‪@TheKavernacle‬

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you to everyone who watched and/or otherwise engaged with the first of my cyberpunk videos. The response has been quite dramatic, and it has received far more views than I expected. I'll make a few observations and points here. 1. I've been told The Kavernacle's common abbreviation is "Kav", so I will use that in future. 2. Some people commenting on the video have told me it's too long. I sympathize with this. The video is nearly two hours long, so it only has a niche audience. I know it's far too long for some people. It's a video essay, and this kind of length comes with the genre. However I don't think it's overlong for what it's aiming to address. I am planning on a much more condensed "Common myths about Blade Runner" video of maybe 10 minutes, but that will come later. 3. The origin of cyberpunk as a genre will be addressed in the second or third video, as will the question of whether or not Blade Runner should be classified as true cyberpunk. 4. Some people told me I should have added more details, usually telling me explicitly what they thought I should have included. A few people suggested I should have cited the murder of Vincent Chin, or described how 1980s US movies depicted Japan and Japanese culture, or provided more analysis of the Asian representation in Blade Runner 1982, or talked more about the underlying US anti-Asian racism up to and during the time that Blade Runner was produced. I sympathize with this. It was extremely difficult to decide what to remove, but I had to remove 15 pages of script just to keep the video under two hours as it was, and it just wasn't possible to include everything I wanted to. However, as I mentioned in the first video I will be covering these issues in the next video, and I will include reference to a few things people wanted my view on.

[@mindfighter1]

As someone who lives in Texas and has traveled abroad it seems pretty obvious that the presence of Japanese text alongside English simply means there are enough Japanese speaking people living in the area to make such additions useful. If it was a Japanese takeover there would be little to no English around.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Exactly. In fact Blade Runner's Los Angeles has LESS Japanese signage shown than the real life Los Angeles of 1982 did.

[@animatewithdermot]

TK seems like a nice guy, but I unsubbed from him a year ago when some comment he made (BOASTING about not knowing who a prominent anti-war commentator was) exposed too much of his lack of depth for me to take him seriously. Understandable in someone so young, but might be a good idea for him to dial down on topics he really needs to do a lot more study about. Also, having actually read Edward Said, it's shocking to see how many people throw around the word "orientalism" without actually understanding what it means. It's not a difficult book, Said is a crystal clear writer and does not hide behind academese.

[@animatewithdermot]

Also, 'Tyrell' is an anglo-Irish surname (very common as shipbuilders in my hometown in Ireland). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_(surname) 39:20 (OOOOF!) I was about to comment that some of his statements - treating all Asian cultures as homogenous is itself an example of Orientalism, as per Said. Again, for TK and his ilk, they conceal these kinds of ideas in books.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I am so glad to read what you wrote about Said. When I heard TK talking about Orientalism I just knew we were going to get a nod to Said and then some personal views departing from what Said wrote, all without any critical commentary on Said or the development of Orientalism since his time. The number of people who think Said wrote "Orientalism" about Western views of the Far East is astonishing, not to mention the number of people who don't understand Said was a literary critic rather than a historian, and ironically misunderstood the actual history of Orientalism himself.

[@animatewithdermot]

@@veritasetcaritas Thanks. Just got to the remarkable part where he says no western games were made in 1982. Like yourself, having lived through this, someone should tell Ian Braben and David Bell (ELITE, 1984) this interesting fact. Dear god, the UK was a massive engine of game software design! I watch the UK based RMC channel, which does volumes of game restorations, and articles on 1980s and 90s UK games. The country was punching well above its weight in software and home computing. I mentioned on another post that TK snarked at a very well known anti-war commentator "I don't even know who she is" when she waded into some silly culture war stuff. I couldn't take him seriously after that, I can't Murry-Gellman Amnesia myself that bad! So it's interesting to see your takedown here, as it does show that the guy should maybe slow down and read more books. I know that sounds snarky, but I spent 7 years on a project and shelved it as I was getting too deep, and each new book just opened more vistas of my own ignorance. But with age comes wisdom, sometimes.

[@veritasetcaritas]

​@@animatewithdermot oh wow yeah, Elite! That was an epoch-making game. I played it on my Commodore 64. Wire frame 3D simulation, in 2D!

[@ohauss]

@@animatewithdermot By 1982, the Ultima series was already on its second (and a half) installment, the following year, Ultima III came out and in 1985, Ultima IV, which still today is seen as a milestone in computer gaming.

[@brainbandaid5802]

Thank you for making this video! I'm quite young (22) and often find it hard to find good historical perspectives on contemporary artistic/genre movements. It feels like there's so much misinformation about subjects like cyberpunk and scifi that I have a hard time researching these subjects myself. As a leftist, it's easy for me to see someone like TK and say, "Since we have similar values, listening to you is a shortcut to doing research myself." But your videos have really forced me to reevaluate that notion.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you, I really appreciate that comment!

[@eldrago19]

I'm a leftist turning 22 myself this year and I really identify with this comment. It's very hard with the amount of misinformation floating around to tell what is and isn't true and it's too easy to see someone who shares my values and just accept their facts as granted.

[@davidogundipe808]

Damn, a full autopsy of the kavernacle's essay. Well done!

[@blknmongl342]

4:14 "If Japan came to America and imposed itself on the Americans, what would that look like?" Don't tell this guy what Imperial Japanese soldiers did to the Chinese during WW2.

[@FoxMulder-FBI]

Doesn't mean they'd do the same to Americans.

[@blknmongl342]

@@FoxMulder-FBI I don't know about that, but when it comes to how the Japanese treated US POWs, I doubt they'd go easier on the americans.

[@FoxMulder-FBI]

@@blknmongl342 Surrendering as a soldier was deemed shameful, so they treated the POWs without respect

[@blknmongl342]

@@FoxMulder-FBI Maybe, but it goes against the Geneva conventions, and just because they believed that doesn't make it okay. The Germans also had a similar reason for their poor treatment of Soviet POWs, as they deemed them "subhuman", but it does not justify any of their atrocities. Besides, japanese POWs in allied POW camps were treated much better than any of the Dutch, British and American victims of war crimes by the Japanese, so it's even harder to grasp why any of the crimes of the Japanese be defended.

[@starshark3450]

@@blknmongl342 No-one is arguing if it was okay or not. They are arguing that it doesn't follow they'd treat a ~100 million + civilian population the same way they treated the Chinese in Nanjing (sp?) or POWs.

[@MrEnclave86]

Imagine beginning with a premise. "Man in the High Castle represents a fear of a Japanese controlled America". Imperial Japan from the war. Seems fairly reasonable unwanted scenario to me and entirely different in motive from a last post-war Japanese economic control. How can the two be collated reasonably as just "fear of Japan"?

[@phangkuanhoong7967]

TK tends to over-simplify and sensationalize.

[@UnfortunatelyTheHunger]

I think that one may have it roots completely in anecdotes, rather than any raw data. You know, the types you'd hear from older weebs, about how in their childhood, their WW2 vet grampa would yell at them for dressing up as ninjas rather than cowboys? It kind of relies on the generalization that americans know nothing about the outside world, and by extension, that older americans would only know the japanese as "the guys responsible for pearl harbour"

[@alanpennie]

​@@phangkuanhoong7967 Dick has been criticized for taking too benign a view of Japanese imperialism, which is presented in the book as the main obstacle to the death - worshipping Nazis.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@alanpennie irony indeed! The TV series certainly didn't let Imperial Japan off the hook.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@UnfortunatelyTheHunger good observation.

[@Matt_The_Hugenot]

For background I'm British and old enough to remember 1982 as an adult. The trade war between the US and Japan was very one sided, part of the problem was that Japan didn't even realise there was a problem. Reagan built a coalition that included the blue collar middle class and had to respond to fears of American job losses. Once Japan understood American fears it was easily resolved. As to the setting the use of Japanese dominated neighborhoods I think that's intended to place the movie firmly in California, where America's Japantowns are, and Los Angeles in particular. The book was written at the height of the Vietnam War and the movie made during concerns about the plight of Vietnam vets. 1982 was also the year First Blood (Rambo) came out, another movie about police brutality on veterans. What concerns me most are TK's discussions of race. For a leftist he uses right wing language far too readily.

[@gmodrules123456789]

He's not a leftist, he's a liberal.

[@cleonanderson1722]

@@gmodrules123456789 Kind of an misleading claim I think given the politics I recall him espousing in his content and his own words about his beliefs -- you sure that appellation isn't being motivated by your desire for disassociation?

[@cleonanderson1722]

Good comment but to nitpick a bit I would argue that while police brutality is absolutely a feature of Rambo, my read has always been that the harassment by the police against John was a stand-in for the (semi-mythological / alleged) widespread negative reception of Vietnam vets by the American public writ large. Recall the accusations of veterans being spat on en masse, called baby killer, ostracized by the public etc. Anyway I'm not saying either, or, both or none just expanding the reading.

[@gmodrules123456789]

@@cleonanderson1722 His politics are motivated by aesthetics, not by materialism. Leftism, Marxism, Socialism, etc are materialist political philosophies.

[@cleonanderson1722]

@@gmodrules123456789 Okay, I get that. We all got our standards I guess. I just took his claim of being a leftist and being attracted to communism, socialism and anti-capitalism at face value. He could have been insincere or simply just incredibly wrong about himself. I guess that makes him a lib then? Not really interested in gatekeeping so I'll just keep your insight in mind and move on.

[@poterror]

@TheKavernacle is a genuinely mean-spirited individual who makes sweeping, broad-stroke statements about large groups of people without allowing them to share their side of things. He treats his own fanbase with disdain and disgust and frequently espouses random prejudice such as "If you watch Stranger Things, you need to grow up" and "If you watch professional wrestling you need to grow up". I've seen people make genuine attempts to engage him in good faith and then Kav turns around and starts tearing into them, name calling, making Ad hominem attacks and insults, telling people they're embarrassing themselves, calling people "Neolib", attacking their mental health and telling them they need to go to therapy. One guy paid him a genuine compliment, told him he liked the content and would be interested in collaborating with him. Kavernacle turned around and SCREAMED AT HIM LIKE A CHILD to not tag him in posts on social media with THREE exclamation points afterwards. Dude was a fan and Kav absolutely shot him down. He didn't have to say anything but he chose to not only respond but tell his own fan that he doesn't value them or want to interact with them. Just an overall miserable Ad Revenue Capitalist making rage bait content under the false premise of being a "Communist" despite being just as judgmental about what other people do behind closed doors as any other Conservative member of the Alt-Right. We REAAAALLLLYY don't NEED or WANT people like Kavernacle on the Left.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yikes, that sounds dreadful. You might be interested to know I'm just finishing a video entitled "The Kavernacle is bad at history". I've noticed his commentary on history is consistently unreliable despite him touting his history degree.

