Looking at Replicants in Blade Runner Using Theories of Cyborg (Unit 4. Creative Research)

-


 

looking at replicants

in blade runner using theories of cyborg

Essay by Adam Paloczy

 

    Two final frontiers are existing in the genre of sci-fi. One of them is the dark space, the other one is the endless, deep, and extremely complex human mind.

Lots of movies took the audience into the cosmos, to seek out for new adventures, to find the secrets of unknown, and only a few of them are trying to open up the difficult and the deep human mind.  Blade Runner was always a bit more introverted than most of the other big science fiction films. Therefore it's not that easy to digest to everyone, it was less successful than the easygoing full of action and adventure, spectacle space movies.

 

Behind The Magic

"Unlike the vast majority of films in the science fiction genre, Blade Runner refuses to neutralize the most abhorrent tendencies of our age and casts serious doubt on a host of the cliches about where we should locate their causes. Among the most significant questions, it challenges us to confront are: In what does the "truly human" consist? Does the concept of imitating "truly human" beings retain any coherence once the feasibility of designing "more human than human" robots becomes an increasingly imaginable technological possibility? What might relations between the sexes and family life become if the twin eventuality of uninhabitable earth and the perfection of robotic technologies should come about? "[1] Although back In 1982, Blade Runner was a technical miracle in cinemas, this film with the slow story and the deep messages was not a financial success at the box offices. But a bit later on, after the videotape release, Ridley Scotts' fantastic masterpiece became one of the most important sci-fi and also a cult movie. Such a creation like this has so small chance for a sequel. Most of the target audience has not read the original novel „ Do The Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” from Philip K Dick and have not seen the original movie. These days people want to go to watch a film with crazy action, explosion, and big noise. They are not able to react for two and a half hours of thick emotional impact.

 

Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto and Blade Runner

Albeit, in the world of Blade Runner, we reached the space, the colonizing expeditions started to create new homes, these films are still focusing on what happening on Earth and in the minds of the biorobots, called the replicants.

In Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto, the idea of the cyborg is used to symbolise "an ironic political myth" which tries to be "faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism".[2] Haraway sees the image of the cyborg as present in both our contemporary society's fiction and reality. She uses the cyborg as a metaphor that describes our "social and bodily reality". The image of the cyborg, for Haraway, also symbolises the bridging of gaps and the tearing down of traditional boundaries, and thus the cyborg becomes an important political symbol of liberation, but is also a symbol for "dangerous possibilities"[3]

 

The replicants featured in Blade Runner are considered to be completely machine and synthetic, however, since they manifest human emotions and share the human form to the point where they are indistinguishable to humans, it can be argued that in a way they are a hybridisation of human and machine, and thus can be considered to bridge the gaps and tear down the boundaries that Haraway's image of the cyborg challenges. One of the most persistent themes in Blade Runner is obviously the fuzziness of the boundary between humans and the featured replicants.[4]

 

The second similarity between Haraway's vision and that of Scott is that there is a parallelism between the rejection of a 'female' essence by Haraway and the 'replicant' essence that the viewer of Blade Runner is somehow guided to reject due to Rachael's successful transcendence of her android nature.[5] Donna Haraway writes: "There is nothing about being 'female' that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as 'being' female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices."[6]

 

The third similarity is that politically, both the concepts of Haraway's cyborg and Scott's replicant can be seen simultaneously as a symbol of hope and a symbol of "dangerous possibilities"[7]

 

 

Cyborgs as tools of the Power

In this mad world, a massive company called the Tyrell Corporation has invented and started to manufacture the replicants. Instead of human resources, They used these biorobots for the colonizing and other dangerous work. But these creations where so humanlike, and many of them escaped and returned to Earth. They tried to get their own right to live, thereby they caused a serious conflict on Earth. All of this lead to genocide, which was supported by the Tyrell Corporation.

Later on, famine swept across the Earth, the Tyrell Corporation has closed, and they stopped to make replicants. From this chaos, slowly but surely a new company, the Wallace Corporation raised, which has solved the crisis with genetically modified food. This is where the second chapter of Blade Runner is starting. There are three short films in between the feature films.

Blade Runner 2049 directed by Danny Villeneuve, who has already proofed us with Arrival, that he does not like ordinary stereotypical sci-fi. The film created in neo-noir style, just like the original. This is a dark, foggy, rainy,  world with neon lights, where we do not know if its day or night. This is a different world, a possible future of our home, where the sunshine can not really reach the dirty street of Los Angeles, across the poisoned atmosphere of our planet. People just like rats are living int he cyberpunk concrete jungles, mixed with biorobots. We can feel from every single frame of the film the depressing mood, the human duality and we can witness to die of our devastated planet. it's wonderful to see the fantastic technological development of mankind, and it's also very sad to see what we achieved with all of this. We have flying cars, but we can not afford a pet or a flower. Every technological invention, what supposed to make our life easier and comfortable, started to choke us. Our planet is just a place to make more replicants.  Just like a big factory nothing more than that. Everybody who had a chance has already moved away from here and left this dying planet. This film represents a beautifully created, but very pessimistic vision of our future, with so many details, which makes everything just even scarier to me. I'm saying it is scary because I can see our possible future in this film, with the massive, rich and powerful dangerous corporations and the possibility of the ethical and moral issues that we will face when we will, because, I believe we will create cyborgs may be less than 50 years.

