Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: Technology's Link to Humanity Essay

“War is peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”, These are the moral codes and social conventions citizens of George Orwell's 1984 live by. With high level surveillance and publicly inflicted ideologies that promote the governing force puppeteering its nation, 1984 shares shocking similarities with increased security, political power and technology seen in today's world. In the same vein, Ridley Scott's dystopian futuristic thriller Blade Runner, set in an overpopulated, corrupt, corporation governed world can be compared to the world of today in terms of the rapid development in technology and the political influence large corporations can have on governments. Both texts create a futuristic world that is able to form connections with its audience to varying degrees. But how do George Orwell's 1984 and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner depicted futuristic worlds specifically relate to the audience of today?

Within Ridley Scott’s 1982 ‘Blade Runner’ memories serve as the “cushion” (‘Blade Runner’ 1982) for replicant emotion; subsequently making them easier to control. By this, memory lays a foundation, with past experiences creating a bridge to feel and identify as more human. Through past and present circumstances, mood, and relationships, memory serves as a lever to react with a “readiness to respond” (HM Works) within both the present and the future. Scott explores the function of memory in order to illustrate the human psychology in a complex light, using scientific references as to highlight key debates in what makes humans more empathetic and how they use memory in order to be a more emotive species; thus, evaluating the superiority of mankind. Memory in ‘Blade Runner’ is used in order to create a platform to mould replicants into society as more functioning humans as to be a more exact replica, rather than to serve as the initial function of a “slave” (‘Blade Runner’ 1982).

The opening of Blade Runner gives a close up of a human eye, a human sensory organ reflecting the toxic panorama of the world the ‘people’ created; a dark and depressing metropolis filled with urban decay. The entirety of the film seems to be falsely lit by the progression of technology, suggesting a hidden dark side to technology; as portrayed by Scott this the unethical production and retirement of Replicants, positioning the audience to view acts such as this as hallmarks of dying society. The portrayal of a city composed of all human creeds and colours similar to cities of today but taller, wider, darker and grittier gives the audience the ability to identify what is important in daily society, and determine whether or not this type of technological advancement is enviable. Scott describes the need for nature; natural sunlight, organisms and fresh air an essential part of society that no technology should have the ability to mask. In each text the sad, predictable futures of protagonists is described to be controlled by the advance of technology.

In Blade Runner, the Tyrell Corporation created advanced robot which were virtually identical to a human, they were known as a replicant. They were superior in strength and agility and at least equal in intelligence to the engineers that created them. The replicants were used for off-world as slave labour in hazardous explorations and colonisation of other planets. After a bloody mutiny replicants were declared illegal on earth. Special police units called Blade Runners were ordered to kill on sight “This was not called execution, it was called retirement” this quote manipulates our morality into a perception that is approvable by the tyrell corporation. Scott juxtaposes “executions” to “retirement” to convince society that corporation are in its core evil, as they manipulate people’s perspective of them by stating the righteousness of its actions, despite being blatant injustices behind the scenes. This particular scene is a message between the composer and the responder it helps mould our views on the rest of the movie to try to get us to be on the Tyrell Corporations side.There is dark irony through “execution” and “retirement”, Scott is trying to expose the corporations lack of morality for humanity appealing to audiences through the sheer power

Despite different contexts, both Shelley’s Frankenstein and Scott’s Blade Runner enthrall the audience in a journey to explore the inner psyche through the various perspectives that are drawn.

Comparing Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Is a science fiction novel written by American writer Phillip K. Dick. Blade Runner is a dystopian science fiction film. It is an adaption of the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Both the novel and film have much in common however; the tone and the objective of the story are completely different. The film is about machines that become so similar to humans they start exhibiting human traits and the book is about humans loosing their humanity that they can be mistaken for a machine.

Like many great films, Blade Runner is based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? written by sci-fi legend Philip K. Dick. The story follows a

     Scott loves to do things that are going to make Hollywood angry, or things to go against the norm of Hollywood movies. Just like Galagher stated in Bleak Visions: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Directors Cut, “Blade Runner which began life as Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was actually a ‘militantly anti-establishment literary protest’ by a man who hated the very idea of Hollywood”. So keeping with his theme of

The movie that I chose to analyze for this section is Blade Runner. This movie takes

Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner reflects some of the key themes seen in Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein. For one, both the sources touch on the necessity of creators taking responsibility for their creations. Another key theme established in both works is the idea that emotional complexity and knowledge, over memory and appearance, allow people to be defined as human beings.

Scott’s depiction of the Replicants in Blade Runner is very different from Shelly’s depiction of Frankenstien’s monster as a result of its different context, however, this representation is equally sceptical about the advances in technology. Whereas Shelley created a creature that was unable to assimilate into society due to his grotesque appearance, Scott uses creatures which are described as “more human than human”. This is reflective of the unprecedented growth in technology during this period, particularly in communicative and medical fields. DNA testing was first used by Sir Alec Jeffreys in 1984 and mice were the first mammals to be cloned in 1986. Scott was clearly influenced by these advances and believed that we may definitely reach a stage in which we had to delve into a psychological test, the Voight Kampff test, in order to distinguish between human and replicant. The fear society has of them is evident in their treatment, and the derogatory terms such as “skin-jobs”. The similarity in the way society views these creatures and Frankenstein’s creature is uncanny, despite the different

In the novel’s beginning, Deckard had little reason to question the morality of his job of “retiring” androids. Through the

Bound by different contexts, authors often use a popular medium in order to depict the discontent of the ideas of society. This is evident in the module Texts in Time; as Blade Runner, having been written more than one hundred years after Frankenstein is still able to reflect the ideas proposed in the latter. Blade Runner by Ridley Scott deals with the effects of globalisation and consumerism during 1980’s. Alternatively, the epistolary novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley deals with the kinship to the natural world set in the Romantic Era and enlightenment period. However Blade Runner, although subjected by a different context, also portrays a similar idea to Frankenstein; the fear of science and technology coupled with the value of the definition of a human. Through this commonality, we are able to utilise the values of Blade Runner in order to truly understand Shelley’s purpose.

‘Blade Runner’, the film adaption, directed by Ridley Scott in 1982, of the 1968 novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ by Philip K. Dick. This essay will explore the meaning of the Tyrell slogan “More human than human” by following Deckard on Earth in Los Angeles 2019 as a futuristic, dark and depressing industrial metropolis by looking into and discussing what is real and what is not, the good and the bad and why replicants are more appealing than humans. This essay will analyse and pull apart the “Blade Runner’ world, the condition of humanity and what it really means to be human.