[@poterror]

@@veritasetcaritas I mean he makes a living talking about countries he's never lived in or been to. He seems generally unknowledgeable about most of the topics he touches on. In his most recent video, he was laughing in the comments about the fact that he's already lost 200 subs. He's also claiming to be Irish in his most recent video and people in the comments were calling him out for being born and raised in London and having the most pompous British accent ever. I'll be waiting for your video. Keep up the good fight 🫶

[@Abcdefg-tf7cu]

​@@poterror I'm glad someone else sees his videos for the rage bait they are. He is a textbook example of why I never listen to a European's opinions about America. They have a caricatured and cartoonish understanding of every country outside the EU.

[@Kitsune2Megafan1086]

Internet really bring out the worst in some.

[@lordMartiya]

Isn't Ghost in the Shell, a Japanese franchise, one of the biggest Cyberpunk franchises of all time?

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes. In a future video i will explain how cyberpunk emerged INDEPENDENTLY in Japan around the same time as it was emerging in the West, and for very much the same reasons. This is an extremely important aspect of the history cyberpunk which TK seems totally unaware of.

[@octagonPerfectionist]

ghost in the shell is one of the greatest pieces of media to come out of japan. truly iconic.

[@kaisersoymilk6912]

Yes, and ironically, the American version is heavily censored. Luckily I live outside the US, my local version isn't. Here's the thing with Japanese authors: they are basically free to do whatever they want, this allows them to be very creative, but at the same time there's a good chance they'll write something that may offend you.

[@lordMartiya]

​@@kaisersoymilk6912 As it should. It's the same reason Italian comics are diverse and high-quality, the authors are free to do their thing with original characters. Just from one publisher, Bonelli, there's such diverse stuff as their flagship comic Tex Willer (a Western), Zagor (also a Western, but set many years before the classic period), Dylan Dog (a horror), Lilith (a limited science fiction series with the protagonist trying to fix what went wrong in the past... And the villains trying to keep her from unfixing THEIR fix), and more.

[@Silver_Prussian]

​​@@kaisersoymilk6912not the sh*t movie with scarlet, the actual one from the late 90s. Its much better, animation is awesome and raises question I honestly dont have an answer for.

[@danbongard3226]

I'm honestly surprised to hear that people have a good impression of TK, because "Blade Runner represents a xenophobic fear of a Japanese takeover of the world" is the most aggressively stupid hot take I've heard outside of a Matt Walsh video.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yeah I found it weird that he said that, given the fact that later commentary in the 90s sometimes argued there was not enough Japanese representation in the movie, and that's actually a criticism with a stronger point, since the Los Angeles of Blade Runner 1982 certainly has a less pronounced Asian presence than the real Los Angeles in 1982.

[@danbongard3226]

​@@veritasetcaritas I have to assume he started with the conclusion he wanted and then went cherry-picking looking for confirmation. I would also guess he didn't actually watch the whole movie or read a summary of it. The classics of the cyberpunk genre took trends from the 70s and 80s and assumed they would continue. So most cyberpunk novels include a Japan that is more economically important. Approximately zero of them describe a world in which Japanese economic power makes a Top Twenty list of things that are wrong with the world.

[@martinsriber7760]

It's far from the dumbest thing he said. His video about how he is burdened with knowledge about the Middle East is really something.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@danbongard3226 to be totally fair to him I think he was led astray by his sources. The view that cyberpunk and especially Blade Runner 1982 were motivated by fears of Japanese takeover seems to have emerged in the 1990s as a reaction to the actual economic conflict between Japan and China near the end of the 80s. This was then retrojected onto all of cyberpunk, and onto Blade Runner. But it's an anachronistic reading. I think Kav just didn't do the necessary work of verifying the information in his sources, and didn't do any primary source research.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@martinsriber7760 yikes.

[@forest_green]

The pyramid business is hilarious. The Tyrell corp building looks more like a ziggurat, or, as you've said, a Mayan building. How could he be so misinformed?

[@veritasetcaritas]

Right! A ziggurat should come to mind long before anything Japanese. I still have no idea how he drew that connection. Maybe there's some modern pyramid shaped Japanese building I haven't heard of.

[@atrution]

@@veritasetcaritas not to legitimize any groups claim to stacking rocks in the easiest way to make it not fall down, but if referencing the area of Asia that is Orientalized and homogenized in insensitive ways, Indonesia has pyramids.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@atrution is that Gunung Padang?

[@atrution]

@@veritasetcaritas I believe that is one, but there is evidence of others

[@FoxMulder-FBI]

Fun fact: When a Japanese engineer saw the Tyrell building he figured: yes, we should have that. Construction is starting in 2030 (Shimizu Pyramid)

[@leontrotsky7816]

There comes a time in everyone's life when you realise much younger people are now expressing wildly inaccurate views about stuff you actually remember.

[@veritasetcaritas]

That was one of the weirdest parts of watching his video, having him talk so wrongly about history literally lived through. Funny also to consider that those parts of my life now qualify as "history".

[@Dollibet]

definitely one of the more surreal parts of aging out of "young adulthood" and into "adulthood"

[@NelsonStJames]

Dude, this is so true. It's maddening; you want to response, but then remember that it's a waste of time because few people take anything somebody says on the internet contrary to something they want to believe seriously anyway.

[@poterror]

I remember how stupid I sounded when I was 28 and how sure of myself I felt

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@poterror I am sure he would find it condescending, but I do try to cut him some slack on the basis of his age.

[@sylvarogre5469]

interesting point here: The term cyberpunk was coined by William Gibson & Bruce Stirling after Gibson was inspired by seeing Bladerunner (Edit: you seem to have counter evidence, placing the coining earlier. Looking forward to that.) in theaters to write the first cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. It has nothing to do with fear of the Japanese. In the 80's, Japanese management techniques were 'en vogue'. We Americans loved everything Japanese. We started getting our first anime. Ninjas movies were common. Meanwhile, both Ridley Scott and Phillip k Dick ( before his death ) said the main themes of Bladerunner were about humans losing empathy and humanity.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Bruce Bethke wrote a story in 1980 called "Cyberpunk", which was published in 1983. The term was popularized by people like Gibson and Stirling. I totally agree with what you wrote about cyberpunk having nothing to do with fears of Japan, and I remember the huge rush of Japanese soft power which resulted in all those "samurai" and "ninja" style management books, as well as all the anime.

[@sylvarogre5469]

​@@veritasetcaritas just edited after I got to that point in the video. How did I miss a book with the title Cyberpunk?! My collection is lacking now. 😅

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@sylvarogre5469 to be totally fair to you, MANY sources identify the origin of the term as at least 1983, since that's when Bethke's story was PUBLISHED, but it seems less well known that he wrote the story three years earlier.

[@Nee-zf2rv]

@sylvarogre5469 Gibson published a short story called „Burning Chrome“ in july 1982, which takes place in the same timeline as Neuromancer. There is also a story of him reading the story to a group including Bruce Stirling in 1981 on Wikipedia with a documentary as the source so take that with a grain of salt. Even if that story isn‘t true, the short storys release being so close to Bladerunners makes me think he came up with the idea for a cyberpunk story independent from it, although it inspires his later works.

[@CraftsmanOfAwsomenes]

I don’t dislike TK but the way he presents info in his videos is often very confident in a way that isn’t necessarily earned with his subject knowledge. Not that I blame him for this mistake considering how ingrained it is.

[@veritasetcaritas]

To be fair to him, confident presentation on KZbin is part and parcel of the expected delivery. If you sound doubtful about what you think, it's harder to get people to take you seriously. Additionally, he did invite critique at the start of his video, and acknowledge he had limited knowledge of it. However I agree with you that on this subject he does present himself with more confidence than his knowledge warrants.

[@martinsriber7760]

His videos about cyberpunk are year old. He is much worse now.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@martinsriber7760 that is disappointing.

[@martinsriber7760]

@@veritasetcaritas Yeah, as one of his early subscribers I am very disappointed. :(

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@martinsriber7760 well, I used to watch many of his videos myself so I do know what you mean.. I stopped over a year ago.

[@melissahalle8398]

It seems TK may be confusing the japanese aspect of other or later cyberpunk novels and movies like Neuromancer. In neuromancer japanese megacorps are indeed present but i'm not sure it's motivated by xenophobia or just an artistic choice. After that cyberpunk had a distinctly japanese flair to it.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I think he is also unaware of how cyberpunk emerged independently in Japan around the same time as it was emerging in the West, and for much of the same reasons, and that during the 80s there was quite a lot of cross-pollination between Western and Japanese cyberpunk, as a result of Japanese soft power influence. That was when Western cyberpunk really started taking on a Japanese aesthetic; because it had been exported to them by Japan.

[@MCArt25]

In Neuromancer it's almost certainly inspired by Gibson's impression of living there. There's also a whole essay he wrote where he compares Chiba favorably to Singapore (which he calls an "authoritarian Disneyland" IIRC).

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@MCArt25 Gibson didn't visit Japan until after he wrote Neuromancer. In earlier he said "I've never been to Japan", and "I didn't even know where Chiba City was when I wrote Neuromancer". He explained the only reason he chose to include Chiba City was because he had been told about it by Japanese students visiting Vancouver. He also said "I got the street names from a Japanese Air Lines calendar".

[@animatewithdermot]

@@veritasetcaritas I remember Gibson being interviewed about his first PC. It was making a strange sound, so he took it back to the shop. The support guy switched it on, heard it, and said "That sound is the hard drive booting up". Gibson imagined a spinning spherical orb, silent and perfect, and not some clanky grindy victorian steam engine device. So I don't think Gibson lets reality get in the way of his imagination!

[@danbongard3226]

Japanese megacorps exist but aren't portrayed as dominant over non-Japanese ones. The three megacorps that feature significantly in Neuromancer and its sequels are Maas, Hosaka, and Tessier-Ashpool (Dutch, Japanese, and Anglo-French, based on the names). Somewhere in a parallel universe where Gibson used "Callahan Corp" instead of "Hosaka", we're discussing TK's video about How Neuromancer's Lack of Japanese Corporations is Caused by Anti-Japanese Xenophobia. :)

[@ash12181987]

I've been looking forward to this, since the community polls.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I hope you enjoy it.

