Altered Carbon, the Netflix Original Show which I commonly mention is my favorite cyberpunk show ever created, features an overt piece of symbolism in both its title sequence, as well as on the protagonist’s body, in the form of a tattoo he keeps on himself so he can Remember what it is he fights against.
Immediately, when someone looks at this symbol, they’re likely to spot three distinct meanings effortlessly:
- The Ouroboros; the snake eating itself. This classically symbolizes the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Some alternative interpretations involve the concept of an entity’s main expression of power ultimately coming at cost to itself.
- The Dragon; dragons in Western literature, myth, and legend, are often depicted amassing incredible amounts of wealth, evoked as hoards of gold. When Dragons are portrayed as evil or antagonistic, they’re typically stealing resources from the rest of the world around them and refusing to relinquish them to people who need them.
- The Lemniscate; or the Infinity Symbol. Infinity is Endlessness, Eternity. Something that never ceases, something that is not only cyclical, but whose cycle is indestructible, perpetual, forever.
Each of these three can easily be seen to be blatant visual metaphors, but all of them combined into a singular image make for one flawless symbol concerning the Methuselahs, or “Meths,” Altered Carbon’s term for the hyper-wealthy trillionaires who are so impossibly rich and powerful that they can resleeve their minds into as many bodies as they want, for as many centuries as they want, for any reason they want.
Immortal dragons who hoard the wealth of the citizens under them, giving themselves a means to live forever, ignorant of the fact that their own greed is what drives the Settled Worlds to destruction and depletion of resources. As Quellcrist Falconer so aptly puts it:
“Eternal Life for those who can Afford it, means Eternal Control over those who can’t.”
