There Is No Spoon

“There is no spoon.” That was me earlier this week trying to find something in my dorm room to stir the sugar into my tea. I ended up using a toothbrush, but that’s not the point. The point is that the child in The Matrix that uttered this iconic line looks an awfully lot like a Buddhist monk. He’s wearing a draped cloth over one shoulder, and his head is completely shaven. In fact, if you scour the rest of the movie, you’ll find a lot of East Asian allusions. The spoon child is not the only one in the room. Just seconds before, we see a shot of another similarly garbed child reading a red book with characters on the front. And isn’t the overall theme of The Matrix with “transcending your reality” an inherently Buddhist notion? But there’s more than subtle spiritual references. Our hero’s training montage culminates in a battle between him and Morpheus. A Kung Fu battle. Inside of a traditional-looking dojo. Even the opening scrawl of lime green code is not filtering in from left to right as it would in America, but trickling down top to bottom. Similar to the way that Japanese and Chinese are read. The overall effect gives one the impression of characters more so than numbers.*

 

“But Bridget,” you say, “this is a one-off.” Oh my young padawan, but is it? Let’s talk about “Johnny Mnemonic.” His story is filled with corporations like “Ono-Sendai” or musicians like “Sony Mao,” neither of which sound like particularly Western names. Similarly, the mafia that’s out to kill him? They’re called the Yakuza. That literally translates to “eight, nine, three,” which is the losing hand in a Japanese gambling game and is further defined as “a Japanese organized crime syndicate similar to the Mafia” (Lexico). At the end of the short story, we have a much more distinct reference: Johnny is smoking a “Chinese filtertip” (Gibson).

 

Once you start noticing these East Asian influences, you start seeing them everywhere. You see them every time they speak Mandarin in Firefly. You see them reflected in the architecture and setting of The Blade Runner. Heck, you see them in Big Hero 6 where they live in a city called San Fransokyo. It seems that cyberpunk and East Asia have a lot in common. Which brings me to my main argument: the reason we find these East Asian allusions in the cyberpunk genre so believable is because in many places throughout East Asia, they’re actually living out a cyberpunk reality.

 

Think about the smog that shrouds Shanghai. Or the glittering neon of Taipei at night. Or the robotic espresso machine sellers in Japan. All of these aspects would fit right in in Zion or Nighttown. To Westerners, who are the main target audience of these two pieces of media, East Asia is a new (relatively speaking) and recognizable-yet-not-familiar region. It’s just far away enough and just foreign enough for us to see it as more science fiction than reality. And that’s what the authors and writers intend. The setting should dazzle. The plot should excite and astound and force the viewer to come to terms with this new, uneven ground. But if it’s too different, if it’s too eccentric, confusing, and unfamiliar, the consumer will dismiss it. The vast majority of people (which is who movie corporations and authors who would like to continue to be authors cater to) will lose interest. In some ways, East Asia and its technological prowess lends itself to the cyberpunk universe, and so the cycle continues.

 

I think it’s also important to point out that while much of our cyberpunk pays homage to East Asia, that doesn’t quite justify the utter lack of Asian characters. Of the major speaking characters in “Johnny Mnemonic” we don’t see a ton of racial diversity, especially for a world that leans so heavily on body modifications and seems to disregard “traditional” human appearances anyways. (Looking at you, Magnetic Dog Sisters.) Johnny describes himself as “Caucasoid” on the first page, and Ralfi’s muse is Christian White, a member of the Aryan Reggae Band, which I think makes it pretty clear to which race he belongs. Of the major characters, we do have Molly Millions, whose race is never mentioned though she does have her “dark hair cut in a rough shag” (Gibson) implying that she could represent someone of Asian descent. However, if we look at the movie, Molly is changed to Jane, who’s played by Dina Meyer, who’s definitely not Asian. The remaining cast includes Dog and his canine implants, a man in a microchip-themed Hawaiian shirt with a rather deadly thumb, and a literal dolphin. But no Asians.

 

The Matrix boasts a more racially diverse group of people and two rather well-executed female characters. Women in cyberpunk, it seems, get to be badass. Trinity and Switch aren’t archetypical pieces of eye candy. And for that I think we should all be very grateful given how quickly skintight leather can go from scrappy to sexy. For this we probably owe the Wachowskis. The Wachowski sisters, that is. However despite this, our ragtag bunch of rebels doesn’t include anyone of Asian descent.

 

But I digress. The message I want to convey is that in many ways we already live in a cyberpunk reality. Our technological landscape is rapidly changing, and I don’t think that it’s a huge mental leap when I say we’ll start to see more science fiction plot devices come to fruition. And I think that’s exciting! I hope that by treating the existing cyberpunk material as a cautionary tale, we can avoid some of their mistakes. And if we cannot do that, then I hope that as the human race we have what it takes to choose the red pill.

 

*Obscure side note: According to The Independent, the digital rain is actually a Japanese sushi recipe in its original Japanese. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/the-matrix-green-falling-code-meaning-sushi-recipes-a8022641.html

 

Bibliography:

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/yakuza

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2016/06/29/the-inspiration-nation-how-japanese-culture-influences-hollywood/2/#3faeb4f07c31

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/10k3ja/why_are_so_many_cyberpunk_cities_asian/c6ecetw/

https://medium.com/theological-and-religious-archetypes/religious-and-theological-themes-in-the-matrix-703382df737d

 

Photos:

https://www.vir.com.vn/nestle-japan-hiring-1000-robots-to-sell-espresso-machines-31098.html

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/shanghai-pollution-fee-scheme-doesnt-attack-the-causes-of-smog-commentators-12172015105704.html

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taiwan_2009_Taipei_GongGuan_At_Night_FRD_8551.jpg