[@MrSporkster]

Came for the topic, stayed for the level of granularity, looking forward to the next part. 👀

This guy has invented the Academic overkill genre 😂

[@veritasetcaritas]

I'll take that as a compliment.

[@Richardiii2]

He is one of the few history youtubers, along with premodernist and Brandon F. to actually be fairly careful with his sources. I really appreciate his careful research and wording, and his dedication to finding the truth only in his sources. I don't think it's overkill at all, more like finally just "academic" level, or at least at the level of care that academics should want to reach.

@@Richardiii2 Totally agree, but most of the amusement I get from this channel is witnessing these tours de forces of research and thorough thinking against people who clearly go along with "vibes" or weird opinions. I couldnt care less about Gnosticism or Blade Runner: its the way he utterly, methodically destroys the other KZbinrs bs.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@Richardiii2 thank you!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Well I guess it has a kind of entertainment value then!

[@coffeehousephilosopher7936]

Tk didn't realize that Blade Runner has a tapestry of influences for it's aethetic. From oriental to the comercials/advertising of certain eras within the U.S

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes it's much more complex than he imagined.

[@zenonvtuber]

I like TK as a source of quick, disposable, modern information. But like many other people in the comments, I too am quite a bit older than him and have winced more than once at the patently incorrect things he spouts with the utmost confidence (though I suspect we all sounded like that in our youth). Like Veritas, I, too, am a western immigrant in Asia (10 years in China, 5 in Japan) and so it pains me to see westerners spread misinformation about Asia wittingly or otherwise. I basically stopped watching him when he was on his travels in SE Asia, because it became too painful to witness half formed opinions through a tourist’s experience on the sociopolitical situations of the region. I’m confident that one day, when he’s older and wiser he will become a great wellspring of information. And I hope this video series serves him in that journey.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thanmk you for your informative and supportive comment. I don't hold TK's missteps against him, as you say it was his first time in SEA and I think he was making a genuine effort to take it all in and be critical about it, while at the same time he had certain conclusions he also wanted to draw about the region.

[@MCArt25]

I think your first mistake is seeing them as a source of any kind of information to begin with. By all impressions he seems to be a blithering idiot without a single shred of either originality or curiosity.

[@animatewithdermot]

@@veritasetcaritas My wife (American) lived in Asia for 10+ years (Korea, Cambodia, Japan) and speaks Japanese. Needless to say, it makes me scared to open my mouth about topics Japanese or Korean, as rank gets pulled very quickly! TK should hang out with her for a few days.

[@poterror]

If you've ever had a one-on-one interaction with him over social media, you'll realize what a child he is. He literally cannot even accept a compliment from a fan who is agreeing with him without trying to find a way to insult that person

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@poterror he sounds pretty fragile.

[@normtrooper4392]

As a fan of cyberpunk media, I have always been wary of people talking about how cyberpunk is about fears of asia.

[@veritasetcaritas]

There's definitely a strand of Asian xenophobia, but it starts late in the 80s from what I have seen, and it is blown out of all proportion to its presence in the genre.

[@normtrooper4392]

@@veritasetcaritas considering how much cyberpunk media is from asia, it definitely is

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@normtrooper4392 two aspects of cyerbpunk's history TK neglected were the fact that cyberpunk emerged independently in Japan around the same time as it was emerging in the West, and the fact that during the 80s Western cyberpunk became heavily influenced by Japanese cyberpunk as a result of Japan's global soft power. That's one of the reasons why Western cyberpunk took on a Japanese aesthetic.

[@Kitsune2Megafan1086]

I honestly never heard of this point about cyberpunk before this video.

[@ernststravoblofeld]

If there's a fear shown in cyberpunk and bladerunner specifically, it's the corporate rule and runaway sprawl. William Gibson's work is pretty much the gold standard of cyberpunk, and he calls a good chunk of his world, "The Sprawl." And while the word he uses for the large, government sized corporations is zaibatsu, they are as likely to be European as Japanese.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Excellent points, I'll look into this for my future videos.

[@SomasAcademy]

This video does a great job of refuting claims by The Kavernacle and other commentators about the idea of Blade Runner trying to warn about Japanese economic takeover of the US, there being a US trade war with Japan during its development, or widespread specifically economic fears about Japan being a big deal among the public during the period the film was being created, and I'm excited to watch your further videos on Cyberpunk. However, one thing that stood out to me throughout the video is how while Blade Runner clearly wasn't intended as a warning about Japanese economic takeover, some of the evidence presented in this video does support a reading of the film as reflecting xenophobic ideas, particularly though not exclusively about the Japanese, to have influences some aspects of the film's aesthetic direction. For example, the use of the term "invasion" to describe Japanese investment in the US in the article shown at around~1:12:46 suggest to me that xenophobic perceptions of this Japanese investment were floating around in the public consciousness at the time, even if, as the article demonstrates, the people most directly impacted largely had a much more positive perception. And then around ~1:43:24, the film's producer highlighted "ethnic changes" among the things the film was "prophetic" about, which, considering this is listed alongside generally negative things like "bad weather" and "the inner city crumbling" and something I would say leans more into concerns about biotechnology rather than being neutral in "cloning," suggests to me that "ethnic changes" is also being presented as something negative, concerning, or at the very least symptomatic of something negative. Now, since this interview was in hindsight and was specifically commenting on things which were not prioritized in the messaging of the film, this comment does not necessarily reflect anything about the original creative intent behind the Asian representation in Blade Runner, but combined with the fact that, as the video says, "when he says "not on the list," he doesn't mean that these weren't grassroots social concerns in 1981 - we have clear evidence that they were," I don't think it's a huge leap to read some potential xenophobia into some of the ways the movie featured Asian people and culture. The fact the film seems to assume a large Japanese-speaking population in the California of the future, which the video mentions but does not really explore except to refute the idea that only ethnically Japanese people would be able to read Japanese, seems to point to major Japanese (or more broadly "oriental" in the words of a contemporary quoted elsewhere in this video) cultural influence in California, and while it's a huge leap to assume this reflects fears of Japanese corporate takeover of the US, I think it's a much smaller leap to think it reflects concerns about immigration and Asian "overpopulation" reshaping certain aspects of American society. Add to this the context also mentioned in this video of contemporary Asian audiences identifying Asian cultural influence in America as problematic due to the desire among Asian American communities to simply assimilate into American society (which is something I can somewhat relate to as a contemporary Asian American - it's weirdly common for people to expect us to be really in-tune with the cultures of our countries of origin, even though today the implication is waaay different), and the previously mentioned context, it seems like there might be quite a lot of xenophobic influence in how the film portrays Asian people and cultural influence, rather than this being a strictly neutral aspect of its worldbuilding as the video seems to imply at certain points. This is more of a generalized concern about Asians than the Japanese in particular - "overpopulation" was far from a Japan-specific association - and I can only speculate that the strength of Japanese capitalism and how well this connected to the film's other themes shaped the decision to make Japanese culture the most prominent face of Asian culture in the film, with the use of Japanese signs and Ramen shops. So, tl;dr it seems like even though the film wasn't influenced by economic anxiety about Japan, the outsized role of Japanese culture in certain aesthetic elements of the world seems like a manifestation of certain broader xenophobic ideas about Asia and Asian immigrants, rather than being a totally neutral element. Keep in mind, I have not seen Blade Runner nor done any historical research on perceptions of Asians in the US during the late 70s and early 80s, so I may be missing some important context, but going entirely off the content of this video and my own background knowledge, this was an interpretation I expected you to go into at a few points and was surprised to see go unaddressed. Now, I understand that the point of this video was to address The Kavernacle's claims specifically, and evaluating whether or not Blade Runner's representations of Asian people and cultures may or may not be xenophobic along a completely different avenue from the one The Kavernacle claimed in his video/videos would be outside of its scope. This element just kept niggling at me as I watched the video, though, so I felt the need to write this comment. (EDIT) It occurred to me after posting this comment that you might address these exact points in your next video, I haven't watched The Kavernacle's videos so I have no idea whether he made any arguments similar to the ones I discussed here in addition to his claims about economic anxieties lol

[@veritasetcaritas]

I just want you to know I've read this and will get around to replying. It's such a lengthy, detailed, and thoughtful comment, I want to do it justice. I'll make a couple of points here though. 1. Yes, in the next video I will be picking up on those loose threads. I knew when I wrote this script they would seem like loose threads to the critical viewer, so I will be returning to them. However I just could not cover everything in this video. I had to remove 15 pages of script just to keep the video under two hours as it was, and that's already far too long for many people to watch. 2. Even though I left those threads lying around, I always took care to actually point them out, with phrases such as: * expressed with racist language * The workers, though racist * that could very well be for outright racist reasons * they had both compatibility concerns, and even racist concerns, about working for a Japanese company So yes, I did ensure viewers knew there was definitely anti-Japanese sentiment in the social fabric at the time. I was definitely not denying that. The issue I was addressing is about how, where, and why that was directed. Going into the nuance of that will of course take much more time, but Kav's claims were not remotely nuanced, so in my initial reasponse to them I didn't really need that level of detail. I can pick that up in the next video. On that point, I'll be spending a lot of time in the next video helping people understand that the Los Angeles of Blade Runner 1982 is not disproportionately populated with Japanese people. In fact it is significantly LESS Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, than the real lilfe Los Angeles of 1982. This is something people just don't seem to realise, though I did foreshadow this when I quoted Ridley Scott saying he thought the future Los Angeles population would be "very Spanish".

[@wintermute5974]

This is a perceptive comment. Asian economic expansion provoked a lot of negative reactions, from anxiety to outright xenophobia (and still does). Blade Runner doesn't contain enough information about the broader world for us to say if Japan has literally 'taken over', but the use of Japanese/East Asian imagery is absolutely a strategy to help remake LA into a strange and unfamiliar place, and it is absolutely drawing on broader ideas that were in the culture at the time.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@wintermute5974 I don't think the use of Japanese/East Asian imagery is a strategy to help remake LA into a strange and unfamiliar place. The Los Angeles of Blade Runner 1982 is not disproportionately populated with Japanese people. In fact it is significantly LESS Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, than the real lilfe Los Angeles of 1982, which had a lot more signage in a range of Asian languages than is shown in Blade Runner. This is because Ridley Scott thought Los Angeles in the future would be LESS Asian and more Spanish. I think the real issue is that contemporary audiences today don't know what Los Angeles looked like back in 1982, and just assumed it was full of white people. So when they see Asian people in Blade Runner's Los Angeles, they think "Wow, Asian people in an American city, that's so strange, that must have really made the audience at the time feel weird".

