This essay will discuss the representation of the body in Blade Runner because in discussing the effects of something yet to happen which is the dystopia presented by Blade Runner, in the present tense i.e. in assuming that it has already happened, we gain a greater insight and understanding of the consequences of our actions as a society now. Dystopic films and novels such as Blade Runner, Nineteen Eighty Four and Brave New World are invaluable as texts which have tied together philosophical, political, sociological and economic lines of enquiry and have presented ideas of our future and perhaps sometimes warnings about where a certain path might lead. I have chosen Blade Runner as my study text because it presents a future that is dangerously close to the now but clearly stems from the mistakes and lessons of the past.
Key to understanding the representation of the body in Blade Runner is the replicants and their relation to the film's protagonist Deckard (played by Harrison Ford). The replicants are genetically engineered machines that simulate a human in every physical way, blade runners are a special police force that locate and `retire' replicants who have escaped their slave labour on the off-world colonies, and have returned to Earth seeking more life (replicants are designed with a four year life-span).
Blade runners detect replicants by administering a Voigt-Kampff test, using a Voigt-Kampff machine. The Voigt-Kampff machine identifies replicants by looking for emotional response in the "capillary dilation of the so called blush response" the "fluctuation of the pupil" and "involuntary dilation of the iris." The close-up of the eye that the Voigt-Kampff apparatus displays enables the blade runner to see emotional ...
... middle of paper ...
... thin line between good and evil, human and inhuman? But this is the power of the film's message, because the text refuses to endorse one side over the other, it refuses to say who is truly evil and who is truly good. In doing this it states, and this is the central message of the film, that what it means to be human is indefinable.
Bibliography
1984 George Orwell
Blade Runner Ridley Scott
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick
Future Noir Paul Sammon
Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution Francis Fukuyama
Phillip K. Dick - A Day in the Afterlife
Phillip K. Dick: The Dream Connection
Projecting the shadow: The Cyborg Hero in American Film Janice Hocker Rushing and Thomas S. Frentz
Retrofitting Blade Runner Judith Kerman
York Film Notes; Blade Runner Nick Lacey
...the narrator and all people a way of finding meaning in their pains and joys. The two brothers again can live in brotherhood and harmony.
Another aspect of the movie “Bladerunner” is of those that broke away from the system. The “Nexus 6” were androids that developed emotions and escaped from slavery, because they wanted to live longer. Roy and Priss are good examples of androids showing that they have emotions. They were manipulative, passionate for what they wanted, and even had loving sides. Roy was the leader of the “Nexus 6” and Priss was his girlfriend
Blade Runner and New Brave World's Perspective's on Humanity Ridley Scott’s film “Blade Runner: Director’s Cut” and Aldous Huxley’s
... The creature separates how good and evil are both viewed by society and how much of both exist in the world. The creature has been admiring and discovering life by experiencing and learning the language, interactions, and overall love; he can’t believe how much evil there has been and how he hates it. The creature goes on to say that “To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honor that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm.”(52)
Conclusively, dystopian texts are written to provide a warning about future times. Authors and directors use a variety of techniques to put their idea forward and have an impact of the audience. Rules that the chosen texts exhibit include that citizens have a fear of the outside world and all citizens adhere to a strict set of rules, but there is a main protagonist who scrutinises the governments or society’s nature. The rules that authors and directors use to put forward their messages of the moral issues human cloning and relying too much on technology and instinctively perusing traditions are evident throughout all three texts.
...be, as the Tyrell Corporation advertises, “more human than human.” Ridley Scott uses eye imagery to juxtapose the tremendous emotion of the replicants with the soullessness of the future’s humans. By doing so, Scott demonstrates that our emotions and yearning for life are the characteristics that fundamentally make us human, and that in his vision of our dystopian future, we will lose these distinctly human characteristics. We are ultimately losing the emotion and will to live that makes us human, consequently making us the mechanistic, soulless creatures of Scott’s dystopia. Blade Runner’s eye motif helps us understand the loss of humanness that our society is heading towards. In addition, the motif represents Ridley Scott’s call to action for us to hold onto our fundamental human characteristics in order to prevent the emergence of the film’s dystopian future.
