> It's a product of its time too. I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket where the noir surroundings and mega corporations are a product of xenophobia, basically.

This is a super interesting critique of basically everything cyberpunk, that I've only recently come across. I still don't totally buy the xenophobia angle, because to me it just came across as a projection of hyper-corporate/capitalist. Like it's an extrapolation out from where we were, but the problem isn't that it's foreigners, it's that it's hyper-capitalist. In blade runner the world has been globalized to the point where we don't recognize downtown LA, but that's not actually what's wrong with the world - big faceless corporations and environmental destruction are what's wrong with the world. While the environment itself is heavily influenced by asian imagery, Tyrell and Weyland-Yutani aren't very strongly coded asian. i.e. Tyrell is run by an Elon Musk type engineer-ceo, and Weyland is a decidedly white name to go along with the Yutani part.

I'm still digesting this idea tho, I definitely need to re-watch with this in mind. There is definitely some playing with xenophobia there, just... how much? and is it re-enforcing it, or is it challenging it?