[@JasterViewer]

Only somewhat related, but I've heard people say that The Hunger Games is about criticism of capitalism. Is this true or not? I wouldn't be confident that this comparison works very well since Panem is quite literally a command economy where the state controls almost every aspect of the economy (with different tasks divided into different districts) and the polar opposite of a market economy with competition.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I would say it's more a critique of authoritarianism from what I know. I haven't ever seen the media or read the books, but I know it has been interpreted as both a critique of capitalism and a critique of authoritarian socialism or communism.

[@JasterViewer]

@@veritasetcaritas Are you familiar with Kurosawa films? Do you think they (or just the samurai ones) were meant to reflect his political views at all?

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@JasterViewer I am a little familar with them, but mainly from the perspective of cinematography, not history or his political views, which I don't really know about.

[@cleonanderson1722]

Thanks for the work you put into the channel, looking forward to watching this video. I do sympathize with TKs politics and consider him a fellow traveler though I don't really watch his content because what I have consumed seems to mostly be off-the-cuff analysis of either KZbinr or current major news cycle drama oriented (i.e. subjects I generally don't think warrant the time investment) and found myself feeling like his rationale towards conclusions and general reasoning patterns are sorta sus despite the good intentions.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I sympathise with his politics too, and used to watch his content quite regularly; we're both leftists after all. But I stopped when he started putting out less political videos and more social commentary or media commentary. I think in some cases he doesn't do the research necessary to really grasp the topic he's attempting to grapple with.

[@animatewithdermot]

@@veritasetcaritas The cruelty of the YT algo, forcing people to post and post and post must take some of the blame - I saw one YT'er whose channel died after he took time off due to his fathers illness and death. It's a vile system, can only lead to facile content and burnout. It's great that there are still those who put in high effort / low volume material (e.g., Bobby Fingers, 4 or 5 vids a year that are close to works of art)! Also appreciate the effort that went into this one - I have to confess I was also under the illusion that Hollywood was fixated on the rise of Japan, so this is great to see as a counter.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@animatewithdermot I honestly sympathize with those who are enslaved to the algorithm. That's one of the reasons why I keep ny videos unmonetized. I never need to fear or feed the algorithm. I publish the content I want, and don't need to worry about any KZbin checks, or financial pressure to create content to a specific schedule or to suit other people's tastes. Although I was already skeptical or some of the pop history myths about Blade Runner, I have to say that even I was surprised at what my research turned up; I had thought that a couple of them were true, and was genuinely astonished to discover these myths have no real historical grounding.

[@cleonanderson1722]

@@veritasetcaritas I really appreciate your philosophy and thoughtful approach towards the management of your channel and the quality control around the content you create. It's truly unfortunate but frustratingly inevitable that the platform itself rarefies content such as yours. So much wasted potential out there... Anyway, not to blow you up too much but I'm genuinely thankful for your special circumstances and your personal dedication which allow us all to share in your work.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@cleonanderson1722 thank you so much for the encouragement! It does become exhausting sometimes, and comments like yours help a lot.

[@hamletprimeiro]

This is a very impressive video. Congratulations. I am just glad that someone besides me heard about IRON MAN: CRASH. I don't know if it will be a topic at the next video, but seems to be a tendency in the last decade to "invalidate" Cyberpunk by accusing the genre of racism or Orientalism by approaching the works without taking into account their context and the time in which they were created. It seemed to me that Kavernacle fell into this same trap. I must confess that this interpretation of Cyberpunk bothers me because I have always seen the genre as humanist because it criticizes issues such as environmental destruction, social inequality, dehumanization of the cities, etc.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you! In a later video I will examine the history of cyberpunk as a genre, and spend a lot of time describing the influence of sources such as Metal Hurlant. I feel the same way you do about cyberpunk. The criticism of techno-orientialism is a post-factum interpretation. Though not without merit when applied to later cyberpunk, I don't think it has much value as an interpreation of the earliest material. Glad to see someone else knew about Iron Man: Crash!

[@Cyynapse]

i really appreciate video responses that dont just go "this guy is dumb" and instead respectfully and substantively disagree

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you! As I said in the video description, this isn't intended to be personal or some kind of attack. It's just that Kav has entered an arena with which he's unfamiliar but which is well within my area of knowledge, so I'm not only concerned with explaining where he's wrong but demonstrating the process by which I determined he's wrong.

[@dark-hoodiedexilesorcerer6768]

I've never actually seen "Blade Runner," or watched any of the Kavernacle's videos. The subject isn't one of my particular areas of interest, but you managed to hold my attention through the entire video nonetheless, so that's something. And I loved the shout out to Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." That book played a pivotal role in my political development, back when I was first exploring radical possibilities in my early 20s, and I still have a great deal of respect and affection for it.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you so much! Zinn's work has its weaknesses, but I still think it's a classic of late twentieth century social history.

[@herobrinesblog]

The book Neuromancer, which im currently reading, has way more "japan will be an economic superpower rivaling the USA and their companies will be like mafias" idea than blade runner. The table top rpg Cyberpunk 2077 (the one that spawned the video game) also has a lot of japanese companies with lots of power and control over the economy and society and mob practices. But i remember reading "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and the fear of a japanese economic dominance was not there at all basically. Id say, today, i do notice a fear of an asian economy surpassing and controling american economy/society, but its a fear of china, not japan.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Ironically, in Neuromancer we see a Japan which is already in economic decline. The text mentions that although places like Chiba used to be the places for high end cyberrnetic work, they are rapidly being replaced by Chinese companies. This was quite prescient, given how early Neuromancer was written.

[@arkusworldwalker9818]

32:28 It seems to me that TK is a classic example of conflating using stereotypical signifiers for a quick building of the setting (like that short but somewhat famous shot of an AD displaying a Geisha promoting a pill or something on a giant screen) and making your whole script revolving around these signifiers. Philip K Dick has a special place in my heart, as a philosophy student in Belgium with something of a soft spot for post-war and Vietnam era counter culture, and an interest in the struggle of anarchists around the world -and Dick was definitely on the libertarian spectrum, even though I can't say for sure if he was libleft or libcentrist-. While he wasn't japanese-phobic (Man in the High Castle as the questionnable taste of making Japanese occupiers "the good guys"? At the very least, Dick dilettante interest in Sino-japanese magical practice really distorted his view of the Japanese "sphere of coprosperity"), he still used the tropes of his time, arguably to twist them on their head and sharing his experience, as a mentally unstable person, of reality, humanity, faith, etc. While a thorough dissertation on Dick's metaphysics and relationshp to the real would be great (Mark Fisher mentionned him, as well as Lovecraft, in *The Weird and the Eerie*), reducing "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" as Cyberpunk nippo-phobia (is that the right term?) is patently absurd. Arguably it isn't really Cyberpunk, because while it is a meditation on the boundaries between human and machine, its theme do not coalesce into the specific mix of drugs, body horror and gang violence that one can read in Neuromancer, for instance. I mean it is Cyberpunk more than it isn't, but I could see the case for it being a futuristic meditation on Faith and Humanity in a very christian sense (there is a whole plot, that doesn't make it to the movie, with basically cyberspace Jesus and his actor blurring the line between true worship and spectacle, with Buster, I think). Of all the takes to be made about Blade Runner, its source material, and the real people behind those two, it must be one of the less informed that only make sense if TK is an essayist with no self discipline whatsoever.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes I think TK is inadvertently over-reading a few of the signifiers in Blade Runner and blowing them out of proportion, not to mention misunderstanding their socio-historical context. I think it's ironic that the people who complain about how many Japanese people are in Blade Runner are demonstrating they don't really know how diverse the Asian representation in the movie really is, and are demonstrating they notice the Japanese people the most because they don't look like themselves.

[@arkusworldwalker9818]

@@veritasetcaritas Yeah... Japan is a weird signifier in Europe and its (former) colonies around the world. It's both highly commodified, yet in spite of/because of this commodification, its whole culture tend to be reduced to its spectacular exports (animes, etc.) and thus treated as base or a destruction of Western "refinements". IMHO, every culture reflects the internal struggles and contradiction of the people who create and animate it (I have a really 101 understanding of anthropology, so fact check me on that one, but it feels like an axiom of the discipline if you read peeps like Gregory Bateson or David Graeber), and capitalist culture (or non-culture if you go the Debord route) reflects the highly segregated mental life of capitalist subjects, whose life tend to be heavily divided between work and non-work, and where culture isn't seen as a tool for self exploration and empowerement, but as a commodity among others. You'd think that would have been the route of a self declared leftist exploring the ramifications and origins of cyberpunk. But no. Leftist becomes more and more of an empty signifier, too.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@arkusworldwalker9818 David Graeber mentioned! Good point about leftist becoming an empty signifier. Maybe it's time to re-read Debord's The Society of the Spectacle.

[@arkusworldwalker9818]

@@veritasetcaritas Also maybe some Félix Guattari's work on the critique of psychoanalysis, freudian and lacanian, where he deconstructs, through semantics, the dogma.

[@Speweythealien]

One illustrative and severe example of non-elite anti-Japanese sentiment is the murder of Vincent Chin by auto workers near Detroit in 1982. Sadly, the US labor movement has its own history of tension between racism and integration. The "buy American" push at the time was popular among rank and file workers. The oil shocks of the late 70s hit ordinary people hard and began the era of neoliberalism. Japan became more visible in daily American life, the Soviet Union was in decline, and a fresh new scapegoat was born. Though I agree that that's not the intention or the text of Blade Runner, I think it's reasonable to assume it would be inferred by a significant portion of the American audience at the time.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes it's absolutley true anti-Japanese sentiment did exist at the time, and I cited several examples of outright racism, including an example of the "Buy American" campaign. But even then, the unions were happier if the Japanese companies opened up in the US itself and gave US workers jobs. Remember the union slogan was "If you SELL in America, BUILD in America". As I mention in the pinned comment, I will be referring to Vincent Chin and other instances of anti-Japanese sentiment in the next video, but I couldn't just keep pouring years of history into this video, it was long enough already. Neo-liberalism didn't start until Reagan, but I did mention the US recession and de-industrialization which raised economic fears in the late 70s and early 80s. I understand that from our perspective it's reasonable to believe an anti-Japanese sentiment in Blade Runner might have been "inferred by a significant portion of the American audience at the time", but the problem is there is just no evidence for this. I couldn't find any reviews presenting this opinion, or any reference to people interpreting the movie this way, from 1982 all the way up to 1990, even when reviewers were commenting on Asian representation in the movie. Most people just seemed bored by it.

