
Themes and Things to Discuss about Blade
Runner
Engl 831: Prof Cindy Selfe
03/05/01
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THEMES
WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT
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Ethical responsibilities as creators and to
our creations
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Frankenstein, Milton, Blake
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(sinner in hands of angry god-- HF dangling
over edge)
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What does it mean to be human?
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Can machines be more human than humans?
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Meaning of technological literacy
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Beyond binaries
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Implications of our uses of technology
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Being critical about our own relationship with
technology
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Literacy as a means to transcending the class
struggle
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Ridley Scott's focus on alienation (also in
other movies such as Alien, Thelma and Louise)
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Struggle against entropy (Kipple)
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Division between humanities and sciences (MA/MAPC
etc)
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Turin tests-- when do machines become human/alive?
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To what degree are humans turning into machines?
Syndromes where people think they are machines; need to be plugged in.
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Quest in Blade Runner for the father
and for the origin (typical for identity)
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Shortened life span in BR (Also in RUR)
Is part of what makes us human our mortality?
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Master/slave stuff
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When Deckard sleeps with Rachel is this a suture--
point where cross-over happens?
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Possible Sutures I noticed watching the movie:
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The eye is the first horizon--our eye watches
Baty's eye, watching the movie watch the landscape
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Roy tries to get Chew to empathize with him
("if you could only see what I've seen with your eyes") before they strip
his coat off.
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When Deckard kills Zhora, he recognizes
he has a feeling, for Rachel
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Before he is shot by Rachel, Leon tries to get
Deckard to empathize with his life: "How does it feel to live in fear?"
When he dies, he falls over on top of Deckard in a parody of sexual
embrace
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The first moment of real connection between
Deckard and Rachel is when he sees her tears. Soon after that, she
flees his apt and he picks up the picture of her mom. For a brief
second the picture moves--an empathetic connection so strong the picture
comes alive and into time.
-
This is parallel in some way to the moment of
suture when Roy pulls Deckard up from falling -- at that moment time is
reversed as the tape is literally run backwards.
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I noticed last night that frequently the replicants
function as teachers-- they keep trying to tell the humans how to identify
with them..
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Where does our future lie? (Heidigger--
go to the "standing reserve" to solve problems; begin sacrificing environment/
humans to solve problems)
-
doesn't lie with humans, with nature
Post-apocalyptic rain, dominance of ads, commercial
culture
QUESTIONS
WE WANT TO TRY TO ANSWER
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Is Deckard a replicant?
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What's with the unicorns in the Director's
Cut?
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What's with the eyes?
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I had some new thoughts here: Could the
red in the replicant's eyes also be thought of as their passion for life?
The first eye we see in the film has a fire reflected in it. There
is loads of fire imagery surrounding Roy-- "Fiery the angels fell"... "The
light that burns half as long..." This time through I noticed how
often their eyes also seem glassy, as though there was nothing behind them..
But it would contradict the humanistic theme of the movie to say that they
have no souls. Again and again the replicants request humans
to see them through different eyes, or through their own eyes. Deckard
find Zhora though the eye of the camera, the fisheye of the mirror....
It would be ironic if part of what this movie is saying is that what makes
us human is our ability to see and to look -- watching the movie makes
us human??.
LINKS
TO DR. SPARKS' OTHER SITES ON BLADE RUNNER AND PK DICK