Week 2  – Punk Anti-Heros

This week’s discussion looks at the main protagonists in the core readings and films, from The Matrix’s Neo to Neuromancer’s Case. What are the outstanding features they share? How do they interact with the world they find themselves in, and how do they move from being peripheral outcasts to heroes, if at all? How do these genre heroes compare and contrast with other examples of the “hero” and “anti-hero” in literature, from Shakespeare’s flawed tragic heroes to the modern bildungsroman? What about women in cyberpunk? Snowcrash’s Y.T., Trinity in The Matrix, Rachel from Do Androids Dream…  Are the just foils for other characters? Or are they developed into anti-heroines?

Resources
Transcript of debate from  from e-zine Computer Underground Digest , 1991
The hero-myth cycle might be useful too. Wikipedia is a good place to start.
A useful essay on Cyberpunk on The Internet Review of Books
The Women of Cyberpunk from The Cyberpunk Project
These are just to get you started – there is an enormous amount of writing out there

Tasks
Write a short paper (1-2 pages) on two of the anti-heroes from the prescribed readings/films. Compare and contrast their main characteristics and progression through the story. Can they be said to be variations on the same type of protagonist? Does this mean that there could be an archetype used in classic cyberpunk?
Please upload your writing as a blog post by Monday 21st of September, in preparation for the discussion on Wednesday 23rd.

Image: Rick Deckard by Dunechaser on Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0