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Jul 26, 2003, 7:32:28 PM7/26/03

A Study of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner

1 INTRODUCTION

Blade Runner opened in US cinemas on the 25th June 1982, amid media

hype, and yet proved to be a commercial failure, only just recouping

its $28million costs. Critical reaction to the film was generally

negative also: the Los Angeles Times cautioned: "(Don't let the words

blade runner confuse you into expecting a super-high speed chase

film. Blade crawler might be more like it...[1]". Indeed, reaction to

the film was so hostile that director Ridley Scott later commented,

"You'd have thought we were boiling babies or something [2]." His

previous film had been Alien (1979), a sci-fi horror film that proved

an enormous commercial success, and Blade Runner's star, Harrison

Ford, was (and still is) one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood,

with Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark

breaking box office records a few years previously. Blade Runner's

producer, Michael Deeley, had last worked on The Deer Hunter, which

won Oscar for Best Picture in 1979. It is to some extent

understandable, given Scott and Ford's previous films, that the public

were disappointed with Blade Runner; expecting a special effects laden

action film, they were instead presented with a dark, depressing

vision of the future, in which most Hollywood values are

overturned [3].

However, despite its initial failure, critical reassessments have

steadily become more favourable. It has acquired a cult following, and

is credited with having inspired the basic aesthetic of the science

fiction subgenre cyberpunk, the best example of which is William

Gibson's Neuromancer (1984). Blade Runner is one of only 50 films to

be stored in the United States Library of Congress, on account of its

contribution to film culture. The British film magazine Empire once

described it as 'a seminal work and an undeniable classic... [4]'.

The general volte face of critical and popular opinion towards the

film may have been the reasons behind Scott's decision to release a

Director's Cut of the film in 1992, which restored his original

intentions for the film. As a text, the Director's Cut reveals exactly

how Scott planned the film originally, and as such allows a variety of

new readings of the film's themes. This dissertation argues that the

Director's Cut of the film reveals subtextual complexities and motifs

which question the status of Hollywood science fiction.

Many critics have cited Blade Runner as a postmodernist film. However,

postmodernism carries with it an inherent tendency to devalue art,

insofar as postmodernism posits that all semiological systems are self

referential and as such incapable of any truly representative

relationship with reality. In this dissertation I will argue that this

may not be true of Blade Runner, because it makes use of mythical, and

in particular Biblical, imagery to espouse some of its themes. In the

first section of the dissertation I will consider the films moral and

political themes, which relate to the politics of power and

oppression. I will argue that the film debunks the idea that humans

are superior to replicants. I will then consider the wider

metaphorical implications of this through two historical phenomena

which inform Scott's semiology, the first being North American

slavery, and the second being South American slavery, in the form of

the Mayan civilisation. In the second section I will analyse the films

theological themes and their relationship to the film's literary

antecedents, such as Paradise Lost. The film's use of mythical and

Biblical imagery is a rejection of the depthlessness of postmodern

ideas in favour of a view of Man which is redemptive, and which

contradicts the celebration of meaninglessness which typifies

postmodern theory. The use of imagery from mythic and religious

metanarratives offers humanity self-definiton through moral truth. It

is argued that the film's optimism is the result of a creative

paradox. While the film suggests that dehumanisation is all that

technology have to offer, it is the ultimate creation of this

technology, the replicant Roy Batty, who finds the path to spiritual

and moral enlightenment. I the third section, I apply popular

postmodern theories to the film.

This dissertation was written between September 1997 and February

1998, and formed part of the final examination for my undergraduate

degree in English Literature and Philosophy, at Manchester University,

England. I would like to thank Dr. Marcus Wood, formerly of Manchester

University and currently teaching at the University of Sussex. As my

dissertation supervisor, he offered advice and judgement which were

hugely helpful. It goes without saying that any errors are my own.

12th July 1999

Endnotes

1 - Sammon, Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, 1996, pg 314

2 - Sammon, Ibid, pg 389

3 - By this I mean the values of what Theodor Adorno called the

'culture industry', which mass-produces art for profit. To profit most

from a mass art like cinema one must appeal to the lowest common

denominators in a film, for example a love interest, or the desire to

see justice done at the end of a film, and so on. Blade Runner's hero

is an anti-hero - at one point he kills a fleeing woman by shooting

her in the back. The film generally presents a negative view of

humanity, which may have contributed to its initial commercial

failure, especially given that it was released at the same time as ET,

a 'feelgood' film that was the box office success of that year.

4 - Empire, August 1997

2 MORAL AND POLITICAL PARADIGMS

Science Fiction is a genre which deals, primarily, with outlandish

ideas, such as time travel, or human cloning. It is for sheer

convenience's sake that most science fiction novels are set in the

future, since this allows the author to disregard realist conventions

which may hinder the exploration of the chosen idea. Most science

fiction authors consolidate their readers acceptance of their vision

of the future by inventing realistic vernaculars, not only to add a

realist essence to their work, but often to help to express their

ideas as well. Perhaps the best example of this would be William

Gibson's invention of the word 'cyberspace' to describe the

'consensual hallucination' of a direct neural interface with a

computer - a word which has since passed into mainstream language

itself [1].

