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the extreme of sympathy. Reduced, emasculated. Isn’t this Blade Runner? But in a new age. We fear for Deckard’s future, certainly, and we pity his situation but there’s something about the ending that leaves me thinking to myself that... Blade Runner is not pessimistic. It’s a warning, blatantly, of a future that could be... but it’s a reflection of our own humanity. That, in the end, it triumphs. And that is catharsis truly evolved. NOTES 1. Truman by David McCullough. 2. 3.1 - Eye 3. http://media.bladezone.com/contents/ford-BR.mov 4. Director’s Commentary on The Final Cut
(3.4) INNOCENCE There’s a weird moment in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It’s one that took me back a little, a tiny bit of shock. A prod, if you will, and it’s definitely one of the moments (many of them) in the book that made me truly ponder something. Innocence itself. The moment was in one of Deckard’s descriptions of Rachael, and I remember the quote off by heart. “A figure like a child’s.” Deckard eventually falls in love with Rachael. The line hung throughout the book and I came back to it when Deckard finished up his affair with Rachael. Not to be hysterical or otherwise absolutely wrong but, with Deckard’s description, is he indulging in paedophilia? He happily calls her a ‘child’, and actually, the Replicants are in some sense ‘children’. Short-life spans, four years old as a Nexus Six, implanted memories as ‘emotional cushions’ only go so far. They are children trapped in mechanical bodies of adults that are probably the best way to put it. Innocence, then, seems like a precious commodity in the Replicant world. Yet, looking at the ‘human’ world we already see the geishas of Blade Runner all hypersexualized young women, the rich folk indulge themselves in looking at naked women and there’s a true ‘honesty’ to the place. The grime just froths over in the cities, I’m not sure there are any children in the film. I’ve looked it over tens of times, and they might be on bikes during Roy’s first appearance. This world, regardless, seems devoid of ‘childhood’. It’s the boroughs and urban filth from wall to wall, no place for a child, but who knows. These ‘childhoods’ of the Replicants are fabricated but... does that make them adults? Memories are what matter here; they’re what makes us human. Tyrell goes beyond that, “More human than human”. If our own childhood is fabricated, if we cannot preserve our own past self then what are we? Shells, husks even. The Replicants are only (at most) four years old but still smoke and drink and kill. They act like angstyteenagers or the middle-aged or, quite frankly, the depressed milling sheep of Blade Runner’s world. Even Deckard turns himself to alcoholism, an addiction mirrored with Rachael and Pris’ smoking. Indulging them in adult activity, trying to keep them ‘adult’ and ‘human’, but utterly falling back on that ‘missing something’. In either case, Deckard or Replicant, it’s ‘life’. And it’s that drive for ‘life’, that underlying goal that punctuates Blade Runner’s moral underbelly. Is Deckard’s quest one for innocence? Are the Replicants asking for life so they can be children again? Without a childhood, there is usually life-crushing trauma. Orphans are, thanks to this lovely ‘caring’ world, the most at risk of falling into depression in Uganda[1] and without generalizing that’s probably true for the Western world too. That’s what they are then, the Replicants, ‘Orphans’. The only separation between them and Deckard, a Replicant in my view but it’s not necessary to view it this way, is a purpose. A drive, a motivation; his job. Even then, he finds himself corrupted by his killing. His first on-screen taken life, Zhora, takes him back. It’s like it’s his first time ever, something doesn’t feel right. He’s shaken as he steps out of the little snow display. The ‘cold-blooded killer’ becoming physical, tangible, he has lost his innocence
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Written and Edited By: Nathan Hardi
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INTRODUCTION Blade Runner is consid
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SECTION I: IDEAS I don’t think it
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(1.1) DECKARD Any film, video-game
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some of his wit. Yet, Blade Runner
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Perhaps he’s on the edge of his h
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about immigration, but he is also t
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he’s using it to go in and kill Z
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dependent he is upon her love now.
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Deckard is not a powerful character
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Roy Batty kills the last remaining
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What about his humanity? Well, as c
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Deckard appear so inhuman at the st
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system in any way. Roy, as evil and
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Whereas Sheep is definitely centred
Page 32 and 33: SECTION II: BEYOND 1980s. This was
Page 34 and 35: for Star Wars and Blade Runner. The
Page 36 and 37: cityscape scene from Episode Two. A
Page 38 and 39: Superhero movies aren’t exactly s
Page 40 and 41: eal first ‘ideas’ film that led
Page 42 and 43: notes. There was a great rusty feel
Page 44 and 45: with ideas and philosophies and not
Page 46 and 47: I mentioned the Hamlet comparison e
Page 48 and 49: The biggest grossing film of 1982 h
Page 50 and 51: opposite to what E.T said, but the
Page 52 and 53: games that was an inevitability I c
Page 54 and 55: (2.5) AFTERMATH Blade Runner was a
Page 56 and 57: elieves if you go in disappointed a
Page 58 and 59: those events. Blade Runner is undou
Page 60 and 61: SECTION III: SYMBOLS Memories. Is t
Page 62 and 63: Batty takes this upon himself to ri
Page 64 and 65: Coming away from the more abstract,
Page 66 and 67: give more evidence and integrity to
Page 68 and 69: Tyrell is then rewarded by having h
Page 70 and 71: a family, now he is only Roy Batty.
Page 72 and 73: through the ceiling, hangs off stee
Page 74 and 75: Blade Runner does not argue with re
Page 76 and 77: (3.3) TRAGEDY "When one man dies it
Page 78 and 79: thought I had won Ridley's agreemen
Page 80 and 81: Except the original Star Wars trilo
Page 84 and 85: to the Replicants. He knows what he
Page 86 and 87: (3.5) GAFF Who or what is Gaff? As
Page 88 and 89: common culture there is some humani
Page 90 and 91: (4.1) EAST AND WEST I write this at
Page 92 and 93: acist or other discriminatory attit
Page 94 and 95: physically into Deckard, to carry o
Page 96 and 97: (4.2) THE CAPITALIST MACHINE Blade
Page 98 and 99: parties but that he can watch them.
Page 100 and 101: Deckard recognizes this, eventually
Page 102 and 103: glory days of almost 1920s ‘rugge
Page 104 and 105: they fundamentally destroy it and l
Page 106 and 107: (4.4) TODAY Today. As I type this,
Page 108 and 109: capitalism. The docile populace see
Page 110 and 111: SECTION V: EVOLUTION Blade Runner e
Page 112 and 113: females who use their pure sexualit
Page 114 and 115: I respect Barr’s interpretation,
Page 116 and 117: and indeed the placement of women a
Page 118 and 119: (5.2) THE NEXT STEP “THE NEXUS 6
Page 120 and 121: Deckard spits in his face there’s
Page 122 and 123: Final Cut whether Blade Runner was
Page 124 and 125: trace of sarcasm from Holden. He’
Page 126 and 127: CONCLUSION When I took on this proj
Page 128 and 129: BIBLIOGRAPHY Kerman, J.B (1997 edit
Page 130: ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nathan Hardisty is
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