When viewing the atrocities of today's world on television, the starving children, the wars, the injustices, one cannot help but think that evil is rampant in this day and age. However, people in society must be aware that evil is not an external force embodied in a society but resides within each person. Man has both good qualities and faults. He must come to control these faults in order to be a good person. In the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding deals with this same evil which exists in all of his characters. With his mastery of such literary tools as structure, syntax, diction and imagery, The author creates a cheerless, sardonic tone to convey his own views of the nature of man and man’s role within society.
The plot of the movie “Blade Runner” becomes unrevealed till the end of the movie. Many assumptions about the plot and the final of the movie appear in the spectator’s mind, but not one of these assumptions lasts long. Numerous deceptions in the plot grip the interest of the audience and contribute for the continuing interest to the movie eighteen years after its creation. The main character in the movie is Deckard- the Blade Runner. He is called for a special mission after his retirement, to “air up” four replicants who have shown flaws and have killed people. There are many arguments and deceptions in the plot that reveal the possibility Deckard to be a replicant. Roy is the other leading character of the movie. He appears to be the leader of the replicants- the strongest and the smartest. Roy kills his creator Tyrell. The effect of his actions fulfils the expectation of the spectator for a ruthless machine.
Although there were many concepts that were present within the movie, I choose to focus on two that I thought to be most important. The first is the realistic conflict theory. Our textbook defines this as, “the view that prejudice...
... It states that there is different inequality socially and politically. Inequality is determined by people’s ideals of what they were taught and society projects as the superior and inferior races. This film shows that there is a way to change that if you make the other side see how they affect the people they are discriminating against.
... imagination is sometimes more excessive than the action on the screen. After the application of Williams’ “theory” to David Creonenberg’s film Shivers, it is apparent that the spectator’s personal perception of the action (or inaction) is more the cause of the bodily reaction that Williams is referring to, rather than the objective excess on the screen. Ultimately, various characteristics of Williams’ arguments are true, but as a film theory in general, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess” needs further research and flexibility in order to be both relative to all “body” genre films, and applicable to all unique spectators.
In Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott, robots known as replicants are built very similar to humans, in fact they are almost identical to humans. They have a conscious and the ability to reason. During some instances in the film the replicants are morally superior to humans. This contrast is used by the film to highlight the German Expressionist belief of the madness of humanity. The film represents the darkness of humanity by portraying the replicants as moral beings while humans are ruthless killers, which is done by different shot selections throughout the film.
... is the brutality of hate and racism. The emotions running high in the movie makes it powerful and moving and the death of Derek’s younger brother Danny Vinyard is shocking enough to bring tears to many viewers’ eyes. The movie ends with Danny’s voice reading his paper out loud and he ends his paper with a very important quote by Abraham Lincoln. This quote shows how Danny’s, as well as Derek’s, mindset changed from the beginning of the movie to the end. When hearing this quote it leaves the viewers in awe that Danny finally started to look past his hateful ideologies but ends up dead because of the lifestyle him and his brother decided to lead. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained we must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature”.
Duckworth, A.R. (2008). Blade Runner and the Postmodern use of Mise-en-scene. Available: http://ardfilmjournal.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/blade-runner-and-the-postmodern-use-of-mise-en-scene/ Last accessed 21st Dec 2013.
The idea of death in Blade Runner seems to be different for humans and for replicants, but it is indeed the same. When a replicant is killed, the characters in Blade Runner refer to it as, “retirement,” while killing a human is called murder. These two terms are actually synonymous. The term murder, in one of its definitions, means to put to an end, destroy (AHD). The definition of retirement is to stop working (AHD). If these terms ar...