Blade Runner uses its own terminology: the clones of the film are

described as 'Replicants', a word chosen for its connotations with

cell replication (the action which allows genetic engineers to clone

genetic material [2]). The terminology is introduced to the viewer by

use of a narrative device often found in film noir - that of the

scrolling text, either before, during, of at the end of the film

itself. Once the opening credits of the film have rolled, this text is

scrolled past the blank screen[3]:

Early in the 21st Century, the TYRELL CORPORATION advanced Robot

evolution into the Nexus phase - a being virtually identical to a

human - known as a Replicant.

The NEXUS-6 Replicants were superior in strength and agility, and

at least equal in intelligence, to the genetic engineers who

created them. Replicants were used Off- world as slave labor, in

the hazardous exploration and colonisation of other planets.

After a bloody mutiny by a NEXUS-6 combat team in an Off-world

colony, Replicants were declared illegal on Earth - under penalty

of death. Special police squads - BLADE RUNNER UNITS - had orders

to shoot to kill, upon detection, any trespassing Replicants.

This was not called execution.

It was called retirement.

This crawl introduces us to some of the terminology used in the film -

such as replicants and Blade Runners - but much more interestingly, it

can be seen to have an element of bias, also. The replicants are

specifically referred to as slaves. The text also mentions that they

are retired, but suggests that this is more or less synonymous with

execution. We are allowed to ponder this deliberately emotive language

for a few moments, perhaps long enough to intuitively feel some

sympathy for the replicants before a single one has even been seen,

before the words LOS ANGELES, NOVEMBER 2019 fill the screen, and the

film proper begins.

The fade from black is marked by the sound of an explosion, and the

first image of the film, the cityscape, is revealed. Los Angeles, the

City of Angels, is a hellish, endless maze of giant, industrial

buildings; an oil refinery spews flames into the night sky, which is

an ashen, polluted grey. A flying vehicle emerges from the fog, and

shoots past the screen. Lightning strikes a building, to no apparent

effect. This is a place of poison and decay, and it is hard to believe

that humans could inhabit it.

The vast hell is dominated by the Tyrell Corporation headquarters, two

Mayan-style pyramids, each 700 storeys high [4]. For decades, one of

the greatest riddles of archaeology was why the Mayans, having built

such huge, terrifying, aesthetically impenetrable cities, abandoned

them en masse, to crumble and become overgrown with vine and

jungle. The riddle was solved when it was recognised that the Mayans,

despite their impressive astronomical knowledge, had agricultural

practises so primitive that they did not even have ploughs; the

farmland around their cities was overused, drained of nutrients, and

cities had to be abandoned because staying in them would mean starving

to death.

This historical fact is echoed in twenty first century Los

Angeles. Earth has been drained of its resources - once the Garden of

Eden, it is now a place of death and pollution. Those who can afford

it have emigrated to the greener pastures of the Off- world colonies;

those who cannot have no choice but to stay and live in the sulphurous

ruins.

Suddenly, the screen is filled with a blue eye, in which is reflected

the explosions watched a moment earlier. It stares straight at the

camera. The next scene begins with Holden, a blade runner, staring

glumly out of a window at the city, at which point the eye can be

inferred as being his. But when it is on screen this inference cannot

be made, because we are yet to be introduced to any

characters. Cinematically, it is a slightly unsettling experience. The

film is being watched - and suddenly, quite literally, the film begins

to watch the watcher. Throughout the film, as shall later be

described, a sense of paranoia is sustained, contributing to an

all-pervasive sense of negativity.

The camera zooms into a window, and the next shot is an interior one;

the film's first character, Dave Holden, a blade runner, is seen

staring out of a window, drinking coffee. A large man enters the room,

and a loudspeaker introduces him as Leon Kowalski, a new employee

working as a waste disposal engineer. He waits for instructions, and

is told to sit down. There begins a bizarre and sinister test: Holden

creates a hypothetical situation - not helping an animal in distress -

which suddenly becomes accusatory. This both aggravates and upsets

Kowalski. A certain tension is created by a lingering close up of

Kowalski's upset face, as well as a thudding heartbeat noise o the

soundtrack.

Abruptly, the mood changes. Holden smiles, visibly relaxes, and is

suddenly conversational and friendly:

HOLDEN: They're just questions, Leon. In answer to your query

they're written down for me. It's a test, designed to provoke

an emotional response.

(He smiles a genuine smile)

Shall we continue?

The tension in the atmosphere dissipates, since the reason for

Holden's earlier hostility is known. His next question contributes to

the new, friendly mood of the test. It is neither confrontational nor

accusatory. It's a nice question.

HOLDEN: Describe to me, in single words, only the good things

that come into your mind about your mother.

Leon thinks about this question for a moment, before responding, 'Let

me tell you about my mother...' and shooting Holden with a gun hidden

under the table, in a moment of violence so quick be barely have time

to register it before the scene ends.

Leon Kowalski is, in fact, a fugitive replicant. The question

'describe in single words only the good things which come into your

mind about your mother' may seem mild to us, but to Kowalski it is the

most sinister question of all - because he has never had a mother, he

is a manufactured being, and so cannot but reveal his status as such

in any attempt to answer this question verbally.

In Mayan culture, the ruling classes were known as the almehenob -

'those with fathers and mothers', a reference to their noble lineage.