[@jorndebello7317]

Been waiting for this one. I can't wait for part 2. Keep up the great work ❤

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@AlexBermann]

To answer a completely rhetorical question: the asian culture known for its ziggurats were the various mesopotamian cultures like Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians and Assyrians. India and Indonesia also had pyramids - as did China in the Qin dynasty. The terracotta army was found in one.

[@veritasetcaritas]

To be pedantic, Mesopotamia typically isn't known as an Asian culture, and altthough there are pyramids in India, Indonesia, and China, those countries aren't known for them, mainly because their pyramids weren't built on a suffiicent scale or volume or weren't built or discovered until relatively recently. But yeah, we know TK didn't have Mesopotamia, India, Indonesia, or China in mind. He had Japan in mind.

[@AlexBermann]

@@veritasetcaritas Mesopotamia is pretty much central Asia. Anyhow, I just used the opportunity to spew random trivia and give your video engagement because Japan really is not known for its Pyramids :)

[@anonviewerciv]

23:00 Cuisinart is in Blade Runner 1982? I definitely missed that. 🍳🌃

[@veritasetcaritas]

Many companies are there which people wouldn't have imagined would be there!

[@Planag7]

Another thing to bring up is they were concerns with a Japanese market undercutting the US car market do strictly because the emissions standards that were set up in the late seventies that GM and the other car company said it was impossible but Honda actually stepped up and said "we could do it!" I'm a bit of a car guy and yeah it was why you saw a lot of stop gaps in the US market where they basically badge engineered imports. So like for instance Chevy would import isuzu's and call them the Chevy chevette! Also in the 70s, a bit separate from the import Wars there was something in Europe called the chicken tax. But ended up being expanded out to importing of cars usually with a tariff of 2.5%. but it affected trucks later on in the 80s. I believe it is still in effect and it's something like 25% so when you see those guys importing Japanese kei trucks or vans they still have to pay a 25% tax! Kind of crazy

[@veritasetcaritas]

Good point about the environmental regulations! Thanks for your comments.

[@TwinRiver100]

15:12 the whole collaboration part you're talking about here and all that, is this sort of where we get stuff like that movie Gung Ho with Micheal Keaton where there's that culture clash with the Japnese workers that come to that american town to open a Toyota or Honda factory to bring jobs. and through lots of issues they learn to work together and all that. I'm not sure if this is truly the theme, I watched parts of it in high school years ago and haven't had a chance to watch the full thing in quite some time. 😅

[@veritasetcaritas]

That's a great point, and further evidence for pop culture of the time actually fostering camaraderie between Japanese and US workers. I should follow this up and include it in my next video, thanks for the great lead!

[@TwinRiver100]

@@veritasetcaritas thank u❤️ Mind u, please verify this via checking out the movie. I might've misremembeed it.😅

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@TwinRiver100 the Wikipedia article looks like a good start, and it seems this will definitely be a useful point of reference, thank you!

[@vispian7688]

I have yet to watch the video. But from a brief scroll through this is specifically about Blade Runner. I was wondering if you will cover or if not your general thoughts on Japanese Cyberpunk itself. Japanese Cyberpunk is more notably known through the extreme and short lived film genre. Notably through directors like the acclaimed Shinya Tsukamoto - Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) Cult director Shozin Fukui - 964 Pinocchio (1991) and Rubber's Lover (1996) "Founder" Gakuryū Ishii - Burst City (1982) and Electric Dragon 80.000 V (2001) Alongside the well known animated features of Akira/Ghost in the Shell/Serial Experiments Lain Cyberpunk is an extreme genre and has several different categorisations even in the west. Videodrome is vastly different in themes and content than Blade Runner and there is an argument both are or arnt Cyberpunk. I was just wondering if you were gonna cover the genre as a whole and even touch upon Japanese Cyberpunk in this series. If not would love to hear your thoughts if you have any?

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes, a later video, probably the third, will describe the origin of cyberpunk in the West and its INDEPENDENT origin in Japan in the late 70s punk scene, and its emergence through dystopian punk cinematography, notably Panic High School (1978), Crazy Thunder Road (1980), and Shuffle (1981), as well as the later and more cyberpunk Burst City (1982), Death Powder (1986), and Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). I'll also include reference to the Japanese manga Akira (1982), which was recreated as the 1989 anime movie of the same name, and the Japanese manga Ghost in the Shell (1989-1991). I'll also consider Japanese influences on emerging Japanese cyberpunk such as Tetsujin 28-go (1956-1966), and Western influences such as Mœbius in Métal Hurlant (1974-1982).

[@phagemaleficar]

Sharing this vid everywhere I can! Love your work!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@georgesdelatour]

This is a very rigorous defence of Blade Runner. And, since I love Blade Runner, I’m grateful. However, I also think it’s tone-deaf and philistine to require a work of art to have politics which perfectly align with your own in order for you to deem it good. If Kavernacle can only accept an art in which aesthetics is totally subsumed by politics, he’s already lost.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes I thnk a work of art can be great even if it doesn't align with my politics. HP Lovecraft wrote some extremely good stories, but he was horrifically racist and anti-progressive. I can still appreciate his literary skill and admire the way he communicated his ideas, though this is easier when the plot isn't over-burdened by his racism.

[@kaisersoymilk6912]

​@@veritasetcaritasthe John Ford movies and Dirty Harry come to mind in this category.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@kaisersoymilk6912 yes, in fact in a later video I'll be identifying some movies which had a good view of Japan early in the 80s, with movies which had a very bad view of Japan much later in the 80s and especially in the early 90s.

[@kongspeaks4778]

I don't think TK only plays games where he agrees fully with the politics. If you listen to him complaining, you'll notice a lot of the games he criticises are games that he also has mentioned enjoying.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@kongspeaks4778 yeah I doubt that he would do that. He wouldn't be playing many games if that were the case.

[@darthJ9]

When he said this was going to be the first of a series of videos i was positively giddy

[@veritasetcaritas]

I am planning on three.

[@darthJ9]

I'M ONBOARD SIR

[@Smittumi]

If I ever make a KZbin video I pray you never hear about it 😅. Although I could make it to trick you into making an amazing counter video, and thus learn more about the subject 🤔

[@veritasetcaritas]

It would be a learning experience for us both!

[@raaaaaaaaaam496]

The current Fremont Tesla plant was originally a GM plant I think and then a Toyota-GM partnership plant. It went from unionized and non unionized though arguably workers were treated better. They also were better employees with the Fremont plant being the worst performing plant until Toyota took over. Infact I don’t think Toyota or any Japanese auto manufacturer had standalone plants until the South Carolina boom but I’m not sure.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes in the late 70s and early 80s US-Japanese coroporate partnerships were the thing.

[@ItsJustCartier]

Wow pretty surprised you are covering the Kavernacle. NGL thought his videos on Rittenhouse and Destiny to be riddled with issues so I tuned him out. Can’t wait to hear his bias show in this Cyberpunk series🤣

[@chrisstott3508]

I've watched Bladerunner a dozen times. Not once did I imagine that Japan had imposed the dystopia on Los Angeles. It was always clear to me that US cities had simply embraced the tech revolution without forethought as the line of least resistance. There's a lot of 'line of least resistance' in Bladerunner.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Deckard himself takes the path of leAt resistance, returning to being a blade runner despite having had "a bellyfull of killing", because "I'd rather be a killer than a victim".

[@octagonPerfectionist]

i’ve always kinda seen japan as a harbinger of things to come in the west. they’ve always had the fashion trends first but they also tended to run into some social issues relating to a highly corporatized capitalist society before we did. it would have made sense to derive a cyberpunk style from a japanese aesthetic at the time, even if that wasn’t really the goal of bladerunner. i’d imagine other parts of asia probably had a somewhat similar experience as japan as well.

[@animatewithdermot]

When I worked for Disney Mobile in the mid 00s, we were targeting the Japanese market with our mobile animation, as they were a generation ahead of the west in tech (all pre-smartphone). Korea was even further ahead, they were able (gasp) to watch entire movies on their phones in the 2005/6 era.

[@alanpennie]

I don't think cyberpunk existed as a genre in 1982. Neuromancer, generally considered the ur - text, came out in 1984 (dread date). Blade Runner was a very striking movie from a visual pov, so I daresay it influenced the *look* of cyberpunk.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I'll cover this in a later video, but the cyberpunk genere is older than that. It started emerging during the 60s, with the earliest proto-cyberpunk texts written in the late 60s. By the late 70s, certain genre conventions were already established. In 1980 the term "cyberpunk" was coined to identify the new genre. It is true that writers such as Gibson were highly influential on the genre and helped popularize both the term cyberpunk and certain of its literary conventions, and it's also true that Blade Runner had some influence on the cyberpunk aesthetic, though Blade Runner was not interpreted as cyberpunk until at least four years after it was produced.

[@alanpennie]

@@veritasetcaritas Interesting. As someone who read a good deal of SF in the 1970s and early 80s I certainly wasn't aware of *cyberpunk* as a label.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@alanpennie I was reading a lot of scifi at the same time as you, and I actually read Neuromancer before I was aware of the cyberpunk genre. For years I thought Neuromancer was the first cyberpunk text, and it was only much later I discovered its roots as far back as New Wave scifi, which was kind of funny since I had been raised on New Wave, especially on Le Guin, Bradbury, Pohl, Moorcock, Anderson, and Aldiss. I have to throw in Laumer as well, because I think some of his work comes just within the threshold.

[@alanpennie]

Does anyone want to mention the horrible Rising Sun (1993)? Or is it best left to well - merited oblivion?

[@alanpennie]

​@@veritasetcaritas Just checked Laumer because I vaguely remembered his name. I tried one of his *Retief* stories and found it unreadable. His sense of humour didn't appeal to me at all.

[@Mrax_Taylor]

Part 1! You going it depth about cyberpunk I guess?

