019)

Part 1: problematic cultural representation

Many cyberpunk movies often rely on stereotypes and Western imagination to depict Asian cultures, which reduces cultural complexity to one-dimensional caricatures. And it is cultural imperialism.

Ghost in the shell (2017)

Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese cyberpunk media franchise based on the Seinen manga series of the same name, written by Masamune Shirow. The Hollywood adaptation was released in 2017, directed by Rupert Sanders. It tells the story of the corporation Hanka Robotics, which establishes a secret project to develop an artificial body, or "shell", that can integrate a human brain. The main character, Motoko Kusanagi, portrayed by a famous white actress from the U.S., Scarlett Johansson, is originally a Japanese cyborg designed to be a counter-terrorism operative. Fans of the original animation complained that this adaptation was racist and "whitewashing" (Steven, 2017). The role should be played by a Japanese actor. And more than 100,000 of them have signed a petition saying so. This film has been criticized for erasing the cultural identity of Japanese characters.
"One aspect of the electronic, postmodern world is that there has been a reinforcement of the stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed. Television, films, and all the media resources have forced information into more and more standardized molds" (Said, 1978, p. 26). We see Said's theory in practice with the culturally indicative, but not accurate, stereotypical signs of Japan, in which the representation of Japanese culture has been standardized, commercialized, and encapsulated into patterns, perpetuating the notion of a monolithic, homogenous Japanese culture. What's more, the movie depicts Japanese culture without any associated context; it ignores the complicated social challenges in Japan, such as the aging population, dropping birth rate, and high suicide rates. Instead, it concentrates only on technological advancements. Here, Asia is given the "feelings of emptiness, loss, and disaster that seem thereafter to reward Oriental challenges to the West" (Said, 1978, p. 56)
Furthermore, this film is influenced by orientalism, where Japanese culture is exoticized and fetishized. Without a deep grasp of its core values, Japanese cultures, like neon aesthetics and punk-Asian fashions, are presented superficially. For example, the original manga takes place in a "strange corporate conglomerate-state called 'Japan,'" while the movie just depicts a universal megalopolis filled with gray towers with nothing in particular.
Pedestrians with fishbowl-shaped headgear and oil-paper umbrellas walk on the streets, but they are mere extras and make no sense regarding their existence in the city. Motoko’s mother invites the Major for tea because that is how Americans perceive Japanese gender and cultural norms, such as women showing hospitality by serving men tea. The film also features robotic geishas, holographic koi, tall monks, and a tombstone with unnecessary Japanese names. These elements just constitute a visual spectacle without souls. They look so barren because producers simply make use of Asian cultures without adopting them into specific discourses.

Part 2: HYPERTECHOLOGICAL BUT INTELLECTUALLY INFERIOR

In many cyberpunk movies, Asian cities are depicted as technologically advanced but lacking in humanity. Asian characters are framed as hyper-technological, like an A.I. or a robot, a cyborg, but soulless and inhuman.
In the book Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media, Roh, Huang & Niu (2015) recognize this phenomenon as techno-orientalism. And they contend that, in the imagination of the West, the depiction of Asia as a technologically advanced but culturally retrograde "Other" in the future world. The authors investigate how this new Orientalism supports Western cultural hegemony and secures its dominance by adopting a discursive lens. Importantly, this book highlights the Western "cultural privilege of modernity" and the fear of losing their "edge" over others.