There was no middle class in Mayan society; people were either

fabulously wealthy or miserably poor. The very poor made up the huge

majority of the population, and worked for the almehenob as slaves.

Again, another reference to the Mayans - this time, their practises of

slavery and oppression - is being made. Holden is asking Kowalski

about his mother, but Kowalski is a replicant, and replicants are used

as slaves: literally and symbolically speaking, he does not belong to

the class of individuals who have fathers and mothers [5]. He kills

Holden because he must; Holden has the authority to kill any replicant

upon detection.

This scene introduces us to some of the themes that feature throughout

the film: visually, it gives us the first two examples of 'eye'

imagery (the giant disembodied eye, and Kowalski's eye on the

monitor), and thematically, it introduces us to some of the political

and moral issues of the film. Should the replicants be killed for

being on Earth? Should the replicants themselves kill, simply to get

here? What is the difference between replicant and human anyway? After

all, the fact that Kowalski is a replicant is by no means obvious. He

is, in fact, indistinguishable from a 'real' human - he exhibits fear,

nervousness, and a capacity to kill in cold blood.

In the past, many film noirs have had recurrent images of eyes, an pun

on the idea of the 'private eye'. Murder, My Sweet (1944) is a good

example of this, as L Heldreth observes:

In its opening and closing scenes, the detective, temporarily

blinded by powder burns, sits in a pool of light with his eyes

bandaged. Earlier he had been unable to see figuratively,

i.e. detect the killer, and at the end he has temporarily lost his

vision [6].

In Blade Runner, the eye motif of earlier film noirs is again used, in

connection with the replicants. At various points in the film, each

replicants eyes are seen to 'glow', a clue that they are replicants

(this effect is most clearly seen in the artificial owl, as Tyrell

dies). Consider the scene at Chew's Eye Works; Chew, a genetic

engineer who designs eyes, is confronted by Batty about morphology:

CHEW(nervously): I don't know ... I don't know such stuff! I just

do eyes ... genetic design ...just eyes. (Squints) ...you Nexus,

huh? I design your eyes.

BATTY(smiling): Chew - if only you could see what I have seen,

with your eyes...

Batty accepts his artificiality here, the fact that he was

manufactured, but celebrates his experiences, the things he has

seen. For Batty, eyes and vision are the keys to the development of an

almost Romantic consciousness, emancipated from his status as an

automaton. For Chew, eyes are simply units of production. He

manufactures eyes, but only Batty 'sees' their significance. In some

ways, Batty is the human, and Chew the automaton.

The politics of power involve a distinction between oppressed and

oppressor, salve and master. In Nazi Germany, Jews were forced to wear

a Star of David badge, a visible symbol of the inferior status forced

upon them. In Dan Simmons sci-fi novel Endymion (1995), androids are

used as slaves, but given bright blue skins, so there is never any

confusion over who is slave, who is master. In Blade Runner, there are

no distinguishing features between replicant and human, oppressed and

oppressor. The only distinction that may be made is with the use of

the Voight-Kampff test.

As Holden says, the Voight-Kampff test is 'designed to provoke an

emotional response'. Because replicants are at most four years old,

and hence to an extent emotionally immature, their responses to

emotionally resonant questions is different, because their lack of

experience may lead to them not knowing (or understanding) the correct

reaction to some of the questions. Thus the two made be

differentiated, and replicants, upon detection, executed.

The Voight-Kampff test has a monitor which displays a close-up of the

subject's eye for the duration of the test. It is with the aid of this

close-up that the exminer may judge emotional response by involuntary

iris fluctuations. The Voight-Kampff machine is part of a continuous

theme throughout the film, the idea that those in power have more

'vision' than those lower down the social scale. At street level,

everything is chaotic, obscured; constantly unsteady shots have extras

passing in front of the camera, forcing us to strain to see the often

out of focus background images - for example, after Kowalski's death,

whilst Deckard is buying his bottle of Tsing-Tao, Gaff (the blade

runner who originally arrests Deckard) approaches Deckard from

behind. Background images are so blurred that he is visible only when

he practically right behind Deckard. However, those in positions of

relative power - the police, Eldon Tyrell, have access to much clearer

view of the city. The constantly roving spotlight, present throughout

the film, suggest constant surveillance. The police spinners [7]

afford vast, panoramic views of the city, and even have panes of glass

in the floor to allow the pilots to see below them. Characters in the

film are occasionally watched by the apparition of a strangely

sinister Oriental woman, which floats over the city, embedded on the

side of a giant airship. David Dryer, co-special effects supervisor

for the film commented:

The one scene we ... were sorry to lose was supposed to occur in

the fight between Deckard and Leon (Kowalski). The idea was we

were going to do a matte painting of a giant building above Ford

and James with an oriental woman on an animated billboard looking

down on the and reacting to what they were doing. She was going to

be puffing on one of those big cigarettes and acting as if she was

watching a televised fight. That bit was supposed to give a

feeling of oppression, that these billboards are watching everyone

everywhere they go[8].

