The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

312 The experience of space and timeinterrogation, which rests on the fact that they have no real history;they have, after all, been genetically created as full adults and lackthe experience of human socialization (a fact which also rendersthem potentially dangerous should they evade control). The keyquestion that exposes one of the replicants, Leon, is 'Tell me aboutyour feelings around your mother?' To which Leon replies, 'Let metell you about my mother,' and shoots his interrogator dead. Rachel,the most sophisticated of the replicants, tries to convince Deckard ofher authenticity as a person (after she suspects that Deckard has seenthrough her other defences) by producing a photograph of a motherand a little girl which she claims is her. The point here, as Brunoperceptively observes, is that photographs are now construed asevidence of a real history, no matter what the truth of that historymay have been. The image is, in short, proof of the reality, andimages can be constructed and manipulated. Deckard discovers awhole range of photographs in Leon's possession, presumably meantto document that he has a history too. And Rachel, seeing Deckard'sphotographs of his family (and it is interesting that the only sense ofhistory that we have for Deckard is provided by his photographs),tries to integrate with them. She puts her hair in the style of thephotographs, plays the piano as if in a picture, and acts as if sheknows what home means. It is this willingness to search for identity,home, and history (the match with Bachelard's views on the poeticsof space is almost perfect here) that ultimately leads to her reprievefrom 'retirement.' Deckard is certainly touched by it. But she can reenterthe symbolic realm of a truly human society only by acknowledgingthe overwhelming power of the Oedipal figure, the father.That is the only route she can take in order to be able to respond tothe question, 'Tell me about your mother?' In submitting to Deckard(trusting him, deferring to him, and ultimately submitting to himphysically), she learns the meaning of human love and the essence ofordinary sociality. In killing the replicant Leon as he is about to killDeckard, she provides the ultimate evidence of the capacity to act asDeckard's woman. She escapes the schizoid world of replicant timeand intensity to enter the symbolic world of Freud.I do not think Bruno is correct, however, when he contrasts Roy'swith Rachel's fate as hinging upon Rachel's willingness to submit tothe symbolic order and Roy's refusal so to do. Roy is programmedto die shortly, and no reprieve or salvation is possible. His demandto overcome all the waste of his own condition simply cannot bemet. His anger, as well as that of the other replicants, is huge.Gaining access to Tyrell, Roy first kisses him before tearing outTyrell's eyes and killing his maker. Bruno quite reasonably interpretsTime and space in the postmodern cinema 313this as a reversal of the Oedipal myth and a clear sign that thereplicants do not live within the frame of the Freudian symbolicorder. This does not mean, however, that replicants have no humanfeelings. We have already seen something of Roy's capacity to feel,in his moving and deeply affectionate response to the death of thewoman replicant Pris, shot down by Deckard in the midst of J. F.Sebastian's replicas. Roy's subsequent pursuit by Deckard, whichquickly reverses into the hunted pursuing the hunter, culminateswith Roy at the last minute rescuing Deckard from falling into thecanyon of a street below. And it is almost exactly at that momentthat Roy reaches his own programmed end.But before he dies, Roy recounts something of the wondrousevents he has participated in and the sights he has seen. He voices hisanger at his condition of enslavement, and the waste that allows allhis incredible intensity of experience to be 'washed away in time liketears in rain.' Deckard acknowledges the power of those aspirations.The replicants, he reflects, are just like most of us. They simply wantto know 'where they have come from, where they are going to andhow much time they've got.' And it is with Rachel, who has notbeen programmed to die in the four years, that Deckard escapes,after the four other replicants are dead, into a natural landscape offorests and mountains where the sun, never seen in Los Angeles,shines. The replicant has become the simulacrum to such perfectionthat she and the human can set off into their own futures, thoughwith both of them 'wondering how much time we've got.'Blade Runner is a science fiction parable in which postmodernistthemes, set in a context of flexible accumulation and time-spacecompression, are explored with all the imaginary power that thecinema can command. The conflict is between people living ondifferent time scales, and seeing and experiencing the world verydifferently as a result. The replicants have no real history, but canperhaps manufacture one; history for everyone has become reducedto the evidence of the photograph. Though the socialization is stillimportant to personal history, that too, as Rachel shows, can bereplicated. The depressing side of the film is precisely that, in theend, the difference between the replicant and the human becomes sounrecognizable that they can indeed fall in love (once both get on thesame time scale). The power of the simulacrum is everywhere. Thestrongest social bond between Deckard and the replicants in revolt -the fact' that they are both controlled and enslaved by a dominantcorporate power - never generates the slightest hint that a coalitionof the oppressed might be forged between them. While Tyrell's eyesare indeed torn out during his killing, this is an individual rather