Pick one moment in Blade Runner that helps to define some complex and conflicted relationship between humans (or a particular human) and replicants. Why did you choose this moment? Don’t pick a moment that simply expresses hatred. Those are obvious but also not that common in the film. Think about more complicated, ambivalent kinds of feeling and interaction.
6 thoughts on “Blade Runner–Group 4”
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(Like Will I also mistakenly believed there was a presentation today! My bad!)
I mentioned in class how impressive Harrison Ford’s performance is in how little he’s given–yet also how much he gives it by doing so little. It is an incredibly understated performance that relies heavily on the archetypal associations of gumshoe detectives from hardboiled and noir fiction. However, that’s not the only association the viewer has while watching. Even back when this film was released, Ford had made his mark on pop culture as an action hero–having already played both Han Solo and Indiana Jones–two hardboiled protagonists known for their grit and flippant demeanors. These traits are often relied upon in film to render the heroes more charismatic; if you wanna make a detective more charming, have him a make a wisecrack while facing down the barrel of the gun. In Blade Runner, Deckard waddles between these archetypes. For the most part, he is a sullen, uncharismatic, seemingly haunted shadow of a man; every now and then, though, a charming Fordism will slip in. This happens in his violent confrontation with Leon. The latter clearly maintains the upper hand throughout the bout, with Leon proceeding to pummel Deckard to a bloody pulp–a predicament Ford’s characters regularly find themselves in. During the beating, Deckard does something we’ve never really seen him do–something that frankly seems out of character. He attempts to talk his way out of it. Leon asks him how old he is, to which Deckard responds with a punch. When he recognizes that his punch did nothing, he quickly resumes a civil stance and answers sheepishly, “I don’t know.” Later, when Leon says, “Nothing is worse than having an itch you can’t scratch,” Deckard–clearly on his last legs–weakly replies, “I agree.” He’s trying to use charm on the threat he’s been assigned to terminate. This scene stuck out to me as a milestone in the Deckard-replicant dynamic throughout the film–specifically the question of who is the real hero. Blade Runner is a slave insurrection narrative told from the perspective of the slave catcher. The only way we can fathom a slave catcher as a hero is if the film’s reality is distant enough–instead of human slaves, it’s robots. This scene represents one of the few moments when Deckard is written as a more charming action hero–a character one might actually root for. The fact that he’s being beaten up mercilessly certainly helps.
(Sorry for the delay in this post! I conflated this class with Psycho and thought we similarly had a presentation on Blade Runner and no post).
Like we talked about in class today, I am really curious as to the ambiguity of Deckard’s status as human or as replicant, and I think that his relationship with Rachael complicates his interpretation. I don’t necessarily want to analyze the agency/consent that either Deckard or Rachael do or do not exercise in the kiss scene, but I do think it’s interesting how their demonstrations of emotion contrast each other, and perhaps how they use each other to justify the other’s status as human. I think it’s interesting that Rachael, the outwardly stated replicant, demonstrates what I would consider more visible emotion than Deckard. When her level of humanity is challenge, she sheds a visible tear. We don’t see that from Deckard. Even extending beyond the relationship between those two, I’m intrigued by how the other replicants compared to Deckard demonstrate much more complex emotion. I’m thinking specifically about the motivation behind Deckard’s killings and Roy’s killings. Deckard is driven by obligation, or rather by order. He kills because he is told to kill, but doesn’t demonstrate a clear thought process or emotional reaction to the killing of Zhora or Pris. Roy, on the other hand, is driven by a more emotionally charged vengeance. His killing of Tyrell is that of a vindictive son against an evil father or creator, and he breaks one of Deckard’s fingers for every replicant he has lost. Seeing Pris having been shot by Deckard only seems to fuel this rage. So, I think when we’re evaluating demonstrations of emotion, as well as the emotional motivation that drives Deckard and Roy to kill, it seems to me that the outwardly stated replicants may demonstrate more human qualities than the ambiguous Deckard.
The moment that I thought defines the complex and conflicted relationship between humans and replicants was between Rachel and Deckard when they first met, and he told her she was a replicant. Elise also described the scene where she shed a tear when she was told this, and we could see Deckard understanding her humanity. It is more representative than replicants want to be more human, and they want to live their own experiences and relationships (i.e., the love between Priss and Roy) or the relationship that Rachel and Deckard cultivate. Roy used the word slave to describe what the replicants were in society. I think it exemplifies their relationship to humans and that they are a vehicle of labor rather than emotional and physical beings. Another interesting point regarding the concept of a “slave” was the scene of Deckard forcing himself upon Rachel, which Elise described below as not consent, that she is essentially just a slave and thus powerless to him.