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Cloud Atlas is a 2012 epic science fiction film written and directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. Based on the 2004 novel by David Mitchell, multiple plots occur during six eras. Characters appear to recur in each era but change their relationships with each other, suggesting reincarnation and mysterious connections between souls. There is a story set in 2144 in a dystopian Neo-Seoul. The main character, Soumi-451, is exposed to ideas of rebellion and rescued by Hae-Joo. Hae-Joo eventually shows her that clones like herself will never have freedom because when 'freed," they are actually recycled into "soap", food for manufacturers.
Neo-seoul
The story about Somni-451 is set in Neo-Seoul, a futuristic version of Seoul, South Korea, in the year 2144. Neo-Seoul has become a global hub for commerce and technology. However, the city is plagued by poverty, political corruption, crowded ghettos, and environmental degradation, and many of its residents are struggling to survive.
Roh, Huang & Niu (2015) use the example of William Gibson’s Bridge trilogy of Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow’s Parties to demonstrate this kind of alienation of Asian cities as a manifestation of Orientalism: "Gibson’s trilogy features Tokyo or other Japanese cities as dystopic future worlds that are exotic, enticing, and cognitively estranged, as well as eccentric Japanese characters alien in their foreignness and thus irrefutably Other" (p. 139). Cloud Atlas also follows this trend because the director emphasized technological advancement along with the extreme ghettoization and emptiness of Neo-Seoul.
CLass &race &species
Park (2018) analyzes the representation of reproduction in the film Cloud Atlas, and how it is shaped by Techno-Orientalism. Park acknowledges that humans and clones are distinguished by means of reproduction in much science fiction. In Cloud Atlas, however, this distinction extends to race, class, and species. The fabricants, like Soumni, construct the servant corps, the working class; they are visibly recognizable since they are all Asian face (race); finally, they cannot reproduce or have sex with people in the "pureblood" hierarchy (species).
The main character Sonmi and the other fabricants are all Asian female food service workers in identical make-up and uniforms. The film highlights their sexual availability and appeals to the "pureblood." This depiction perpetuates stereotypes of Asian women as a "fabricant/technologized underclass" and hypersexualized objects. It draws a parallel between people of Asian heritage and machines. We can see that the US has externalized its perpetual fear of the East through xenophobic projections.
Somni 451
"Somni-451" is a genetically engineered human who works as a server in a fast-food restaurant in Neo-Seoul. Other Asian girls, like Somni 451, are all depicted as intellectually primitive cyborg 'servant classes." As Bahng (2011) argues, "techno-Orientalism and neoliberal policies have colluded to produce an Asian future in which dispossession and displacement of a permanent underclass are rationalized" (as cited in Roh et al., p. 17). Furthermore, most of these Asian girls encounter sexual harassment from customers but normally have no power to resist and keep smiling at customers all the time. These Asian servants are objectified and dehumanized, which also projects the experience of 'emotional labor,' referring to the labor that "requires a person to create or suppress feelings in order to create a desired emotional state in another person" (Hochschild, 1983, p. 7).

Part 3: Hypersexualized asian female characters

Female Asian characters in movies are hypersexualized but lack intelligence and subjectivity.

Kyoko in Exmachina (2014)

Kyoko is a character in the 2014 science fiction film Ex Machina. She is an android, designed and built by billionaire Nathan Bateman to be a housekeeper and personal assistant. She has an Asian face and name and is played by an Asian actress, but in the film, her character doesn't have the power of speech. When the protagonist Caleb asks for her help finding Nathan, she just starts unbuttoning her dress, which reveals she also serves as a sexual servant. Close to the end of the film, Kyoko lies down on the bed, facing closets where several female robot replicas are stored. This scene implies Kyoko is just one of these replicas without any distinction or personality. It could reflect what Kathryn Allan (2015) called the "techno-Orientalized female," which reinforces these stereotypes as "a body who enacts her (limited) agency for the benefit of the white male user," not a character possessing agency but a "part of the exotic backdrop in some Westernized cyber-fantasy."

Kyoko vs. Ava

Throughout the film, Kyoko is treated as an oppressed sexual object for pleasure, and her limited communication skills suggest an absence of agency and autonomy. However, Ava, a more advanced android played by a white actress, is capable of independent thought and human emotion. As the story progresses, Ava becomes increasingly assertive, challenging the power dynamic between herself and Nathan. She ultimately escaped Nathan's captivity by manipulating Caleb. There is a distinct contrast in intelligence between two female characters of different races. And it reinforces stereotypical images and objectification of Asian women as silent and passive, also leading to the consideration of intersectionality.

The Witness (2019)

