Blade Runner: What It Means to Be Human in the Cybernetic State

By John W. Whitehead

Were not computers, Sebastian. Were physical.Roy Batty

Thirty years ago right around this time, Ridley Scott was wrapping up production on his filmBlade Runner.By the summer of 1982, it had opened in over 1,200 theaters across the country. Routinely panned and even attacked by test audiences, the film fared little better in theaters. In fact, it was a certified box office flop. Virtually no one, it seems, likedBlade Runner. Fortunately, in the three decades since it first debuted on the big screen, viewers discovering the film on cable TV and DVD have come to appreciate it as not only a cult film par excellence but an emotionally challenging, thematically complex work whose ideas and subtexts are just as startling as its now famous production designs.

Set in Los Angeles in the year 2019,Blade Runnerdepicts a world where the sun no longer shines. Instead, a constant rainy drizzle adds to the dark character of this futuristic landscape. Although the opening shots aerial perspective suggests a modern Los Angeles, the audience soon discovers a very different city in which the endless archipelago of suburbs have been replaced by a dark and ominous landscape lit only by occasional flare-ups of burning gas at oil refineries. An energy shortage has crippled life in the future. The earth is decayed, and millions of people have been forced to colonize other planets. Those who remain behind live in huge cities consisting of a conglomeration of new buildings four hundred stories high and the dilapidated remains of earlier times.

The streets teem with Asians, Hare Krishnas and men in fezzes, all lit by a lurid blaze of flashing neon. The crunch and crush of modern population seems overwhelming and totally dehumanizing. Genetic engineering has become one of the earths major industries, with humans now assuming the role of maker and creator. Since most of the worlds animals have become extinct, genetic engineers now produce artificial animals. And artificial humans called replicants have been created to do the difficult, hazardous and often tedious work necessary in the colonies on other planets.

If Michelangelo were alive in Ridley Scotts future world, rather than portraying God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he would likely paint the human creators of the Tyrell Corporation, the worlds leading manufacturer of replicants which has just introduced the Nexus-6, a replicant with far greater strength and intelligence than human beings. These latest-model replicants represent an obvious potential danger to human society, and their introduction on Earthan offense calling for the death penaltyhas been strictly outlawed. When the replicants somehow make their way back to Earth, they are systematically retired (but not killed since they are inhuman) by special detectives or Blade Runners trained to track down and liquidate the infiltrators.

Police receive an emergency report that four combat model Nexus-6 replicantstwo male and two femalehave killed the crew of a space shuttle and returned to Earth. The Blade Runner assigned to track them down and terminate them is Deckard (Harrison Ford, in his best performance).

The film shifts dramatically when the replicants, who are on a mission to extend their short life span, display a stronger sense of community than the human beings on Earth. With his three partners now destroyed by explosive bullets, the silver-blonde replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) succeeds in finding his way to Tyrell himself, the master of the Tyrell Corporation and the genetic engineering genius who actually designed him. Batty wants to have his genetic code altered to extend his assigned four-year life span. He simply wants to live. But when he discovers he cannot, Batty kills Tyrell in a despairing rage, calling him (as Zeus to Cronos) Father. At one point, Batty remarks: Its a hard thing to meet your maker.

Blade Runnercannot be understood without comprehending the deeply felt moral, philosophical, ecological and sociological concerns that are interwoven throughout the story. Three key, yet profound, questions contribute to the core ofBlade Runner: Who am I? Why am I here? What does it mean to be human? Thus, the eternal problems in the film are essentially moral onesthat is, should replicants kill to gain more life? Should Deckard kill replicants simply because they want to exist?

View post:
Blade Runner: What It Means to Be Human in the Cybernetic State