At the same time, Blade Runner does not want to represent the replicant just like a simple killer machine, like in Terminator 1, these biorobots are more human than humans, who has every right for freedom and life. At this point, we can see mankind/ Tyrell and Wallace companies as „creators” just like God with big power. The director of the Wallace Corporation is basically acting like a god. With his power, he can decide which replicant can live, for how long, and who should die. He does not need to explain anything to anyone. His massive building, just like a homeworld of some kind of god. Everything is massive, with no furniture, television, or anything like in an ordinary home. Wallace the director, thinks that he is a sort of god, and for me, it feels like, he does not see himself as human anymore. He does not have moral control, he creates and destroys replicants. He is the lord of that world.

Harrison Ford, Sean Young, James Olmos, Rotger Hauer, Ryan Gosling, or Jared Leto were the perfect choice for these movies. But Blade Runner is not memorable only from the great acting. This is more like a „feeling movie” for me, which right at the beginning grab you with that strong melancholic atmosphere, and it holds you until the very end. Maybe that's why either you like this movie, or you feel it is boring.

"Blade Runner is itself an off-shoot of a genre which had virtually disappeared from screens: the hardboiled detective story, such as the classics born from the novels of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. The dystopian air of "Blade Runner" should feel very familiar to fans of such dark-hued crime stories as "The Big Sleep," "Double Indemnity," "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Out of the Past" – stories in which urban centres like Los Angeles were hotbeds of vice and scandal, with a seen-it-all narrator presiding above the fray. "[8]

In this movie I have not seen sets, I saw reality. I did not see robots or humans, I saw sentient beings. I feel that in this film there are no unnecessary scenes or action. It feels like every small detail has a meaning and it gives something into the movie. At this time, the massive Coca Cola logo does not feel like just a sponsor, it looks more the power of the big brands and how these multi corporations will grow in the future, also we have a chance to see a world where everything and everybody is just a nameless consumer or just a product with a serial number on this poor planet. In this future,  every meter is advertising space, and you can find 10 000 opportunities at every corner to forget how to be a human being.

    

    In this film we can see that the replicants feel more, they want to live more than humans. As I said before, they are just more humans than humans. They feel deeper, and they insist on life much more than the empty people who are just wasting life and dating, digital neo bitches. Maybe because of this uncomfortable message of the film can be a reason why Blade Runner can not be a box office hit. Perhaps people do not want to accept this kind of strong critics about our society.

 

31/05/2020 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

-Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs And Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, 1991

-Blade Runner By David Morgan https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/blade_runner.pdf

-Fenech, C. Can Donna Haraway's ideas on cyborg fit into Ridley Scott's vision of the future in Blade Runner?

-William, D. Ideology as Dystopia: An Interpretation of Blade Runner

 

-Scott, R. Blade Runner (1982) [Movie, Final Cut Edition, Warner Bros.]

-Villeneuve, D. Blade Runner 2049 (2017) [Movie, Warner Bros.]


[1] https://web.stanford.edu/~jonahw/PWR1/Docs/Williams-BladeRunner.pdf

Ideology as Dystopia: An Interpretation of Blade Runner DOUGLAS E. WILLIAM

 

[2] Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991), p.149

[3] Ibid. p.154

[4] Chris Fenech:Can Donna Haraway's ideas on cyborg fit into Ridley Scott's vision of the future in Blade Runner?

 

[5] Ibid. p. 3

[6] Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of the Natural (1991), p.155

[7] Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of the Natural (1991), p.155


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monsters Among Us - Documentary

-
Image
Monsters Among Us Monsters have preoccupied mankind from the earliest times: even cave art includes animal-human monsters. Certainly, monsters were present in the ancient religions of Egypt and Mesopotamia; the Old Testament describes the giant land and sea monsters Behemoth and Leviathan, while in the world of Classical mythology, monsters embody the fantasies of the gods and the cruellest punishments of human beings. While we may no longer worry about being eaten by trolls on the way home, there remains a fascination with these creatures who have shadowed us throughout history. The full documentary is available in 4k below. 
Read more

Unit 9 - Where In The World? Part II. Digital Character design and environment

-
Image
 Digital character design and environment In our last unit of the year, we had to create a character design then we had to place it in an environment. This unit meant to be preparing us a bit for the third year projects, where we need to make the environment for our sculptures. We had the opportunity to do this project on paper or digitally. After my work placement with Lifecast Ltd at Elstree Studios, I am interested in ZBrush, because I saw how much are they using it this day, therefore I choose the digital techniques for unit 9. We have been given some scripts, what we needed to read through and choose one that we want to work from. I have chosen "Tom`s List" by Sibusiso Mamba. Moreover, I choose straight the first scene. I really liked this script and I found the character very interesting. I have imagined an old-style bloke, in an old fashion movie. Probably in a film noir. The black and white representation and design would serve the film. The Character A middle-aged hi...
Read more

Ghost Stages (Unit 7)

-
Image
  Ghost Stages Project Unit 7 In this part of the unit, we have been tasked with  collaborating  within a small team: JACKY CHAU   ZHISHUANG FAN  YISONG HUANG  ADAM PALOCZY  GEORGE TUSON   RUIMENG GU In our group had the chance to select a ghost scene from a list to work on, moreover, we could approach the making of this scene however we wanted and we been taken through some introductions and workshops to give us tools for designing, making and performing. We were asked for a production pitch of our scene so our ‘pitch’ can include drawings, designs, samples, models, and proposals, furthermore like part of the pitch to be a proof of concept (a performance/animation/small film etc.) of the ghost. We had the opportunity to find our project from 6 scenes. I was very excited about this project. I was reading about practical ways to produce ghost effects, like peppers ghost and other staff. I always wanted to be involved in a ghost film. Our ...
Read more