live sound on the film, they ultimately had to lip-sync. Other musicians featured on the soundtrack included British trip hop artist Tricky, Belgian electronic group Lords of Acid and American heavy metal band Prong. A soundtrack album was released on October 3, 1999. In addition, 60,000 promotional CD-ROMs, which contained production material from the film and music clips from the soundtrack, were made available only through the "College Special" issue of Rolling Stone magazine that was sold at record stores. Themes Although Strange Days is generally classified as a science fiction thriller, the film uses multiple dramatic and narrative elements, including film noir conventions like the femme fatale (Faith Justin). The terms "techno-thriller", "tech-noir", and "futuristic erotic thriller" have also been used. In 2001, cultural critic Steven Shaviro compared Strange Days to Cameron's earlier films, stating that the film "has characters that the viewer is supposed to identify with, and a plot full of thrills, exciting action sequences and unexpected twists. But at the same time, Strange Days is very much an experimental film, one that questions and inverts the traditional and Hollywood structures of identification and involvement, in ways that are consonant with the ideas that have been put forward by feminist film criticism over the last thirty years." The film's dystopian society and use of SQUID technology, which has been compared to the "simstim" technology in William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer, were also considered cyberpunk concepts. The film explores controversial themes such as racism, abuse of power, and rape. Voyeurism is also a major element due to the protagonist's extensive use of SQUID technology. The fact that the film was directed by a woman was even more controversial, with film critic Michael Mirasol noting that had Strange Days been directed by a man, these scenes would likely have been criticized as sexist and misogynistic. Nevertheless, Bigelow insisted that the film does not glorify violence and that it has a positive purpose. According to her, "I wanted to treat 'the system' fairly, because if it's the enemy, then we're the enemy, since by not changing it we're reproducing it... The film ends in a strong insistence on hope. Ultimately it's humanity - not technology - that takes us into the next century and the next millennium." In 2015, The Washington Post editor Sonny Bunch felt that Strange Days was still relevant, comparing the imagery captured by the SQUID units