"DO YOU HATE YOUR MEAT?": Selling Bodily Transformation in Cyberpunk 2077

A billboard in Night City shows a person pulling the skin off their own face. The text reads, "DO YOU HATE YOUR MEAT?" Another shows a mechanical fist gripping a woman's hair. Jesse Gauthier reads the ads that cover the city in Cyberpunk 2077 the way an art historian reads a poster. He traces them back through Italian Futurism and the visual culture of fascism, and then to the player, who spends the game buying new body parts.