Another example of this is Tyrells office, at the very top of one of

his pyramids, which has picture windows that survey the entire

cityscape. The spaciousness of the office, emphasised by the spartan

furniture in contrast to the overcrowding at street level, suggests

that space itself is a status symbol. This contrasts sharply with the

lot of the replicants, for example Zhora, who works in a crowded

ground level strip club. When Deckard visits her, he tells her that he

is from the 'Confidential Committee on Moral Abuses' and that he is

investigating claims that the management have peep holes in the ladies

dressing rooms. He claims to protect her from the intrusive

surveillance of a higher authority, when in fact the only surveillance

she need fear is his. Surveillance appears to be a key feature of Los

Angeles in the future - the entire city appears to have turned into

one of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticons, whereby one cannot tell if one is

being watched, but it is possible that one is being watched at all

times, which means extreme caution must be exercised at all times. The

replicants of the film must stay 'in character' at all times, even

when alone.

Their functions place them, forcibly, in the lowest social classes;

whether hazardous, such as nuclear fission loading (Kowalski) or

sordid, such as prostitution (Pris), the replicants are given only the

most menial and degrading jobs. They have childlike qualities: Roy

tells Sebastian he's got 'some nice toys' whilst Pris watches, toying

with a broken doll. They are also linked with animal imagery - Roy's

wolflike howl, Zhora's snake tattoo, Pris's racoon makeup. Both

childlike and animalistic qualities have been attributed by slave

systems to their victims. Stanley Elkins, in his book Slavery: A

Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life(1963), offers

a historical explanation for this fact, using as his example the

racial stereotype of the black colonial plantation worker as being

lazy and childish. It was common belief at the time that these

personality traits were racially inherent, but Elkins debunks this

argument by reminding us of the physical and mental torments many

slaves suffered, not least in their capture and transportation. The

vary act of capture was in itself traumatic, but what followed was the

long march to the sea, which was sometimes hundreds of miles

away. Upon being sold as slaves to European slave traders, the African

would then be transported by ship to the America in what became known

as the Middle Passage, which Elkins described as 'almost too

protracted and stupefying to be described as a mere

"shock"... brutalizing to any man, black or white, ever to be involved

with it [9].'

Only the strongest and healthiest men and women survived the entire

experience, from capture in Africa to arrival in America[10]. Upon

arrival, Africans knew absolutely nothing about where they were; the

cultural codes by which they had lived their lives no longer had any

relevance. The life these men and women went on to lead was one of

hardship and constant surveillance. Given these facts - the mental

scarring that their capture, transport and subsequent lives of slavery

left upon them, it is not surprising, Elkins argues, that many of them

responded to a situation which their deaths could occur at any time,

and for any reason, by reverting, first to a state of utter

detachment, and then to a state of childish loyalty to their new

masters. Because as Elkins says:

The (old) African values, the sanctions, the standards, already

unreal, could no longer furnish (the slaves) with guides for

conduct, for adjusting to the expectations of a complete new

life. Where then were (they) to look for new standards, new cues -

who would furnish them now? (They) could now look to none but

their master, the man upon whom the system had committed their

entire being: the man upon whose will depended (their) food ...

shelter ... sexual connection, (any) moral instruction (they)

might be offered ... in short, everything [11].

By casting Roy Batty as the perfect Aryan - 6'5", with a muscular

frame, blonde hair and blue eyes - Scott is pointedly contrasting his

appearance with black slavery, perhaps to bring emphasis to the fact

that oppression need not be contingent upon race. Elkins finding are

relevant in the way that Roy Batty has come to see Tyrell as his

father, in the same way slaves in the colonies attributed

'father-figure' status to their oppressors [12]. All this would come

to suggest that the replicants are strangle childish because of the

unimaginable traumas they have been made to suffer. But, although

these traumas may have affected them, they have not broken their

spirit, or desire to return to Earth. Although slave ships often had

insurance against mutiny by the slaves, it rarely happened. But the

replicants in Blade Runner did mutiny, and killed humans in doing

so. Although the Blade Runner script identifies J F Sebastian as a

chess Grand Master, and Tyrell is referred to several times as a

genius, Batty's chess strategies are superior to both. Mentally and

physically, Batty is the Neitzschean 'superman' - he is 'More Human

Than Human', as the Tyrell Corporation motto puts it. And yet Batty,

the 'prodigal son' is a enslaved. But nothing, not even being born

into slavery and suffering hardships we cannot imagine, can or will

prevent him from coming back to Earth, to meet his maker.

John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, argued that

personal identity comprises nothing but memories: the mind is a tabula

rasa, or 'blank slate' at birth, and all subsequent experiences shape

our personalities, and make us human. Subsequent philosophers (notably

Noam Chomsky) have shown that there are in fact various things

'pre-programmed' into the human mind (such as the capacity for

language acquisition, for example) but do not contest that our

personalities, the ways we are that make us human, are acquired

through experience.

This raises a compelling question: if humans are defined as such

because we have personalities, based upon years of memories and

experience, and there now exist replicants with personalities, based

upon (albeit ersatz) memories also, at what point may the two be

differentiated? According to Tyrell, there now exist replicants with

memories so perfect that they believe they are human. The film encodes

this idea in reverse; Rachel is presented as an ostensibly human

executive at the Tyrell Corporation, part of the structure that

creates and sells the replicants. But she is subsequently revealed to

be a replicant - the Voight-Kampff machine gazes into the windows of

her soul, and pronounces her a machine, also.

