Idk if this is the right place but I'm posting anyways. Idk what I'm posting, but I'm posting it anyways.
So someone on The Bad Website came up with the brilliant idea of updating the Orientalist racism underpinning the cyberpunk genre (yes, Aliens is cyberpunk, don't @ me, or do, happy to discuss) for the 21st century and I thought the idea of a Musk-Xinping partnership was funny. After all, Musk is a socialist /s
Also wanted to ask if there's any other Alien fans on here. Trying to set up a Discord RP.
Ah, the Elon-Jinping corporation, the only entity more powerful than the Bill-Jack corporation
Man I so disagree with your take that Aliens is cyberpunk. It doesn't have any of the traditional aesthetics or much of the technology associated with the genre. For all we know the internet doesn't exist in the Aliens universe and everything is just using radio waves across space. Sure there's the androids, but the cybernetic technology is wholly separate from real people. We don't see Ripley with a cyborg arm or any sort of tech built into her head. The androids work more as an allegory of the bio-tech fusion being totally alien to humanity (which is further reinforced by the biomechanical aspects of the xenomorph and the alien ships) than as a transhumanist theme like in most cyberpunk works.
I don't see how it could fall under that category but I'd love to hear your take on why you think it should
Thematically, Alien is cyberpunk. You have the megacorps, government take over by said megacorps, the orientalism, the techno-pessimism, the class divides, poverty, social decay, etc.
What's different is mainly aesthetics, which makes sense. It's in space, not a crowded city. Most of the settings are isolated and industrial, so they won't be lit up with neon and bright advertisements. The criminal/vagrant underclass that's ubiquitous in cyberpunk isn't going to be invited into these sensitive facilities, so even the janitors are more boujee than you'd expect to see on Earth.
We see ecological collapse, mass communication technology, and other traditional cyberpunk elements (including cybernetics, iirc) elsewhere in the extended universe, though not in the main films. The internet doesn't really work in space when signals take years to reach their destination, but an automated retinal display beaming propaganda directly into your eye, automatically flipping channels until it senses that you're sufficiently mesmerized by the newest cult sermons does appear in some of the old comics.
Prove that Blade Runner and Alien aren’t part of the same sprawling universe.
The main difference is the Replicants are more human on the inside than the Androids in Alien.
Didn’t the crew of the Nostromo have to take a multiple year detour to check on the Alien stuff and they weren’t trained for it and they wouldn’t be compensated? That’s cyberpunk.
One of the extras from one of the movies places them in the same universe. Alien is very much "high tech low life." Shitty working conditions aboard a space ship ship that is run down and kept in barely functioning order? Yeah that's cyberpunk.
Fair enough. I wasn't considering anything outside of the first two films, and I guess I can see your point considering what I remember from the few comics I read in the extended universe
I’m with you on Aliens being cyberpunk, but how in earth is the idea that the most powerful corporation on earth is an English-Japanese partnership racist Orientalism?
Like, there’s def. an argument to be made for shit like Neuromancer and Blade Runner, but Alien?
So I had a whole reply typed up, but the site is acting up.
I'll just say that, in the lore, Weyland is a successful Anglo-capitalist company. Great innovations that make life better for everyone, and makes a killing in the process, but still goes bankrupt. It's then bought by Yutani, a rising Japanese conglomerate. Weyland-Yutani then goes on to swindle and basically subserviate the US government. I see that as an Orientalist trope at the root of the cyberpunk genre (not the aesthetic).
So, yes. Alien did latch on to Orientalist trends in contemporary sci-fi. However, Weyland-Yutani is presented as basically Anglo-American in the franchise and it delivers a strong anticapitalist message without ever demonizing Asians. Come to think of it, I don't recall any Asians in the movies... Oh well. I'd say it's disputable. I would call it Orientalist, though derived from cliche instead of racism. I understand if other's don't think that bit of lore makes it Orientalist.
You meet Robert (?) Weyland in Prometheus though, and he’s like the primary antagonist of the movie, so Weyland Corp was evil already before the merger. Where did you get the lore you’re referring to from?
I ask not because I want to keep arguing about whether the movies are racist or not (I’m sure they could be when viewed through the right critical lens) but out of an unrepentant nerdy obsession with the universe of the Alien movies.
Yes, I suppose that's correct. It's after his death that the Yutani corporation buys Weyland Corp.
