MOTTA, F. S.; http://lattes.cnpq.br/1022641325895781; MOTTA, Felipe Silva.
Abstract:
This work analyzes how contemporary cyberpunk fiction presents technology as a
structuring element of social stratification in the film Elysium (2013) and what
responses this work offers to this issue after decades of the existence of this
subgenre. This study develops tools that enrich the study of cyberpunk through a
redefinition of the genealogy of the term that forms the subgenre, recognizing two
characteristics that allow for the identification and deeper understanding of this
object: the punk, as an individualized subject; and the cyber, as private technology.
In addition to this contribution, the text argues that cyberpunk is a social
phenomenon. To support this, I draw on theories about capitalism following the rise
of neoliberalism (Fukuyama, 1991; Jameson, 1996; James, 2005; Fisher, 2009;
Byung, 2015; Safatle, 2021), in resonance with Marxist theory on the Machine and
modern machinery (1867). I employ film analysis (Vanoye; Goliot-Lété, 2002; Sorlin,
1985) as the methodological tool to dissect this film and its potential in relation to
society. Through this, it was possible to reflect on cyberpunk not only as a subgenre
of science fiction but also as a social phenomenon (Amaral, 2006; Lemos, 2004) that
emerges in various regions of the world as a reflection of neoliberal policies, as
works that comment on the lack of faith in technology (Berardi, 2019) and the
individualization of subjects. Although cyberpunk is often characterized as a fatalistic
subgenre that reflects the prevailing pessimism of contemporary times and has
captured the imagination since the 1980s, the film Elysium emerges as a kind of
rupture within this dynamic. It takes a different aesthetic direction and approaches
the narrative through actions that not only document that universe but also position
the characters to react to it in ways that structurally change it, opening space for a
new kind of imagination.