TYRELL: She's beginning to suspect.

DECKARD(incredulous): Suspect? How can it not know what it is?

There is no change in Rachel's appearance, but once the distinction is

made, it is final, and she ceases being human. Deckard's switch to

'it' foregrounds the fact that Rachel is now an object, not an

individual.

Later, Rachel goes to see Deckard at his apartment. She has with her a

photo of herself as a child, with her mother. History is made up of

linguistic and photographic artefacts from the past. Deckard proves to

her the illusion of her past, by telling her her own

memories. Although clutching a fake photograph, the tears are very

real. It is at this point Deckard realises that she is not simply a

machine, like other replicants, perhaps. Equipped with a memory, an

entire lifetime of experienced, she becomes human - she has the life

experiences that the replicants four years lifetimes forcibly prevent

them from attaining. So seamlessly human, in fact, that even she did

not realise that she was a replicant.

Rene Descartes, in his Meditations Upon The First Philosophy, pointed

out that our senses are far from trustworthy. We have no direct

one-to-one contact with reality, and must instead rely upon sense data

to help us construct some simulacrum of it within our minds. His

famous Demon Argument argues that our senses may be deceiving us - the

modern form of the argument is to posit that it is quite possible that

your brain actually resides in a nutrient vat somewhere, and that all

the sense data you receive, convincing you of the existence of an

external reality, is fed to you via strategically placed electrodes,

by a mad scientist. It is a conceit entertained by us all,

occasionally - how do I know that my existence is not just a virtual

reality game? Reality is a very ephemeral thing. Rachel's predicament

is Descartes' argument come true, the difference being that she has

been unfortunate enough to have her illusion of reality shattered -

the scientist has revealed his cruel trick to her. We feel sympathy

for Rachel because she is forced to face a truth that we all, in our

more fanciful moments, imagine and dread - the fear of verisimilitude

being destroyed. Rachel responds by throwing away her photo, which

contrasts with Kowalski, who knows he is a replicant, and yet

treasures his photos. He may be an artificial human, but he knows that

within that context his memories are real... and he cherishes them.

Rachel has neither father nor mother, and so is just like any other

replicant, and faces the danger of being retired. For the sake of her

survival, she must adapt quickly.

RACHEL: What if I go North ... disappear? Would you come after me?

... hunt me?

The reference to going North brings to mind the Underground

Railroad, the method used by blacks in America to escape slavery

in the southern states.

DECKARD: No ... no I wouldn't. I owe you one.

This is an important point in Deckard's moral development. He ceases

his previous coldness to her, and begins to treat her like a

person. This moral development is encouraged by the climax of the

film, where Deckard, oppressor and hunter, is hunted by Batty a deadly

game of cat and mouse. The terror-stricken Deckard is forced onto the

roof of the Bradbury Building by a chillingly amused Batty, yet to

break a sweat even when Deckard is exhausted. With no other options

available to him, Deckard is forced to try and jump to the roof

opposite, and barely manages to cling to the edge of it, dangling

precariously.

Batty clears the gap with ease, and spends a few moments watching the

crippled blade runner grapple with the edge, trying to survive even as

his grip begins to weaken.

BATTY: Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what

it is , to be a slave.

These words are not spoken with rancour, nor is there any sense of

gloating over Deckard's predicament. They are spoken in a perfectly

conversational tone, although there is a sense of bitterness with the

last few words. It is almost as though Batty has hunted Deckard

throughout the scene not to wreak vengeance or otherwise punish him,

but to educate his viewpoint, to help him understand fear and

consequently develop empathy. Batty, the replicant, is humanising

Deckard, the ostensible human.

Deckard, realising he is about to die, spits at Batty, his face a mask

of fear and hatred. But then Batty saves Deckard's life, grabbing his

hand just as his grip fails, and lifting him to safety. This restores

a symmetry to the film, a symmetry Deckard cannot help but be aware

of: he has killed two replicants, and now two replicants have saved

his life. Edited out of the Director's Cut, the voice over at this

point in the original film had Deckard saying:

DECKARD(voice-over): I don't know why he saved my life. Perhaps,

in those last moments, he loved life more than he ever had. Not

just his life, anybody's life. My life.

Although the Director's Cut dispenses with this narrative, the

implications of Batty saving Deckard's life are nonetheless clear. He

cannot simply dismiss replicants as machines. the Voight-Kampff test

may be designed upon the principle that replicants lack the empathic,

emotional responses of real humans, but they do possess empathy, a

humane side - had they not, Batty would have left Deckard to die. They

are as human as us.

The final scene of the film, in Deckard's apartment, is perhaps one of

the most interesting scenes in the film. Having completed his

assignment as ordered, Deckard returns to his apartment to get Rachel

and escape out of Los Angeles before anyone tries to retire

her. Having woken Rachel, they head for cautiously the

elevator. Earlier in the film, in a scene where Deckard is drunk and

picking out a tune on his piano, there is a slow fade into a sylvan

wood; a unicorn gallops in slow motion past the camera, shaking its

mane, and then the scene fades back to Deckard's apartment. The image,

as with the giant eye at the beginning of the film, makes no sense

whatever in its immediate context, and is somewhat surreal. The

audience is led to infer that the unicorn is of some private

significance to Deckard, a recurring dream, perhaps.

