Blade Runner and Dreaming of Electric Sheep

by Christopher Barr

 "The world becomes a sum of lifeless artifacts; from synthetic food to synthetic organs; the whole man becomes part of the total machinery that he controls and is simultaneously controlled by."  - Erich Fromm

More Human Than Human

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."  - George Orwell, 1984

Blade Runner is a masterful piece of science fiction cinema whose DNA code is printed on pretty well every sci-fi movie since its release in 1982.  Star Wars was the only other film to have a deeper cultural impact in this genre.  The film is quite atmospheric and darkly beautiful in the direction Ridley Scott took his film from Phillip K. Dick’s 1968 novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’.

It opens with a musical score that was a dark, melodic combination of classical composition and synthesizers as we are introduced to this futuristic smoky world, 2019.  We are flown over the massive lite city with industrialized firebombs exploding out of the tops of skyscraper stacks.   At the futuristic Mayan designed Tyrell corporation, an inmate named Leon is seated in front of an interviewer and is asked a number of questions, using the Voight-Kampff, polygraph-like machine, that appear so trite in nature that Leon becomes annoyed.  But when the interviewer asks Leon about his mother, this clearly triggers an emotional response with Leon by way of a bullet in the head for the interviewer.

Los Angeles in 2019 is a dystopian Asian-American hybrid, with Chinese economics and culture pervasive in this future, it is clear that the two nations have become a precarious unified entity.  It’s a garish, depressing and drenched in eastern rain landscape with overpopulation and no future to speak of.  The people here exist without hope, gone are the dreams of a Star Trek future where we all get along and unite.  This future is a post 9/11 future of existential angst and dread, oddly the film was made 19 years before the events and the post-traumatic fallout of September 11^th 2001 occurred.

Blade Runner foretold what almost every futuristic movie these days are telling, whether it’s the Hunger Games, Children of Men, Elysium or some zombie infested world, is that the future doesn’t look so bright.  The vale is collapsing and when it does we could be looking at a more fascist-type future, where the fantasy of freedom can no longer co-exist with the reality of corporate servitude.

Other than Tyrell himself we don’t really see the wealthy and powerful because it’s likely they are all off-world in Elysium-type space stations, living the good life while the poor and unfortunate live in the urban basement of the dank modern city.  The future is bleak and dire but yet the people of this world make do.  They’ve adapted as people often do in the harshest environments.

We are introduced to the films anti-hero protagonist, Rick Deckard, played by the always stoic Harrison Ford.  Deckard is interrupted by a landing police spinner while he tries to eat his noodles and is told by the officer, Gaff to come with him.

Deckard is a burnt-out retired bounty hunter, special police operative known as a Blade Runner.   Who was tasked to hunt down bioengineered beings known as Replicants, which they call ‘Skin-jobs’ and ‘retire’ them, in other words kill them.  Because he’s the best at this job, he is brought out of retirement and told he must hunt them down, capture and kill six NEXUS 6 replicants, which are superior in strength and agility.  They have illegally escaped an off-world facility and are loss in Los Angeles.  He is told the specifics on each of the replicants and that they have a fail-safe incorporated into their programing which gives them only a four year life-span. 

The dominant ideology is that the replicants, off-world laborers, are not human and do not have the same rights as humans do.  Race and discrimination certainly play a role in what this film is exploring in the, 'what is right' and 'what is wrong' realm of ideology.  It asks; what is the real difference between those of privilege and those of the underclass?  The lines drawn in the film are not divided by a distinguishable color but rather a near perfect technology versus a human organism.  

They’re almost us.

Deckard is sent to the Tyrell Corporation to test the Voight-Kampff device and see if it is operating properly, to see if it is able to distinguish the difference between a human subject and a replicant.  He does this by testing it on Rachel, an experimental replicant that has been implanted with memories.  Rachel is unaware that she is a replicant so welcomes and questions Deckard asks her.  Deckard and Dr. Tyrell speak about the fact that Rachel is unaware that she is a replicant.  What’s being implied is a moral issue; where Tyrell has created genetically modified humanoids that are not aware what they are because of some programing manipulation.  The line being drawn here is; do they have a right to know or don’t they?  Conversely, does the public have the right to know or not as well?

Roy Batty, the leader of the replicants that Deckard is after goes and sees an odd little Asian man that was responsible for designing the replicants eyes.  Roy just simply wants to know who designed him.  As he becomes more self-aware, the film inexplicably advocates evolution and rightfully debunks religious notions of a grand architect that created us all.  Roy’s father isn’t a fantasy that exists in the shadows of clouds but rather is a person that uses science to create these machines that want to live.

