tears-in-rain

(4.1) EAST AND WEST
I write this at a time when a worker in China, specifically Apple’s Foxconn
manufacturers, are lucky to get sixty-five pence an hour.[1] To call that inequality would
be a large understatement. Blade Runner’s world seems to display the Eastern culture
as the dominant form, completely taking over American cities and lifestyles. Except this
was weaved in the Eighties, a time when the increasing industrial and commercial
output of the Japanese and Chinese industries was rapidly increasing. To call it a
culture takeover would be a little hysterical, even today it’s hard to see
Japanese/Chinese culture completely overriding that of American. Most of the films we
watch are American, most plays written by American writers; Hollywood runs the world.
So why did Ridley have a world in which the Eastern takes over the Western?
Playing on the paranoia of the industrial expansionism or something more deeply
rooted? To find out, let’s take a deeper ride into the film itself.
Chew, the eye geneticist, is Asian and I’ve already shown ‘the eye’ as a
prominent symbolic hook eminent throughout the film.[2] If Chew is designing the eyes
of the Replicants, if Tyrell is designing their brains then Sebastian (the only ‘American’,
also notice his physical deprecation too) is regulated to the pettiest of jobs. Body or
otherwise ‘organ’ work, would be quite intriguing to see if he worked on their heart or
something. Except we do know there’s “Some of me in you.” and that’s probably,
metaphorically, the ‘incept date’ fate of the Replicants. A confined and reduced mortality
akin to Sebastian’s ‘Methuselah syndrome’.
The eyes and brain are Eastern and the body and (possibly) other parts are
Western. The Replicants are then a fusion of these cultures, true equality perhaps.
More importantly to consider, however, is the metaphorical standpoint of Chew being in
charge of the eyes and Tyrell in charge of the brains. Sebastian is regulated to, it’s not
totally clear, but ‘the brawn’. American imperialism foreshadowed perhaps? I’ll let you
be the judge.
Except Ridley is showing here, or perhaps Hampton or Peoples or all of the
gang, that the Eastern culture is seeing the way. It is literally seeing the future, 2019 Los
Angeles, and remembering it. Tyrell’s designed brain is a holder of the memories that
are so integral to the thematic impulses of the film, and more importantly, to us as an
audience. When we can’t trust our own memories as our own then we can’t assure
ourselves to be ‘ourselves’. This extends then, too, to Deckard himself. The nod at the
end of the film might be of the Eastern cultures willing his brain differently, that he may
in fact not be completely ‘American’ but an amalgam himself. The brass, Americanized
working class swagger and any antagonism, specifically towards Gaff (neatly tied with
the unicorn ‘brotherhood’ symbol) all evaporated when Deckard realizes himself unsure,
or perhaps sure, of his own life being of American design.