As Rachel walks toward the elevator, her foot knocks over something on

the floor. Noticing this, Deckard picks it up. It is an origami

unicorn, made out of tinfoil. Gaff, the other blade runner, is skilled

at origami - we watch him make a chicken in Bryant's office, when

Deckard is refusing to take the job. But how could Gaff know Deckard

well enough to know about the unicorn? The only logical answer is to

suggest that Deckard himself is a replicant. Just as Deckard revealed

to Rachel her replicant status by telling her her own memories, so

Gaff has done for Deckard, leaving with origami the one symbol, whose

real meaning is never made clear to us, which convinces Deckard that

he is not human. In fact, there is evidence that he was already

beginning to suspect; earlier in the film, when Rachel asks him if he

has ever taken the Voight-Kampff test himself, there is a pregnant

silence, and Deckard ignores her. Also, his piano is covered with old

photographs; he appears to spend his free time sitting at the piano,

drunk, looking at the photographs, trying to convince himself that

they are real, that they prove he had a father and mother. The most

reliable evidence that Deckard is a replicant occurs in the scene

between him and Rachel, in his apartment. Rachel asks Deckard if he

would hunt her if she went north. He replies that he wouldn't, and the

moves behind Rachel. At this point Rachel is in the foreground and to

the left of the frame. Deckard is to the right of the frame, a few

feet behind her, and out of focus. But nonetheless, his eyes can be

seen to glow slightly, a device used by Scott to distinguish

replicants from other animals.

Whilst the film as a whole has important moral and political

implications, this scene, upon the discovery of the tinfoil unicorn,

works as the keystone of both. Throughout the film, we have been

encouraged to view replicants as the Other, as slaves, or

simulacra. This scene demonstrates that such a differentiation is

false, that replicants are no different from humans, and that it is

quite possible that we may be replicants. This is the film's moral

message; slavery, racism and sexism have always been defended on the

grounds that the group being discriminated against represent an Other

who deserve demonisation. But this scene in Blade Runner server to

demonstrate that there is no Other - no slaves, no masters, no blade

runners: only humans.

Endnotes

1 - Gibson coined this word in Neuromancer(1983), one of the most

celebrated science fiction novels of the 1980's and the founding work

of the cyberpunk subgenre. Gibson has often cited Blade Runner as a

major influence on the novel.

2 - Sammon, Future Noir : The Making of Blade Runner (1996), pg 314

3 - Hereon referred to as the 'opening crawl'.

4 - Sammon, 1996, p236

5 - 'In 1662, a Virginia law stated that a newborn (African) was or

was not free depending on the status of the mother.' (Denise Dennis,

Black History for Beginners, 1984, pg 38). Holdens question can be

seen to be very straightforward, then : 'Are you or are you not a

slave?'

6 - Heldreth, Blade Runner and Detective Fiction, Retrofitting Blade

Runner, ed J Kerman, 1991, pg 44

7 - The name given to the hovering vehicles in the film.

8 - Sammon, 1996, pg 161

9 - Elkins, Slavery, A problem in American Institutional and

Intellectual Life, 1963, pg 100

10 - 'One-third of the numbers first taken, out of a total of perhaps

fifteen million, had died on the march and at the trading stations;

another third died during the Middle Passage and the seasoning.'

Elkins, Ibid, pg 101

11 - Elkins, Ibid, pg 102

12 - In the scene where Batty and Tyrell meet, there is almost a sense

of kinship between them; Batty takes the opportunity to confess his

sins, and Tyrell strokes Batty's head in a fatherly way which would

otherwise, between two strangers, seem strange.

3 ROMANTIC PARADIGMS AND THE SATANIC MYTH

The human/android relationship has always lent itself to metaphors of

slavery and equal rights. The best example of this would be Isaac

Asimov's Robot series of novels, which began in 1957 and foretold in

epic style the story of a future race of androids, their fight for

equal rights, and revolutions. The theme of Man's overreaching pride

in thinking himself God's vice- regent on Earth has been explored

often in literature, most memorably in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In

cinema, examples would include Planet of the Apes, The Terminator and

2001: A Space Odyssey. These films all explore our relationship with

nature and technology, and the potential dangers to be faced if we, in

our pride, think ourselves masters of these forces. Blade Runner

employs these themes, but almost uniquely, it's Christian imagery also

raises theological questions about the definitions of

humanity. Insofar as it was based upon a novel, Do Androids Dream of

Electric Sheep? (1969) by Philip K Dick, Blade Runner also has strong

connections with literature, which are reinforced by the film's use of

literary allusions and themes. This chapter of the dissertation will

examine these aspects of the film.

In his excellent essay The New Eve, critic David Desser has observed a

claim made by others that Blade Runner's power rests on its adaptation

of a 'fundamental mythic structure' also found in Frankenstein: the

struggle against human facsimiles. Frankenstein itself, he points out,

is a Romantic reading of Paradise Lost. Blade Runner, in its own way,

pays homage to both Shelley's novel and Milton's epic. the film's

dialogue with Christian symbolism begins with one of the first shots

of the film, that of Tyrell's futuristic Mayan pyramid.