[@veritasetcaritas]

In the next video I want to cover TK's concerns over Asian representation and Orientalism in Blade Runner 1982, as well as the origin of cyberpunk itself.

[@abdussamadkhan7394]

When is the next part coming out? ​@@veritasetcaritas

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@abdussamadkhan7394 not for a while. This one took me months to research and produce. But I have written the first half of the script for the next one.

[@Mrax_Taylor]

@@veritasetcaritas I thort you where torching four TIK four a second

[@Mrax_Taylor]

@@veritasetcaritas I remember I giy hoe did a entire seers on Hboms terrible dark sols 2 video Hou bad is TK's vido?

[@BrandonPilcher]

I'm not going to defend Kavernacle's characterization of Blade Runner or the cyberpunk genre as racist, but I will say that I have my misgivings about Ridley Scott. He did portray the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews as White European people in his Exodus adaptation from 2014, and when people called him out on it, he insisted that he did it because White actors would get him more studio support than actors of color (or "Muhammad so-and-so"). Whatever his opinion on Japanese or East Asian people, that doesn't sound to me like a guy with a lot of respect for African or Middle Eastern people.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yeah it's totally fair to say that, but the real question is whether or not Blade Runner was written as an expression of US fears of Japanese takeover, and I really don't think it was. Scott wasn't editing the script until December 1980, after Fancher had written the first few drafts from 1979-1980, and Peoples had written the second last draft on 15 December 1980. The 22 December script was the work of Scott and Deeley, but it was allmost entirely a mashup of Fancher and People's work with very litlte original content from either Scott or Deeley. Additionally, Scott is on record as indicating Japan really wasn't on his radar when making Blade Runner. in his own words, he aimed to represent a future Los Angeles which he believed would be mainly Spanish. If Scott managed to sneak in some personal racism against Japanese people, he must have done so in a very low-key way. Blade Runner's use of Japanese, Chinese, and Cantonese actors who are literally the same ethnicity as the characters they play is quite extrarordinary for the era, and even beats some of today's blockbusters. I wouldn't credit that directly to Scott, but he clearly didn't obstruct it either.

[@BrandonPilcher]

@@veritasetcaritas It's been a long while since I saw the original Bladerunner, so I can't vouch for how well it represents any given demographic. I will add that Scott's handling of the Exodus issue was probably more insensitive and careless than it was malicious. And if his response to the people criticizing the historical errors in his recent Napoleon biopic are any indication, he probably doesn't care too much about any kind of accuracy.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@BrandonPilcher I think you're really onto something there when you compare Exodus and Napoleon. It's probably less racism as such, maybe not even casual or unconscious racism in those cases, but just carelessness and insensitivity, lack of interest in historical accuracy, and a preference for cinematic narrative. That's probably why his scifi looks better on film than his history.

[@Reid-mv4ll]

It's here! I'm clearing my schedule for the next few hours..

[@veritasetcaritas]

I hope you enjoyhed it!

[@neongrey333]

I wonder if he doesn't realize Atari is American.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I don't think he realized.

[@Planag7]

Very much enjoyed this video and learned a little bit as well. Actually found you back in the day when the whole dream Somerton thing was coming up and watched your video on the importance of reading and understanding sources. It's sadly where me and the Kavernacle have a different opinion, as he had this very weird opinion where that if you go after somebody you're going to drive them to suic*de (censoring for KZbin), not realizing that James was actually making those horrible claims while posting thirst traps on another account :( Even though I was a child of the 80s, my mother had this weird thing about us ever watching Blade Runner. So I guess my first exposure into what could be considered cyberpunk would be something like Johnny Mnemonic! I definitely appreciate Bladerunner now that I've seen it both on very good Blu-ray as well as an old laserdisc with yes... The damn narration -_-

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you so much!

[@DestructorN7]

Thank you, I was actually thinking of making some videos like this myself. Cyberpunk genre is my main object of study, and it is very influential in me as an artist, so I found this wave of shallow "anti-cyberpunk" essays that came with the controversies of 2077 (which actually makes a great exploration of the genre) terribly frustrating. I always found it quite amusing, because, for someone actually familiar with the genre, it felt really obvious that the writters of 2077 did understand cyberpunk far better than the vast mayority if the video-essayists trying to paint it as reactionary.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you! I had been planning to make a video on the history of cyberpunk for a while, but when all those 2077 videos came out I was tipped over the edge.

[@DestructorN7]

​@@veritasetcaritas I understand. Hopefully, now that the conversation about cyberpunk is a lot more quiet, possitive and nuanced, it is a good time to talk about it

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@DestructorN7 I certainly hope so, it's about time. I'd like to think this series of videos will prompt re-inspection of the genre and examination of all those earlier cyberpunk videos when people were jumping on the bandwagon and reycling pop history myths.

[@DestructorN7]

​​@@veritasetcaritas I'm pretty sure this will end up well. Always thought that using the fact that cyberpunk had mainstream attention to shit on it and spread misinformation instead of getting people interested into the actual subject was a huge missed oportunity, and I'm glad that trend has died.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@DestructorN7 lert's hope!

[@nilsd4899]

I'm enjoying the video so far, but I am confused about one thing: How is Elden Tyrell a thoroughly German name?

[@veritasetcaritas]

Elden is a traditional Old Norse name possibly originally meaning "Ella's Hill", which entered languages such as Norwegian, Anglo Saxon, and later German. Tyrell is a traditional German name. It is found in the Domesday Book of 1086, in an Anglicized form, and is thought by some linguists to have come from the Tyrol Mountains in Austria.

[@nilsd4899]

​@@veritasetcaritas So maybe "Germanic" would be a better word then? Calling Tyrell a traditional German name seems slightly strange to me, when Wikipedia has a total of two Germans listed with the name, both of which were born in the 20th century. A German search for Elden results mostly in Elden Ring name discussions (And no Wikipedia entry). As a German, if someone was to introduce themself as either Elden or Tyrell, my first instinct would be to assume they are British. But maybe I'm missing something.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@nilsd4899 no, I think it's very safe to say it's a traditional German name, just not a common modern one, though I think if you looked outside Wikipedia you would find far more than just two examples from the twentieth century, especially if you include the alternate spelling Tyrel. I know some people with German ancestry and the surname Tyrell who live in Australia. Similarly, "Charity" is indisputably a traditional English name, but not a very common modern one.

[@kurteisner67]

​@@veritasetcaritasIs that in fact true? I'm fairly certain the name Elden comes from "Ealdwine” or “Ealdwyn", meaning "old friend" (for a famous historic document by a close namesake, take e.g. the Eadwine Psalter). Regardless of whether it has Old Norse or Old English origins, it's by no means German in any shape or form. I'm German myself, looked it up in some databases, and found not a single mention of the name. Tyrell as well is not attested to be a "traditional German name" either, and it's not only that Wikipedia's mentions only two people with the name (one of which has Anglo roots), but also from the 30-40 people registered with the surname on Germany, more than half of them live in NRW around former British army bases post WWII (also not particularly near Tyrol either). Moreover, Tyrol is written "Tirol" and similar since Roman times and unlike the i -> e and a -> o vowel shift the shift from o -> e seems rather dubious and isn't much attested by linguists.

[@basedggallin4556]

​@kurteisner67 You might be onto something, from what I could find Tyrell has its origins in Old Norse, Old English and Old French. And pretty much everything you said about Elden is correct too.

[@DinggisKhaaniMagtaal]

To be perfectly honest, I don’t care much for the cyberpunk genre at all. That being said, this seems like an interesting discussion, so I will leave this comment for engagement and see where this video goes!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@DinggisKhaaniMagtaal]

@@veritasetcaritas Well, I certainly did not regret this watch at all! Definitely an interesting case of how our own narrativizations of history, even as leftists, can fall to our own stereotypes of trends when we don’t actually look too deeply into the history we are discussing. As someone primarily concerned with indigenous decolonization and its possibly contributions to policies of developing nations (specifically here in Mongolia), I only know this too well, having met far too many leftists online and in person who will excuse or even deny Soviet or Chinese crimes and imperialistic exploitations over minorities, such as the Soviet Union’s quite characteristically imperialistic relationship with Soviet Mongolia, or, God forbid, any mention of Chinese abuses towards “indigenous” minorities in East Turkestan, Tibet, or “Inner” Mongolia (I leave “indigenous” in quotation marks as the label is still in discussion and debate for usage when talking about Mongols, Turkic groups, Tibetans, and other Central Asian cultures, although I personally find the relationship to be close enough to be applicable, as long as there is no alternative word at least).

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@DinggisKhaaniMagtaal thank you! I take a de-colonial and post-colonial perspective in my own analysis of history, and I have spent around 12 years in volunteer work among the indigenous commuinities in Taiwan, so I am particularly sensitive to these issues.

[@iamaunicorn1232]

I love this. ❤ Its just a nice critique of a bad take. The subject isnt a bad guy and he didn't do anything horrible he just badly argued something and invited critique. I am so in for the rest of the series!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you! I am glad you can see this wasn't personal. As I said at the start of the video, there is so much mythology surrounding Blade Runner that it's very hard to get past it all to the actual facts.

[@Melggart]

I really respect your rigor with references. I have distancing myself of drama channels, but I do still watch some because sometimes creators I like are a problem and I don't want to lock myself into a bubble. Your critics I respect, they are not just drama baiting.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@vrdfrdcf]

TK might not like being called "TK" because people might confuse him with TIKHistory.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I hope not, I would think "Tee Kay" sounds quite different from "TIK".

[@alanpennie]

​@@veritasetcaritas A couple of days ago I saw a post from TIK which made me doubt his sanity. I hope it was just a temporary lapse.

[@raylast3873]

41:15 I agree with your overall point, but I don’t think this part makes sense: just because incursion of foreign languages in the real world isn’t actually a sign of hostile takeover doesn’t mean that (1) no one perceives them that way (there are definitely people who do) nor does it mean that it might not function as shorthand for such a takeover in a movie. The question what is the creative staff trying to convey and how do people interpret this. And no, I don’t think Bladerunner is trying to show or imply a Japanese takeover, at all. I agree that K is dead wrong. BUT, I don’t think the real-world comparison is by itself evidence of that.