The other moment that defines this complex relationship is when Roy saves Deckard’s life. As Chase said, he teaches him what humanity entails and what it means to be emotionally complex. This interaction creates a break from the norm of Deckard’s life where he has a set of tasks (to retire the replicants) and at this moment, along with his “love” (or “longing”) for Rachel, helps him to realize his emotional capacity for humanity.
The moment that I thought was the most complex is the scene when Roy “retires” in front of Deckard. Roy, before this point, was dehumanized throughout the film. His one function as a robot, was to preserve his own life, which is a very primitive, animalistic concept. It was not until his final moments, when his life was fleeting away, does he realize what exactly humanity is. In the scene before, Roy saved Deckard’s life, potentially in more ways than one. Not only has he saved his biological life, but he also saves Deckard’s humanity. In relinquishing his own mission of self-preservation, he taches Deckard what it means to be an emotionally complex, free human being rather than an artificial one, swore to his mission. This is symbolized by Tyrell’s artificial, imprisoned bird, a recurring theme of freedom throughout the film. Witnessing Roy’s death, Deckard muses: “I don’t know why he saved my life. Maybe, in those last moments, he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life, anybody’s life, my life.” The film suggests that Roy’s emotional maturity, his choice of empathy and compassion, is what makes a human truly human. Considering Deckard and Roy as foils, in trying to kill each other for their own survival, they come to grapple with their own mortality simultaneously. In this moment of vulnerability not only are they able to witness each other’s humanity in the face of death, but consequentially acknowledge their own. So, Deckard and Roy’s mutual acceptance of death exposes a common ground of humanity.
In the end, it’s not Tyrell or any genetic engineer who can make Roy human, rather he must conjure it in himself. Being human isn’t a particular DNA configuration but a state of mind, of feeling. By accepting his own life as finite and saving the man who has been trying to kill him, he shows emotional maturity and achieves humanity, and his legacy is left with Deckard. I choose this scene because it allows us as viewers to think about the aspects of AI and their ability to reach humanity. Its scary, however, because this movie shows that robots can achieve this on their own.
The one human character that I believe has the most complex and conflicted relationship with replicants is Deckard. Initially Deckard has no perceived attraction to Rachel and he eventually agrees to hunt her down and kill her because she is a replicant that has escaped. When he finds her however, it is after she has already saved his life and showed him compassion that he hasn’t seen from most people in his life. This goes against the expectation that replicants are less human in terms of their ability to express emotion in the way humans do. At this point in the movie the viewer believes that Deckard is human when in reality it is revealed later on that he too was a replicant the whole time. When he and Rachel are leaving his apartment, Deckard finds a unicorn which is only seen in his dreams. If he was a real human nobody else would know his dreams but since someone else did it is clear that they were implanted and he is a replicant. The reveal of this at the end works to distort the interpretation the audience has of who is human and what the criteria of this are. In the end I think the takeaway from Rachel’s saving of Deckard and the unicorn at the end is that emotional characteristics are not necessarily a criteria for being human and that other beings are just as capable of feeling what we do.
The most obvious relationship between humans and replicants that didn’t just involve hatred is the one between Deckard and Rachael. The moment that I thought was particularly striking was the one in which Deckard realizes his “attraction” to Rachael (I’m loath to call it love), as I think that it encaptures multiple dynamics that exist between the two. In the beginning of the scene, Deckard does not seem overly interested in Rachael, only offering her the kindness of not actively hunting her down if she were to flee. He seems to have recognized her humanity (like when she sheds tears at the revelation that she is a replicant), but is unsure about how to proceed. Later, when he sees her interact with his family pictures and play the piano, he seems to understand how similar she is to any other human woman. She yearns for real connections to people like family, ones which Deckard doesn’t seem to care about at all.
I have a bit of a bone to pick with the way the rest of the scene plays out. Deckard forces Rachael to stay inside his apartment, and then forces her to kiss him and express her desire to kiss him. Even if we are to ignore that she was forced to consent, there are a couple of uncomfortable dynamics at play here. First of all, Deckard’s job is to literally kill Rachael, so he lords that power over her, but also, he could very much be taking advantage of her aforementioned desire to be connected with another person. This scene represents not how Deckard hates replicants, but how he desires some sort of control over them. Perhaps he understands their humanity (certainly after Roy’s death), but to him, Rachael is just a woman and thus, powerless.