Rachel meets Deckard at his Mayan designed high-rise apartment where she clearly has questions for him.  In spite of Rachel not knowing she’s a replicant but certainly suspects, Deckard unsympathetically tells her that her memories aren’t hers.  They are implants of someone else’s memories.   She tears up and Deckard starts to back track but it’s too late.  She knows she’s a replicant now and leaves in sadness.   It’s interesting that one of Rachel’s implanted memories is of baby spiders breaking free from an egg only to consume their mother.  It’s odd that the programmers of this memory implant thought it humorous to include a memory of the offspring killing their own creator. 

Deckard looks at pictures, old pictures, memories locked in time, locked in a frame of a photo.  But what is real if memories seem real but are not?  How does one know the difference if in their minds eye what happened felt like it happened?  How do we really know we even have a past if all we have is an unreliable witness in our mind that testifies in our defense?

The replicants continue to search for way to continue living longer while Deckard sleeps and dreams of a running unicorn.  He awakes and drinks while looking over photos, zooming in on high resolution images.  This leads him to an artificial snake, which he thinks will lead him to one of the Nexus 6’s that he’s hunting.

Deckard goes into a nightclub looking for the replicant but what we see is the very clothing that the large group of party people are wearing, itself is a replication, from the 30’s and 40’s of the American 20^th century, a time when the future was promising, a future where mankind elevates socially and mentally to a better realm of understanding.   Here Deckard chases down his replicant, through waves of people before shooting her in the street.

Deckard is later told; now that it is determined that Rachel is in fact a replicant, that she must also be ‘retired’.  He is clearly not happy about this and it’s confirmed when Leon, Roy’s replicant associate, tries to kill Deckard but Rachel saves him by killing Leon.   Deckard and Rachel go back to his place. 

The machines that man invented want to live more than the people who invented them.  Rachel wants to live, she wants to get away from those that want to kill her and she asks Deckard to help her get free.  He tells her that he wouldn’t come after her but someone would.

Is Deckard a replicant?

At his piano he tells Rachel that he has dreamt the music he is able to play on his piano.  He knows she’s a replicant but yet he is overwhelmed by her beauty as a woman, but yet she is not a woman, she is a machine but she fulfills all the sensory expectations a ‘real’ woman would have.  Realizing the reality of her situation, oddly enough, she storms out of his apartment but Deckard stops her because he can’t help himself, slamming her against the wall and succumbing to sexual desire.

At this point the nature of reality and what it means to be alive is questioned.  He knows she’s not real but there she is and seemingly breathing, sweating and beautiful.  He clearly struggles with this notion of reality; it is also worth noting that his libido doesn’t care.  All his biological dots connect so he can’t help himself but be a man in the presents of a sexually desirable woman.

Our human minds are already both computational and integrated with the larger technological world around us.  Rachel is real to us, she appears to be living and breathing.  She pushes at the boundaries of our ordinary understanding of what a person is.  She allows us to ponder whether such a creature can really understand, or be conscious, if our own minds are themselves computational and just an embodied informational pattern, then perhaps there is no difference between us and them.  These are some of the concepts Deckard must explore as he goes deeper down the rabbit hole.

These memories that Rachel has may not be true memories but never the less, they are her memories that form her identity in the symbolic order.  Essentially she’s playing by the same linguistic identifying rules as we all are in society.  

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

Roy continues to search for a way to prolong his four year life span, which he is running out of soon.  Roy confronts his creator, finally; Tyrell who asks him what is his problem?  Roy’s answer is ‘Death’ before ramming his thumbs into Tyrell’s eyes.  The thing about that answer is that’s pretty well every person on this planets problem.  Religions have been invented to solve this problem of death, because us, special us will die someday no matter what.  This film takes a Buddhist journey but not in the hero but that of the so-called villain, who has to finally gain the strength to accept death.

Deckard goes to one of the replicant creator’s building and is confronted by Pris, Roy’s female replicant soldier and sort of lover.  Pris fights with Deckard using gymnastic skills before he shoots her dead.  Roy arrives in the building and sees Pris dead on the floor and softly kisses her.  Deckard, bleeding from his battle with Pris shoots at Roy.

Off the ledge of the building Deckard hangs.  Iconic cinematic perfection.  Roy leans down and pulls up his enemy because to live in fear is to be a slave; the point is, is that Roy was never Deckard’s enemy.  Roy just wanted life and he empathized with Deckard for also wanting to live. 

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears…. in rain.
Time to die."

