Blade
Runner is a key example of a postmodern film. It encapsulates every
single key elements regarding the postmodern condition, and addresses
our awareness of modern times. The major reason why modern film
audience finds so much resonance is ‘Blade Runner’ is due to its
realistic portrayal of the contemporary situations they find
themselves in.
The
postmodern condition was defined by the philosopher Jean-Francois
Lyotard as the 'incredulity towards metanarratives'. Metanarratives
are the structures that organize knowledge in a given era. They are
the shared stories that members of a given culture or civilization
have a sense of belonging to. It is the shared history that binds all
the members together for a give culture.
Lyotard
pointed out that in the ancient times, the metanarratives tended to
be folk myths about the heroic deeds of the ancestors of the culture.
By answering the question of 'when do we come from', these stories
became ritualistic in terms of narrative, yet they were essential to
organize the members of the culture, from the shared history for
their origins.
For
the modern era, Lyotard has also identified 2 key metanarratives. The
first metanarrative is a teleological one, and it can be considered
Hegelian. By using reason, humanity can strive for a final purpose of
their existences, leading to absolute knowledge and the most perfect
form possible. The second metanarrative is a socially-relevant one,
in tune with socialism and Marxism. The metanarrative concerns the
progress of human history, and by adopting the right kind of social
reform, that will lead to an utopian condition.
One
can easily see that all these metanarratives have a common feature :
they try to organize knowledge and bind individuals together, so as
to move towards a common aim. An individual, subject to the power of
a metanarrative, feels that he has to belong and thus becomes a part
of the grand narrative. This possibility is challenged by many
thinkers of Postmodernism, as human existence in the modern era has
become more fragmented rather than unifying.
In
the world of ' Blade Runner', the metanarratives that governed it
were put to challenges. The most obvious statement was the one from
Tyrell's company. In an attempt to transcend the limit of humanity,
Tyrell's company created bioengineered replicants as a new type of
workhorse for humanity. The company's 'more human than a human is our
motto' seems to be an idealistic direction at first sight. Yet, the
metanarratives of absolute knowledge and technological progress have
been put into question, because the film suggests that both of them
may not be achievable at the end of the day.
The
fact that technology could make more powerful replicants did not
benefit humanity. By contrast, that actually threatened human welfare
and led to the inception of blade runners. The motto was a deception
: because when the company has made something beyond human, they only
used it for the purpose of exploitation by other humans, as slaves,
workers and pleasure models. There were no enlightenment of humanity
in this scenario, because these novel life forms have not been
granted any human dignity and they were always seen as sub-human.
Also,
'absolute knowledge' turned out to be a false promise. The emergence
of replicants has actually blurred the line of human / non-human and
raised epistemological questions around the definition of humanity.
Is that you have to have a non-engineered life or a mind which is
not implanted by someone else's memories? Roy Batty, having been a
powerful replicant yet constrained by his 4-year lifespan, appeared
to live fuller and has more enriching experience than Deckard and the
other humans (To add to the insult Roy also had Pris as a girlfriend
and Deckard was filing for a divorce until he met Rachel). The
replicant also had more human characteristics like empathy, desire,
instinct for self-preservation and fear of death, unlike the other
human characters who were consumed by the cold and sterile
environment. In this line of reasoning should Roy Batty be qualified
as a human being, and be seen on equal terms with the other
'cold-fish' human characters?
That
leads us to a philosophical question. Throughout the thousand of
years, thinkers have been debating what really is reality and what
approach can we reach that knowledge. As early as Parmenides in
Ancient Greece, the 'appearance versus reality' question has emerged
as the key theme of Metaphysics. Many philosophers have agreed that
that exists an ultimate reality – the standard final answer for
philosophy. Many of these philosophers believe that
rational thinking is the only approach that can reach this final
point, and they tend to distrust our senses as misleading and giving
us false illusions regarding reality. Metaphysicans strive to look
for reality, and often distrust appearance, as perceived from our
senses, as mere illusions. This is 'metaphysical speculation', a
term in particular preferred by the philosophers and scientists who
believed in a more positivist or empirical approach. Because
metaphysical statements are often unobservable and non-verifiable,
positivists see these statements as speculative and meaningless. They
are armchair philosophy – when a different thinker comes to sit on
the armchair, a different answer will emerge.