[@danbongard3226]

Certainly there are people who are angered by a multicultural environment, but the movie doesn't take that position. None of the fans of that movie came away thinking "that would have been an awesome world to live in if it wasn't for the multiculturalism". The environment's collapsing, the animals are dead, and the weather is awful. This is not the fault of the Japanese, and nobody ever suspected it was. :)

[@raylast3873]

@@danbongard3226 it does not, but multiculturalism in the real world is still not positive evidence that the presence of foreign cultures in a movie couldn’t be overinterpreted by the audience. Media, including film, does have the ability to sensationalize and exaggerate things that are act normal by the way they are presented. The point isn’t that this movie does this, but that it might and we can‘t site the real world as positive evidence for how we think a film will or won’t present something.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I agree that it doesn't necessarily mean no one perceives them that way, and totally agree with your point that we should wonder what the creative staff were trying to convey and how people were interpreting this. With regard to the intentions of the creative staff, I pointed out that the Japanese is in there because Ridley Scott thought the future Los Angeles would be "very Spanish, with a big cross-influence of Oriental”. In fact the irony is the Los Angeles of Blade Runner 1982 is LESS Japanese than the real life Los Angeles of 1982. With regard to how people were interpreting it, in all the 1980s Blade Runner reviews I read I couldn't find anyone interpreting it as a hostile takeover, probably because people in the 80s knew that Los Angeles already had a high Japanese population. It's typically people from much later decades who think "Wow, what are Japanese people doing in a white country like America, so weird!", which is odd to me, but people can be strange. There was obviously a lot more I could say about this point, but I couldn't include it in this video, which was already massively long. However, as I mentioned I will be addressing this in more depth in the next video.

[@gorlaxss]

Didnt they decide to use japanese because they didnt want movie goers to be distracted by reading backround signs (i swear 8 read that somewhere)

[@veritasetcaritas]

They used the Japanese for realism, sinmce Japanese signs were common in Los Angeles in 1982.

[@brucehunter8235]

You said Philip K. Dick was an English science fiction author. He wasn't, he was American.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes I made a few other mistakes too, saying words which weren't in the script. Some of the mistakes I managed to detect in the editing process, and some of them I didn't.

[@fjbz3737]

After years of anticipation the magnum opus has dropped

[@veritasetcaritas]

I am halfway through the script for the second part, though that will still take some time.

[@raaaaaaaaaam496]

I kind of feel like the set design is at least inspired by cities like Hong Kong. The horrifying extreme of dense city design. With LA being the other extreme (in the real world). I think you have a hard time proving that there’s not at least some reference to the fear of at least the cities of Asian cities. Blade runner LA does not look like any other cities in our real world except for Asian cities. It’s possible NYC of the 70s could be an influence as it influenced moebius’s the long tomorrow which is arguably the most influential and earliest cyberpunk piece.

[@raaaaaaaaaam496]

Also, the writer (or someone involved with the long tomorrow idk) actually wrote the original script for Alien and the entire long tomorrow story was the inspiration for blade runner. It even has a detective with a flying car investigating a mystery about androids.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I'll get to this in the next video, but Blade Runner's set design was based on: 1. The industrial works of Teesside in the UK. www.bbc.co.uk/tees/content/articles/2009/03/30/tees_tf_blade_runner_feature.shtml 2. The real life Los Angeles in the 1982, only the Blade Runner 1982 Los Angeles is significantly LESS Asian than the real Los Angeles of 1982,, with FAR LESS Asian signage than the real Los Angeles had, and more Spanish, since Ridley Scott thought in future Los Angeles would be more Spanish than Asian.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes I'll be discussing the influence of The Long Tomorrow in a future video.

[@misuvittupaa8068]

Great video . I like how thorough you are.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@nicnic1981]

Do you plan on addressing the Kaizen approach to business in the US as an element of "Orientalism"?

[@veritasetcaritas]

I have actually thought of that, since I work for an Australian company which uses both Kaizen and the Toyota Way. It will probably receive a mention in the next video when I address cyberpunk and Orientalism.

[@nicnic1981]

@@veritasetcaritas The Toyota model def made impacts on how western culture has interpreted/rationalized/subsumed Japanese culture & cyberpunk since the early '80s as both these elements happened concurrently and in my thoughts are intertwined

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@nicnic1981 I remember when Mitsubishi started investing in car companies in Australia, and building its own cars there. They became hugely popular in Australia, and this definitely generated more interest in Japanese methods of corporate organization.

[@nicnic1981]

@@veritasetcaritas As I'm sure you are aware, in the US it triggered the GE creation of 6 Sigma, I worked for UTC and we had ACE (based on Yuzuru Ito) and others. I believe we agree it had it's implications. My thought is the perspectives on the Japanese have varied widely but what about now, how did we get here and what is the possibility of it drastically changing again. Appreciate your stuff - thanks

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@nicnic1981 yes, I remember when Six Sigma became the latest and greatest corporate concept. Thanks for the encouragement!

[@billyrandell]

Let's go good history gang!!!

[@IanJAGreen]

It’s here!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Months in production.

[@thedarkmasterthedarkmaster]

I'm happy that more people are criticizing these breadtube slop creators

[@veritasetcaritas]

I am a leftist myself, but I don't think leftists should be above criticism, and there's a lot of low effort content in Breadtube.

[@thedarkmasterthedarkmaster]

@@veritasetcaritas As someone with a biology major I've wanted to make similar vids debunking some narratives in biology and Paleontology. Did one on the Gypsy moth, but sadly my current video series prevent me from doing more

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@thedarkmasterthedarkmaster imagine if we had all the time to make all the videos we wanted! I have such a huge list.

[@chrisprescott2273]

Something tells me that TK will decide to double down on his false claims.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I'm guessing he just won't see the video, I doubt I'm on his radar.

[@chrisprescott2273]

@@veritasetcaritas That's why Twitter exists 😉

[@THEcamobackpack]

Been waiting for this!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Hope you enjoy it!

[@couldntcareless7884]

Am I the only one who has a bit without any audio at 15 and a half minutes?

[@veritasetcaritas]

Not at 15:30, but there are a couple of patches of no audio for one to two seconds, where I made some very late edits to the narration track, to remove audio artifacts or misspoken words.

[@couldntcareless7884]

@@veritasetcaritasok, it seems it was something on my end. The audio is back.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@couldntcareless7884 could have been just KZbin being laggy. I'm glad it didn't last.

[@raaaaaaaaaam496]

Like 5 mins in and I hope you mention mobius and French comics

[@veritasetcaritas]

That will need to wait until a later video in this series, when I discuss the origin of cyberpunk. I will defintiely be covering Metal Hurlant and its huge impact on the emergence of cyberpumk, and Mobius will be cited.

[@kalinmir]

The Tyrell building is more of a zikurat shape which would be asian but I wouldnt think that it supposes to invoke anything modern...I'd say its more invocative of the tower of Babel (no evidence tho but its a good enough interpretation for me :) )

[@veritasetcaritas]

More like a ziggurat yes, so Mesopotamian, and more like the tower of Babel as you say.

[@himpim642]

iRONICALLY en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimizu_Mega-City_Pyramid

[@himpim642]

i think piramids were more simbolic way to show distrubtion of power.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@himpim642 yes I agree. I cited one academic who even made this point too, so I think it's a natural reading.

[@s7robin105]

Two of my favorite subjects in a video? (History and Cyberpunk) Well don't mind if I do

[@veritasetcaritas]

Same!

[@SpoopySquid]

2 hour veritas video let's gooooooo

[@misuvittupaa8068]

I'm here

[@Sealab2021dotorg]

Yeah this is straight up ridiculous. Some of the greatest cyberpunk comes directly from Japan. I assume he's never watched an anime in his life. Feels like a bit of that understandable liberal nonsense that fester into otherwise good radical politics but you know he's Young. I just wouldn't have said anything if I were him. Lol. Definitely will watch the video thank you.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thanks! In the next video I'll look at the sources he used in his second and third videos so we can understand how he was led astray, and in the third I'll discuss the origin of cyberpunk with particular refrence to Japanese cyberpunk.

[@alenbacco7613]

Did you ever check out behind the bastards?

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes I have listened to them a lot. Love the channel.

[@alenbacco7613]

@veritasetcaritas neat, you did a video ranking the research methodology of KZbinrs forever ago, and I asked how you'd rank behind the bastards. What do you think?

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@alenbacco7613 I would rank them high, but I would really prefer them to list their sources.

[@timmygilbert4102]

That was good, thanks for fixing my flawed assumption frim second hand telling 🎉

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@PhaedrusAK]

I think I sellected 'Don't show me this channel' just from the video titles. I'm so old that I think the point of video essays is to have some knowledge to pass on.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I remember when "video essay" was a respectable genre.

[@legend7951]

My opinion, cyberpunk is a critique of capitalism: yes, blatantly. Is it Orientalist, very obviously not. Japan had a booming economy in the 80s so when the early core cyberpunk works were made they foresaw Japan becoming a massive world power and put that into their worlds, albeit in an exaggerated style. It's less of a "fear" of japan taking over and more what the authors saw the future could be, with their knowledge at the time. Also Japan liked cyberpunk and they made a lot of cyberpunk media.

[@veritasetcaritas]

You make a couple of good points here. It's true that Western cyberpunk authors often put Japan in cyberpunk in positive ways, because they admired Japan. It's also true, and incredibly important, that "Japan liked cyberpunk and they made a lot of cyberpunk media". In fact cyberpunk developed independently in Japan, almost around the same time it was developing in the West, and addressed the same kinds of themes, such as hyper-capitalism and social alienation.

[@legend7951]

@@veritasetcaritas I think cyberpunk developing in Japan could be owed to the economic downturn they faced in the 90s where the 80s bubble burst and they were faced with a struggle they never thought would come. I find Japan's cyberpunk media to be more somber because of this. So while western authors included Japan because of it's massive economy in the 80s, Japan took a liking to cyberpunk because of their economic problems. I think that aspect of it is very interesting, they overlap quite a bit in their criticism of capitalism but they come from different places

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@legend7951 Japanese cyberpunk certainly developed further in the 90s, but it actually originated much earlier, in the late 70s, starting in cinema.

[@ne0nmancer]

The Kavernacle being wrong about something because he sees everything through his ideological lens? Color me surprised!

[@veritasetcaritas]

In this case I think it's more that he didn't do the research, but I do think his leftist perspective made him more susceptible to treating his sources uncritically.

[@avus-kw2f213]

19:28 ancient Egypt🤣

[@vapaus831]

😖 Understanding…

[@mannatgrewal7954]

I like Kavernacle, even though I disagree with him on some things (carnivore diet, one of them)

[@veritasetcaritas]

I think his heart is in the right place and he makes videos in good faith.