The only type of buildings that the Mayans built as pyramid shaped

were the temples in which they worshipped the Sun through ritual human

sacrifice. Tyrell, who lives on the top floor of one of his pyramids,

is a small, thin, middle-aged man with weak eyesight (he wears thick

trifocal spectacles) and little visual presence; and yet, in a visual

contradiction typical of the film, he is presented as a sort of

deity. He has the highest, most panoramic viewpoint over the city,

suggesting he is the most powerful person in it. The only time the sun

is seen in the entire film is from Tyrell's office windows, in the

scene where Deckard gives Rachel the Voight-Kampff test. Tyrell tints

the windows with the push of a button, suggesting that he, the owner

of the Pyramid of the Sun, controls the sun itself, and so is in that

respect a godlike figure[1]. We are told by Chew that Tyrell designed

the replicants very minds. As William Kolb points out:

Nexus is a Latin word meaning 'to bind' and refers to the tie

between members of a group, eg members of a series. The replicants

who arrive on Earth are literally and metaphorically the

Nexus-6.[2]

And as such, the replicants can be said to be a species distinct from

us. thus Tyrell can be said to be their God, in that he created them.

'Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell - "More Human Than Human" is our

motto', explains Tyrell. This is a point stressed by Scott throughout

the film: the replicants display not only great physical strength in

the film, but also great intelligence, too. In the scene where Deckard

is being debriefed, Captain Bryant describes Roy Batty as being a

'combat model., with optimum self-sufficiency'. From these words, and

the image of Batty's cold blue eyes, it is easy to imagine him as some

sort of generic robot killing machine, as seen in countless science

fiction films and novels: toneless production line automata. But

Batty, as played by Rutger Hauer, defies these epithets. He is

intelligent, sometimes cold and calculating, sometimes witty and

frivolous. Whereas Deckard is shown constantly in transit, Batty is

only ever shown arriving. He is somewhat of an enigma.

Upon his meeting with Chew, the genetic designer, the combat model

asserts his independence from generic cliché, and shows that there is

more to him that meets the eye, by reciting (quite well) a line of

poetry:

Fiery the angels fell,

Deep thunder roll'd around their shores,

Burning with the fires of Orc.

This is a misquotation from America: A Prophecy, by William Blake, a

poem that uses the American Revolution as an allegory for the struggle

for personal freedom[3]. Many freed slaves fought in the War of

independence, believing that victory would mean the abolition of

slavery. As such, this quote is particularly apposite; the replicants

themselves are seeking freedom from slavery, and so this is Batty's

way of stating his agenda, his reasons for returning to Earth. Blake's

actual lines were:

Fiery the angels rose, and as they rose deep

thunder roll'd, Around their shores; indignant

Burning with the fires of Orc.

Batty's angels fall rather than rise, however, giving his quote a

Miltonic ambience[4]. In several ways, in fact, Batty and his fellow

replicants may be seen as fallen angels. Literally, the murder of the

crew and passengers of the shuttle that facilitated their return could

be seen as an offence against nature: as slaves, it is above their

station to murder, or return to Earth. Once humankind's servants, they

are now demonised, hunted and executed on the spot. Damned, they have

fallen from their 'More Human Than Human' status, prey to amoral blade

runners like Deckard. Insofar as he is the leader of the fallen

angels, Batty becomes a sort of Satan figure: the strongest, most

intelligent of the fallen angels, unhappy with his station in life,

now disgraced.

Desser states that if Batty can be seen as Satan, then Deckard,

world-weary blade runner, can be seen as Adam[5]. In Paradise Lost,

Milton stressed that his intention were to create Adam as the epic

hero, but later generations read Satan as being the real hero of the

text. Similarly, Desser argues, Blade Runner presents us with the

ambiguity concerning the issue of the film's hero. Insofar as Deckard

is the character we are made to identify with, he appears to be the

film's ostensible hero - he survives. But what kind of hero shoots a

woman in the back? Batty's quest in the film is truly heroic - he

seeks more life, to confront his creator, whereas Deckard is just

doing a job he has been forced to do. deckard tries to kill Batty

several times at the end of the film, and yet when the roles are

reversed, and Batty has a chance to kill Deckard, he spares him. At a

structural level, the question of who is the hero in Paradise Lost is

echoed in Blade Runner: Batty is Satanic, and so Deckard can be seen

as Adam-figure of the text, the character who the audience is

ostensibly made to sympathise with, but who cannot capture the

imagination quite like the ostensible villain can.

Desser also states that Rachel is Eve, and again, I agree with

him. Eve was created for Adam, using one of his ribs. When children

are born, we have no idea what kind of people they will grow up to

become. Rachel, like Eve, was specifically created using human tissue

to become a specific person, with the memories and personality of that

person predetermined. As such, she is very much like Eve. Desser

argues that Rachel's role as Eve is reinforced with film noir imagery:

To the contemporary reader of Paradise Lost, foreknowledge of

Eve's tragic succumbing to temptation, bringing Adam down with

her, makes her image a profoundly ambiguous one. On the one hand,

as described by Adam, she has many desirable qualities; and yet

she leads to the Fall. Blade Runner similarly relies on an

archetypal set of conventions to create an ambiguous image of

woman, the classic femme fatale of film noir. Rachel wears her

hair pinned up behind her head, and is often seen wearing jackets

with the classic Joan Crawford padded shoulders. Her links with

the noir era of filmmaking are further stressed by the ... use of

low key lighting with heavy reliance on shadows, especially the

'bar effect' created by light streaming in through half open

blinds. This iconography automatically makes Rachel suspect - a

potential spider woman, the woman-as-temptress, our fallen mother,

Eve[6].

