In the summer of 2011, I taught a class, titled, "Visions of Delight, Visions of Horror: Technology and the Cultural Imagination of the 20th Century," and Blade Runner was a major text of that class (by the way, I've blogged about that class. Here's a link to the first post, if you're interested: Post 1). In this post, I'd like to pay homage to this film and perhaps speculate on some of its important themes that were brought up last summer.
First, let me say something about the cinematography: in terms of imagery, this film is beautiful. I'm always struck by how colorful and "busy" the shots are, by the vast amount of stuff that is forced into the "mis-en-scene": empty coffee cups, ash trays, banzai trees, photographs, flashing neon signs, garbage, chopsticks, musical scores -- it's as if the camera is trying to show you everything. Really: there are moments where I just glory in the sensitive eye of Ridley Scott. For example, there's a shot where Deckard--having received a beating--takes a sip of alcohol from a clear shot glass, and as he pulls the shot glass away from his mouth, the crystal clear liquor has become clouded with a crimson swirl of blood. So beautiful. This sort of attention to fine detail--the very surface texture of the imaginary world--is a characteristic of Scott's style that attracts me to his films.
O.k.. Enough about the style. Let's move on to theme.
Generally speaking, this film engages with a theme that recurs throughout science fiction, namely, our ambivalent relationship to technology.
More specially, however, this film engages with another recurrent theme running through science fiction texts that incorporate technology: the idea that technology, as it advances, becomes more and more human: in the form of robots, anthropromorphic A.I.s, androids, cyborgs.
Very often this technology-become-human is misanthropic, as in the case of The Terminator, The Matrix, and Battlestar Galactica. Alternatively, in other texts, as technology approaches becoming human, it becomes benevolent and helpful to humanity: consider Lieutenant Commander Data in Star Trek: TNG, Terminator 2, Bicentennial Man, the character of David in Spielberg's A.I. (2001).
What makes Blade Runner so interesting a text in consideration of this theme is how the Replicants not only become human, they become more than human. Technology not only approaches becoming human; it surpasses humanity in every category that counts: mortality, emotion, hubris.
Let's think about what makes the Replicants more human than human.
They are more mortal than humans. They only live four years. Thus, their lives are lived at breakneck speeds and they experience everything more intensely because of this. There's a theme in literature that suggests, with immortality, everything "becomes as dust" (consider the bored Vampire characters that pervade Anne Rice's vampire novels). The inverse of this idea is true: with more mortality, everything becomes even more intense and exciting. This is what the Replicants experience.
They experience strong emotions; they aren't objective, unemotional robots. Even though they are technological by nature (they are machines and they are "retired" rather than killed), they are driven by sentimentality, fear, anger, and love. Consider Roy Batty's lamenting of Priss at the end of the film; consider his rage when he finds out he cannot live and murders his maker, Dr. Eldon Tyrell. In spite of the fact that they struggle with human emotions--they are emotionally under-experienced--there's a way to suggest the Replicants are over-emotional.
Here's the big one: hubris. The Replicants manifest a very human kind of arrogance. They try to live forever. And, unlike us, they are able to confront their maker and question him. Indeed, Roy Batty, in approaching Dr. Tyrell and interrogating him, is like a great poet who laments to god and the universe how horrible mortality it.
With the Replicants the traditional theme of technology-becoming-human is intensified to the extent that technology in this film surpasses humanity, becomes humanity with the volume turned up.
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