[@martinsriber7760]

The Kavernacle is wrong about many things. For example Hamas getting support from Iran...

[@ItsJustCartier]

Who do they get support from then?

[@martinsriber7760]

@@ItsJustCartierGreat question which I would like him to answer.

[@TheGahta]

​@@martinsriber7760well you might get one if you ask him in his channel Here you can only get responses on your own That being said, what reason you have to think its not getting support from them when they are close enough to have the hamas leader travel to the inauguration exposing himself to danger?

[@horcruxhunter5056]

Great video!!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thanks!

[@peterclaassen8139]

I mean most basically. Its not PUNK! Its a movie about a cop! Actual Cyberpunk works are much more explicitly anti establishment.

[@basedggallin4556]

Exactly right it adopts the Cyberpunk aesthetic but ultimately Deckard is working for a corporation, that being said the entire ending sequence to the film is about him realising how fucked up his line of work actually is.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes, this is why when it was released Blade Runner was understood as a scifi detective film noir movie, since the protagonist is the traditional reluctant anti-hero who nevertheless upholds the establishment.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@basedggallin4556 I think there's only some of the cyberpunk aesthetic here; mainly the dystopia, the futurism, and the question of what it means to be human. The rest is flim noir.

[@basedggallin4556]

@@veritasetcaritas Very true, I think it's that unique blend that made it a cult classic, more films exploring the Bladerunner universe and tapping more into the Cyberpunk side of things would be amazing.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@basedggallin4556 I absolutely loved 2049, and if there's a third I can only hold my breath and hope they do the subject matter true justice. But I think a trilogy would be very risky.

[@TempoLOOKING]

42:36 WOKE

[@ogdimmy]

[@toi_techno]

He's talking more about the use of a general "asian" aesthetic in supposedly cyberpunk films, not the literary genre He's mixing in the problematic western eye thing because that's kind of his vibe Fearing Japan, a country that has recently murdered millions in an imperial war is fairly reasonable

[@richard_d_bird]

ever read "the long tomorrow," the comic illustrated by moebius, from 1975? a rather asiatic looking police detective has various film noir type adventures in a very overbuilt, futuristic city full of squalid locations and racially diverse characters. often cited as a visual inspiration for blade runner, and i was lucky enough to recognize that on sight, the first time i saw the movie, when it released in theaters for the first time. one of the main reasons i liked that movie from the start. i also happened to live in the 1980s, and remember a thing or two about what sort social concerns people were often preoccupied with, back then. this tk guy is full of beans, on this this subject anyway. wouldn't know about anything else he posted. i don't generally watch this kind of hysterical drama. only watched some of this one because they're talking about the movie

[@veritasetcaritas]

It's great to see such an informed comment here. I'll be mentioning Metal Hurlant, Moebius, and The Long Tomorrow quite a lot in the next video.

[@patrickholt2270]

This feels a bit like overkill to me. My impression of the lad is that he's just a kid trying to do his bit to counter-act the ubiquitous propaganda of our regime media, both private and BBC. He's produced a bad take, jumping to conclusions in ignorance, playing the now normal game of "call-out the non-woke in pre-millenial art", or pin-the-N word-on-the-Orc, and you've used the entire hard copy Encyclopedia Brittanica 1992 (or whenever the last print edition came out) to swat the fly. I appreciate the information you've delivered, but maybe there are more deserving targets? My tuppence is about William Gibson's novels, which I only just got around to reading. They present a vision of the future from the viewpoint of the early 1980s which seems positively quaint now, in which technological industries and geopolitics are still dominated by the US, Germany, UK and Japan, the rest of the world effectively doesn't count, China is only known for cheap cigarettes, and economic and environmental decline and spreading dilapidation and slum life are universal. That's incontestably true about the USA and the UK especially, but the opposite of reality in the Eurasian heart of BRICS and the One Belt, One Road Initiative.

[@efffvss]

A quick google suggests the guy (I've seen 'Kav' used as the abbreviation in his own comments instead of 'TK') is 28. Calling him a kid at that age seems a bit much. While I get what you're saying about veritas' treatment being a bit overkill, I'd counter that "call-out the non-woke in pre-millenial art" and "pin-the-N word-on-the-Orc" are stupid stances to take and deserve a good (well sourced) dog-piling. Calling out the BS on your own side (as it seems veritas and Kav aren't 'that' different politically) when it's talking BS is just as important as calling out the other side. If Kav made a bad video, it deserves correction Can't lie, bringing up BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative (while using the Chinese term for it, rather than the western one) while simultaneously deriding the west seems somewhat propagandistic. Sure, I'll buy that 1980s Sci-Fi didn't take China seriously enough as an economic power (for understandable reasons at the time imo). But the idea that (despite our definite issues) the US and UK known for universal economic and environmental decline, and universal spreading dilapidation and slum life is just nonsense.

[@patrickholt2270]

@@efffvss The correct name for a thing isn't propaganda. Also it's only propaganda when it's your own government and establishment's line, because that's who has the media control to drum their spin into the public you're part of. So I'm dissenting from the propaganda in the relative estimation of the state of western economies viv a vis China and those Eurasian countries most benefiting from China's development investment. They are growing strongly, while we're in chronic stagflation on top of decades of one financial crisis after another, deindustrialisation, austerity and systematic underfunding of infrastructure. We have mass impoverishment and homelessness, with no end in sight under the dominant policies of the dominant parties. So yeah, Gibson was at least right about generalised long term decay and decline in the US and UK.

[@himpim642]

economic and environmental decline and spreading dilapidation and slum life are universal,That's incontestably true about the USA and the UK especially, but the opposite of reality in the Eurasian heart of BRICS and the One Belt, One Road Initiative. Most of coutnries on eurasian one one road intiative have host of post ussr era slums and far from good life.Not to say a thing about india.or S and B in BRICS thgouh in russia is also far from stellar. Kav is coutnering wester propganda and sherr amoiutn of his produtiction mean he is expected make mistakes nad omission especialy sicne he hasntt got media team behin him,.

[@richardvlasek2445]

can i get an explanation as to why you're trying to discount and minimize all of the uncomfortably racist undertones that are ubiquitous to the cyberpunk genre by saying things that teeter on the brink of just being the "the original authors didn't intend for the text to be interpreted this way" argument

[@veritasetcaritas]

I'm not. The only work I discussed was Blade Runner, which I don't regard as cyberpunk, and which doesn't have racist intentions or undertones, and had some of the best Asian actor representation of the era. I didn't day anything about any other cyberpunk work. I contested the claim that cyberpunk as a genre was a xenophobic reaction to Japan. I will spend more time in a later video on the origin of cyberpunk as a genre and demonstrate this in detail. I'll also talk about how Western cyberpunk took on xenophobic traits later in the 80s. In this very video I cited an example of late 80s American cyberpunk which was based on economic rivalry with Japan, with plenty of underlying xenophobia.

[@MidlifeCrisisJoe]

This is an absurdly pedantic take when you just need to refute the dude's central thesis by pointing out that if anything is the origin point of cyberpunk, it isn't Blade Runner, but William Gibson's novels (as well as other authors, but Gibson was the most prolific and impactful by far). Then follow that up by pointing out that claims of creeping Japanese influence might actually be slightly more relevant TO Gibson's work (which do feature big Japanese companies more often), but none of that is actually in Blade Runner. The end. That'd take about 5 minutes. But you're going on and on for nearly 2 hours AND there's another video? Dude. Brevity. Learn how to use it.

[@neoqwerty]

This isn't the channel for you then, I recommend going somewhere else if you don't want in-depth discussions.

[@MidlifeCrisisJoe]

@@neoqwerty Droning on about everything EXCEPT a central refutation isn't "in-depth discussion." It's literally the definition of pedantry and circling the point for no actual reason. Just because someone says a lot of words doesn't mean they're all worth saying. That said, you're correct, this is not the channel for me. I saw a different video that was much shorter, but if this is the norm, then yeah, nah.

[@garydownes2111]

@@MidlifeCrisisJoebut the point is this isn’t a 10min summary video it’s an in-depth analysis that’s nearly 2 hours long and where it’s clearly stated this is the first part of a series . is your frustration actually the fault of the content creator at all or a product of your choices? I enjoy the analytical nature & context given of the criticism. There is no value in just saying this is wrong, proper criticism should be what is wrong, why it’s wrong and explaining what would have been right or more reasonable points.

[@MidlifeCrisisJoe]

@@garydownes2111 lol ok. I disagree with you that he's even doing an in-depth analysis here. By ignoring the central refutation, there is NO depth because nothing is being tied to any kind of core argument. Regurgitating a bunch of errant facts semi-related to the topic at hand is not analysis without this core structure. Rhetoric is about making a point. What that point is depends on what someone is trying to say. In this case, he has a great example of an easily refutable central premise, which in any case of rhetoric arguing against someone else, is the proper method of doing so. The video creator, rather than refuting that central premise, decides to table that for a later video and released this nearly two-hour video about what are at best secondary, but are largely tertiary or even further away points. It's a waste of everyone's time who's even semi-intelligent or has better things to do. Including the video creator, if he had any sense. Let me put it this way: if you said the sky was purple and yellow polka dots when it's actually blue, and I never pointed out that its actual color is blue, but instead went on a multi-hour tangent talking about the origins of the color spectrum, the linguistic origins of the word purple, then the word yellow, then the history of how purple was related to royalty . . .what am I even doing? Would you put up with what I was saying?

[@garydownes2111]

@@MidlifeCrisisJoe you do know he does analytical criticism for a living right? And that rhetoric is just one method or argument that’s not actually analysis right? You are aware there are different approaches to this and if the creator decides to use another method than you’d prefer that doesn’t make him wrong, right? It’s not a binary situation and honestly it’s weird you express it in those terms.

[@CSM100MK2]

Why do I care

[@neoqwerty]

I dunno, you're the one who left a comment here instead of clicking back. Why DID you care?

[@raaaaaaaaaam496]

The current Fremont Tesla plant was originally a GM plant I think and then a Toyota-GM partnership plant. It went from unionized and non unionized though arguably workers were treated better. They also were better employees with the Fremont plant being the worst performing plant until Toyota took over. Infact I don’t think Toyota or any Japanese auto manufacturer had standalone plants until the South Carolina boom but I’m not sure.