Roy sits on the rainy roof looking at Deckard and then lowers his head and expires. Deckard sees that this replicant/man was not his enemy and he himself was simply a tool, that has been used by forces that will never have to explain themselves and their corporate agendas.

Gaff, the police officer, lands his spinner car and tells Deckard about Rachel, “It’s too bad she won’t live but then again who does.” then leaves.  Deckard goes back to his place and finds Rachel in his bed; they kiss and leave his apartment.

In the end, the big question asked is; Is Deckard a replicant or not?  Gaff left the origami unicorn in the hallway outside Deckard’s apartment, possibly indicating that he knows that Deckard is a replicant just as Deckard knew that Rachel was a replicant, because they had foreknowledge of their implanted dreams.  Earlier Deckard did dream of a unicorn running in the golden forest.  The writer of the film, Hampton Fancher says that Deckard was human as well as Phillip K. Dick himself but the film director Ridley Scott says he’s a replicant.  Maybe the real point here is not to know because it leaves a great film ambiguous in the end, and maybe that’s a good way to cinematically make it resonate even more.

These Replicants were designed to be so sure of their real-ness, they believed that their sensory experience constituted a unique individual, believing they had purpose, meaning.  They were so certain that they were more than a machine.  When the truth presented itself the illusion started to decay, leaving a soulless, lifeless cold machine with the heart of a psychopath.  Essentially they became desperate and this can cause unexpected results.

To recognize yourself is to see yourself and that is what is happening with the replicants, as we see their eyes reflect more light then the humans that inspired their design.  They have become more than human as the Tyrell Corporation suggested.  There is a good chance that society wants them dead because they have become what the Buddhist teachings inspired, was to live your life and exist within the series of moments that tether together a life.

Blade Runner has been influenced by Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, along with Citizen Kane and the Maltese Falcon, Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece Barry Lyndon as well as the existentialism of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and the destruction of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.  Fritz Lang’s Metropolis probably had the most impactful influence on the landscape of this portrait of a decayed future.

David Fincher’s Se7en was a stand out in the influence this film has had on the culture at large, especially the chase sequence between Detective Mills and John Doe, ending with Doe not killing Mills while hard dark rain, crashes down on both of them.

There are a number of scenes in The Matrix that have been lifted from Blade Runner, most notably was around the middle just after Neo was trained and became aware of the what the Matrix is.  He’s with the group and has been reinserted back in the Matrix and while in an old building Neo notices a cat and then notices the cat again.  This scene and this building they’re in draws from the Bradbury building Deckard and Roy battle it out in the last moments of Blade Runner, with the heavy rain, the high ceilings and the big shadows.

Technology has been used to make life better for the human beings that invented it.  But like elected governments the roles are experiencing a reversal of power, where the machines are becoming more protected than people, just in the same way as people are working for their governments personal financial prosperity, rather than their governments working to improve the quality of life to those that elected them into office in the first place.  Life is being forced to conform to the parameters of the machine.  What is able to transform to the computer or be transmitted by the technology will be all that remains and what can not will vanish.  The domain of language will have its limits reduced to what is on the monitor and flat-screen TV, what can not fit the screen will become a forgotten part of history.  Lost from those that were never aware it existed in the first place.
 
Blade Runner has become quite prophetic as we steer closer to 2019.  Minus the interstellar travel, flying cars and the artificial intelligent Nexus 6 we are pretty well lining right up with it.  First World nations are going to have to bail out other first world nations, notably the United States as a result of a dead economy that needs saving, either that or a complete takeover of America and its population, by necessity or by force.

Does science, technology, and the military better serve living breathing human beings, or corporations?  The question we should really be asking ourselves is; when was the last time you saw armored police and military officers fire tear gas at corporate CEOs for deciding to allow cancer-causing chemicals in the workplaces of millions of people?  These power structures in society have not been designed to serve our best interests.  Blade Runner serves as a reminder of the society we are heading towards, where the technology has become far more advanced but the people continue to exist in a state of arrested development.   

This story was spawned out of the fact that ‘crying babies keep me up at night’, meaning, Phillip K. Dick pondering the inhumanity that it took for the Nazi’s during World War 2 to perform their atrocities.  This story is about our loss of humanity but also our equal desire to fight to get it back.  The Nazi’s were inhuman and synthetic for what they have done to the world and to themselves.  This story is designed to inspire hope for the future of humanity.  Unless we climb out of this pit of ignorance, racism and discrimination and elevate our understanding of the world around us, starting with our own selves then we appear to be doomed as a species, human or replicant.

"Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?  It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined.  A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.  Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain.  The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice.  Ours is founded upon hatred.  In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.  Everything else we will destroy - everything."  - George Orwell