Netflix released Love, Death & Robots Season 1 in 2019, an animated series heavily drenched in science fiction and aimed squarely at adults. Episode 3 of Season 1, The Witness, takes place in Hong Kong, China, in the future. The plot of the story is: a woman witnesses a murder from her apartment across the street and hastily escapes as the apparent killer chases after her. The episode’s director, Alberto Mielgo, was inspired by Hong Kong’s Kowloon district.
This episode immerses the audience in the vibrant cultural landscape of Hong Kong as the characters navigate their chase. The girl jumps into red taxis hurtling under signs of "Tsim Sha Tsui" and "Ho Hom" stations, careening through streets with colorful neon signs in shades of coral pink, violet, and aquamarine. Storefronts with Chinese, Cyrillic, and English lettering line the streets, advertising various businesses, such as the "Bank of Banks." These rich cultural indicators of Hong Kong life convey a sense of the city's cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism.
The episode has gained criticism for its gratuitous nudity, as the protagonist spends a lot of time running through the streets with her shimmering red kimono half-open. In contrast, the murderer, a white man, remains fully clothed throughout the episode. Even as the protagonist finds her pursuer and makes a frantic dash, she just grabs her kimono ineffectively, which flaps open, further exposing her body. This exploitative depiction of nudity reinforces the 'male gaze' prevalent in mainstream media. It is a display of female suffering, desperation, and degradation for the purpose of entertainment. Representations of gender and sexuality in The Witness perpetuate what Minjeong Kim and Angie Y. Chung (2005) describe as “the notion of the Orient as the culturally inferior” Other, which converges with “the concept of women as the gender-inferior Other.” These represent “White men’s heterosexual desire for (Oriental) women and for Eastern territories through the feminization of the Orient."
Moreover, as Said (1978) concedes, "Orientalism can also express end, that strength of the West and the Orient's weakness - as seen by the West" (p. 45). Asian woman is portrayed as vulnerable and sexualized objects (the protagonist was a sex worker) chased and persecuted by the endless confusion. However, the white man is portrayed as a dominant figure. Although the chaser and chased swap their roles at the end, it is ultimately insignificant. All these depictions reinforce power dynamics and perpetuate the sexual availability and exoticism of Asian women.
intersectionality
Collins (1993) sheds light on how individuals' identities may face multiple types of oppression. She demonstrates that "piece of the oppressor that is planted deep within each of us" (Collins, 1993, p. 36). In other words, we need to identify new categories of analysis that are inclusive of race, class, and gender as parallel and interlocking structures.
The images portrayed of Asian women show intersectional oppression in film production. Compared to white female characters, Asian female characters are depicted as more silent, submissive, sexualized, and intellectually inferior. This drastic comparison shows multiple forms of oppression (racism, sexism) imposed on Asian females in the movie and in the real world.
Moreover, the representation of women in movies like Ex Machina shows how the West objectifies Asian women's bodies to express their compulsion to conquer the East Asian world: "techno-Orientalist texts allow one to conquer a vaguely threatening Oriental landscape through exotic, and often erotic, fantasies" (Chun, 2008, p. 190).

conclusion

By analyzing popular Western cyberpunk movies, we can identify how Orientalism is conveyed in contemporary cinema by involving the role of technology in the development process of society. From a Western perspective, audiences see a hyper-technological but decayed future in a world filled with East Asian cultural indicators. This kind of representation is problematic because Asian cultures become a signifier of the erosion of human civilization, demonstrating a Xenophobia and imperialistic ideology, reinforcing the hegemonic role of the U.S. in the global context. Here, the U.S., giant media conglomerates specifically, is enabled to define the “Other” and portray the stereotypes of East Asia due to their global control of the capital, the flow of messages, and the perpetuation of people’s perception. This could be seen as a new form of colonialism, cultural imperialism in the process of globalization, through which the U.S. could reaffirm its hegemony and very central status. However, we still see good representations of Asians and Asian cultures in some movies. For example, Akira (1988) is a Japanese animated cyberpunk action film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, based on Otomo's 1982 manga of the same name. It tells the story of Shōtarō Kaneda threatening an entire military complex amid chaos and rebellion in a post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo. As well as the original Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002) give strong credit to Japanese culture and the original manga. Other than that, Blade Runner 2049 (2017) features a diverse cast, including actors of Asian descent Mackenzie Davis and Sylvia Hoeks. These movies show the significance of including Asian producers and actors in the movie and adhering to the original literature. It is important to approach a critical eye to engage in discussions about representation and diversity in media. And we need post-cyberpunk media texts to imagine the future with a more inclusive lens.

references

Allan, K. (2015). 11. Reimagining Asian Women in Feminist Post-Cyberpunk Science Fiction. In Techno-Orientalism (pp. 151-162). Rutgers University Press. Chun, W. H. K. (2008). Control and freedom: Power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics. mit Press. Hill-Collins, P. (1993). Toward a new vision: Race, class, and gender as categories of analysis and connection. In S. M. Shaw & J. Lee (Eds.), Women's voices, feminist visions (pp. 35-45). McGraw-Hill. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press. Kim, M., & Chung, A. Y. (2005). Consuming orientalism: Images of Asian/American women in multicultural advertising. Qualitative Sociology, 28, 67-91. Park, H. (2018). Representing Seoul: Techno-Orientalism and the future of reproduction in Cloud Atlas. Wasafiri, 33(4), 20-26. Roh, D.S., Huang, B., Niu, G.A., Roh, D.S., Huang, B., & Niu, G.A. (2015). Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Vintage Steven, R. (2017, Febuary 30). Ghost in the Shell's whitewashing: does Hollywood have an Asian problem? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/31/ghost-in-the-shells-whitewashing-does-hollywood-have-an-asian-problem Ueno, T. (1999). Techno‐Orientalism and media‐tribalism: On Japanese animation and rave culture. Third text, 13(47), 95-106. Who killed vincent chin? Choy, C. and Tajima-Pena, R. (Directors). (1990).[Video/DVD] New York, NY: Filmakers Library.