Rachel believes she is a perfectly normal human being, until she fails

the Voight-Kampff test, and Deckard ends all speculation by telling

her about the spider that lived outside her window: a memory of

childhood innocence, seared into meaninglessness. The transformation

that Rachel subsequently goes through is one of the most beautiful

moments in the film. Deckard, having numbed himself with alcohol, has

fallen asleep. Rachel sits at his piano, and studies the old

photographs: testaments of a past, a family, a history: all the things

she has lost. She is no longer wearing her jacket. Slowly, very

slowly, she begins to let her hair down.

She is no longer the spider-woman that Desser describes; as Milton

says:

She, as a veil ...

Her unadorned golden tresses wore

Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved

As the vine curls her tendrils...[7]

Humans are born with original sin, and as such, are fallen creatures,

tainted with evil.

Rachel becomes a replicant, and automatically her sin is annulled. As

such, she returns to a prelapsarian state of innocence, as evidenced

by her Eve imagery. She becomes a true human, free of original sin.

The Director's Cut of the film ends with Rachel and Deckard entering

the elevator together, the closing doors cutting off our view of

them. If we extend Biblical imagery, it would be logical to infer that

they, having been cast out of the Garden, now venture forth into

Earth, their futures uncertain. But how valid is this inference? Can

Los Angeles really be said to be the Garden of Eden? Literally, it is

Earth. But it is also a metaphorical Hell, with its infernal landscape

into which the fallen angels descend. Having said that, it is also a

metaphorical Heaven, insofar as it is Tyrell's domain. That they are

leaving Los Angeles is clear - but what is Los Angeles? Heaven, Earth,

or Hell? The answer to this presumably determines their

destination. It must not be forgotten, however, that they are both

replicants - Rachel was sentenced to execution the moment she

disappeared, and one may assume that Deckard's incipient departure

will lead to the same sentence being passed on him. are they, then, a

new Adam and Eve, progenitors of a new race who must suffer in a

hostile world? Or, given their death sentences, have they just left

Earth, only to enter Hell, with the constant fear of surveillance that

will characterise their lives as replicants? We can never know. The

bleak, gnawing agony of their predicament is telescoped into eternity

by celluloid.

This idea is borrowed from Philip K Dick, author of the novel - Do

Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? - that the film was based on. In

particular it is seen in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch(1973);

the eponymous hero of this novel is a man who, having survived

interstellar travel, brings back from an alien race an hallucinogenic

drug, Chew-Z, which allows people to spend their lives in Paradise,

whatever their definitions of Paradise may be. The price to pay,

however, is Palmer Eldritch's assumption of the role of God in every

Paradise this drug creates. Given that Palmer Eldritch is the villain

of the novel, he uses this omnipotence for generally negative

purposes, leading those who have already taken the drug, trapped under

his power, to wonder if they really are happy, if they really are in

Heaven, or in some subtle, slow-burning Hell of Eldritch's

devising. Another character undergoes an unrelated treatment called

E-Therapy, that will turn him into a superhuman genius. There is,

however, a slight possibility that it will have the reverse effect on

him, and turn him into a simian dimwit. In the weeks that follow the

treatment, his worries escalate into full blown paranoia, as his life

falls to pieces, and he wonders whether this is a result of his

oncoming stupidity, or a natural consequence of possessing genius in a

world of lesser men. He quite literally cannot be sure if he is

entering a Heaven or a Hell.

In fact, Dick's books are filled with recurring motifs of paranoia and

dehumanisation that illuminate Blade Runner. Dick died in 1982, four

months before the film's release, as an indirect result of

amphetamines misuse in his earlier career. The paranoia attacks that

drug users commonly suffer was a source of interest to him: he once

joked in an interview, 'the ultimate paranoia would be when it is

attributed to objects - not "My boss is plotting against me" but "My

boss' phone is plotting against me."[8] This ultimate, object based

paranoia does turn up in Dick's novels, for example Radio Free

Albemuth (1985 - published posthumously), in which a character called

Nick, who is feeling unwell, thinks his radio hates him because it

says nothing but 'Nick, you're a prick' all day. But in the world of

Blade Runner such paranoia seems commonplace, even encouraged: even

the billboards watch the city's population as it goes about its daily

business. The audience is forced to share this uncomfortable sense of

being watched by the giant eye at the beginning of the film, helping

us to understand the nightmarish plight of the characters in the film,

watched wherever they go.

However, the film does offer hope in the form of its ostensible

villain, Roy Batty. Chew points Batty in the direction of J F

Sebastian, a genetic designer and friend of Tyrell's. Sebastian, both

enthralled by and terrified of Batty, agrees to take him to see

Tyrell.

They ascend in the lift to Tyrell's living quarters. Tyrell is lying

in his bed (apparently modelled after that of the Pope's). Tyrell

allows Sebastian entrance, to discuss his chess gambit: