Blade Runner: the Gaze of the Replicant

Contexts
1968: Novel of Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

1981: Dick's definition of s/f

Philip K. Dick writes that science fiction is "not merely a story set in the future, and it not merely a story featuring high technology…It entails a “fictitious world” that “comes out of our world, the one we know: This world must be different from the given one in at least one way... sufficient to give rise to events that could not occur in our society…There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation…so that as a result a new society is generated in the author’s mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader’s mind, the shock of dysrecognition.” In “good science fiction, the conceptual dislocation—the new idea, in other words—must ...be intellectually stimulating to the reader…[so] it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification–ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader’s mind so that that mind, like the author’s, begins to create.” (Philip K. Dick, Letter, 1981, Reader, 41-42, xiii-xiv)

What is the conceptual dislocation in Shelley's Frankenstein? in the film Blade Runner? What is different from our world than the world figured by the film?

1982: The reception of Blade Runner

Depth versus surface: Early critics of this film condemned Blade Runner for its oddly contradictory mixture of the conventions of s/f, action adventure and film noir (vulnerable detective; dark rainy city street). They found most of the characters to be empty stereotypes, it's hero unappealing, its plot confused and its romantic ending highly implausible. Invariably critics complained that this film displayed an excess of scenic richness, visual texture and special effects over the "substance" of plot, character and theme. But in the evolution of this film's reception as a cult classic, it is precisely this shift toward atmospherics-using the resources of complex sets, chiaroscuro lighting, modern music, futuristic models of buildings and vehicles, and special effects-that has captivated viewers. For its enthusiasts it seems to convey something enticing and plausible about a future they like to imagine themselves into. Here a celebration of the surface becomes-through an odd reversal-the deep truth of our post-modern future.

Within Blade Runner, what do you make of
the contrast between trash and high tech?
the Media Blimp? the pervasive commercials?
the Off World colonies?
the dark and rain in Los Andgeles?
systems of surveillance?
the collection of artificial animals?
the development of genetic engineering?
the Voight-Kamp test?
Have any parts of this film had predictive value? (are more true now than 20 years ago)

How does the film present and develop the relationship between human and replicant?:
Clip 1: Deckard and Ryan viewing data base records on escaped replicants
How is the replicant placed in relation to the human in this scene? what use is the video technology?
How does the rest of the film shift Deckard's relationship to the replicants?

Clip 2: Rachel and Deckard: "seduction"
Is this date rape or love?

Clip 3: Sabastian, Pris and Roy
Are Pris and Roy darkly manipulative?

Cyborg eyes: What do you make of the motif of the eye in Blade Runner? why is it so important?
  • the 1st eye is Holden's looking at LA... but it is also we the film spectators
  • focus of the test of human/cyborg difference
  • the play of gazes: cyborg's cold look… etc
  • the relay for self-consciousness and recognition: between cyborgs, humans and between cyborgs and humans

"The eyes are the windows of the soul"--Leonardo; [eyes as a symbol of consciousness]

Clip 4: Roy and Tyrell
How is this similar and different than the dialogues between Frankenstein and the Monster?

Replicant: human or humanoid?

BR confronts the reader/spectator with a choice:
either the replicant is an "it"-something to be manipulated with ruthless power (as a slave, a commodity, as what much be kept distinct from the human),
or the replicant is a human: the multi-cultural liberal humanist response: treat replicants like humans and all will be well. But, in Philip Dick's novel the android is less easy to embrace for the simple and obvious reason that duplicates can be made-there is a second malevolent Rachael named Pris who is the same model and comes to kill Deckard.

Clip 5: 1982 film release version: Deckard and Roy & new ending added after negative test viewings in Denver and Dallas
How does the new ending change the director's cut, what Ridley Scott created?

The body in quesiton: new technologies, from communication technologies-including film, gaming, and cyberspace to mechanical prosthesis and genetic engineering, offer ways to extend, transport, leave and remake the body given us at birth. Should we accept all the possible ways to extend or remake bodies? Should we celebrate these hybrids of human and non-human as triumphs over the limitations of an earlier "nature"? [as Dona Haraway sometimes seems to do] When does the project of the extended body entail a bad masculinist mastery over "nature"?

A film like Blade Runner explores the tension between a limited human embodiment and modern genetically engineered body which is strong, beautiful and "perfect." But the predicament of the non-human replicant also appears ultra-human ("more human than human" in a moral rather than physical sense). The replicant is a victim of the corporate and economic power of the commodification of human biology as a replicant.

What do you think is the bottom line for the films ending(s): does it enbrace hybrids of human and non-human as necessary part of our modernity? or, does it turn away from the s/f dystopia based upon the new extensions of the body, precisely in the name of the good feminine, love, memory, and the natural body with its limitations and mortality?
What do you think Deckard learns about the responsibilities entailed through his relationship with the replicants he both kills and loves?

 

 

related web sites for further research