In
fact, from the earliest days of Western philosophy, certain thinkers
have already cast doubt on such a metaphysical approach. The
Sophist Protagoras has advocated a form of phenomenalism, and that
was an empirical doctrine which was developed and embraced by some
later philosophers. He believed that 'what is true for an individual
is what appears to him from (subjective) sense impressions'. For
Protagoras, an objective point of view did not exist, and that
depended on the human's perspective. Therefore there is no point to
engage in any metaphysical speculations, like whether there is
objective knowledge or morality and the existence of God.
While
the approach of phenomenalism may seem shallow because that appears
to not bother with an objective reality, the approach challenges that
we may be going the wrong direction when understanding ourselves. If
our beliefs are always speculative, how can we be certain about the
knowledge we have attained? In 'Blade Runner', such a question has
been posed, though there may turn out to be more than one correct
answers. Advocates of phenomenalism want to focus on knowledge that
is attainable and observable, and get rid of the speculative aspect
of knowledge. That just shows how complex human existence can be.
Juxtaposition
is also a key idea of postmodernism. To juxtapose, is to overlap new
and old elements into the same frame, thus creating a mixed totem of
epoch. Blade Runner is about juxtaposition in many aspects. First, it
is a film with multiple genres. Certainly, it will not be too hard to
see it as a Science Fiction, yet the film contains notions of Film
Noir - the expressionistic lighting and style, the underdog private
eye, the femme fatale, and to a lesser extent, Western - the idea of
bounty hunters. It belongs to the sub-genre of cyberpunk, juxtaposing
with explicit contrast, high material technology with low
mental life. All the images in Blade Runner are splattered with novel
technology and cultural heritage. Police hoover crafts flying through
modern cityscapes and pyramid-like buildings, digital television
screens on buildings, showing traditionally attired Japanese ladies,
various people of different nationalities speaking different
languages, Deckard eating sushi and drinking Tsing Tao beer. Blade
Runner seems atemporal, or as Prince Hamlet would have put it, ‘the
time is out of joint’. It is as if the wheels of time have been
uncoupled, news and olds are merged into an organic unity. What we
can see, is a mesmerizing and complex world, which is more than
similar to our current, diverse lives.
Similar
to ‘The Terminator’, the humans in ‘Blade Runner’ cannot be
separated from their interactions with the machines and technology.
The spatial dimension to define the Blade Runner lifestyle is the
cyberspace. As the French philosopher Jean Baudillard has stated, the
experience of postmodern condition appears like a simulacrum – as
if we have entered into the game zone of a simulation. Isn’t that
the case for our lives? We cannot live without social network, photo
sharing sites, and, not to make myself hypocritical, this is a blog,
right? This is absolutely true that cyberspace has led us all closer,
but are we in control of ourselves, or are we over-relying on the
material computer world?
Anyone
who has watched Blade Runner should vividly remember one of the key
mise-en-scenes of the film – the barrage of commercial brands
throughout the film – be it Atari, Bell, Pan-Am, Coke and a million
others. Indeed, consumerism is a postmodern condition. Quite
unfortunately, some of us can be dehumanized in a sense by material
consumption. These consuminators are
absorbed into the various brand names, which they believe their
shelves are defined by the very brands they are consuming. Our
identities are defined by our personal cognitive beliefs, rather than
an external, material or monetary force. To be original, one should
certainly not to become too postmodern and succumb wholeheartedly to
the clutches of simulacrum and consumerism, as it will certain stifle
real thinking.
by Ed Law
Film Analysis
