Blade Runner When Thinking About

Blade Runner

When thinking about the numerous concepts or themes that run through director Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner, the first theme that is striking is that mankind's future is manifestation of how we treat the planet today. We see overcrowding, technology that has taken on an industrialized appearance, and what might be perceived as "acid rain," since there is a constant darkness to the film. The main theme of the film is that mankind, as he has done with his environment, has been negligent in advancing the technology beyond what it was intended to do; to be of service to mankind. Rather, mankind has experimented beyond his technological needs and has given the robots the unnecessary full range of human emotion. It raises the question of how far will mankind advance technology in the interest of service and need vs. curiosity.

The answer, according to the film, is that mankind will take technology to the fullest extent possible, even imbedding within that technology human emotion. Whether or not a robot with human emotion is of use to mankind is, at this point, a resounding no. In the film, Harrison Ford is the "Blade Runner" Rick Deckard, whose job it is to identify rogue robots, or those robots who have made the escape to society as opposed to the service for which they might have been designated, which is now akin to the emotional range that has been instilled in them. As such, it is now within their nature to desire freedom, as is typical of the human condition, and, now, the new line of robotic condition. Deckard is designated with the task of deactivating the rogue robots, because, and the reason really is not clear in this film, society does not want robots masquerading as humans. This creates the tension needed to carry the drama of the storyline.

However, as Deckard is confronted with the beauty and intelligence and humanness of the new line of robots when he meets Rachael, he begins to experience the human response to human emotions, regardless of the fact that those emotions are encased in a robotic framework. Does giving the robot the full range of human emotions make it human? This is the question that Deckard struggles with as he resumes his role of reigning in rogue robots, especially now since Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, and his robot lover, Pris, played by Darryl Hannah, have committed murder in order to find a way to, from their perspective, correct the fatal flaw that was built into them. However, it was no fatal flaw.

It was, however, flaw by design, intended to keep the robots from achieving the mortality, thus, reversing the control of mankind over the world and putting that control into the hands of robots by longevity and mankind's own mortal attrition. The flaw that has compelled Batty and crew to murder is that a timer was built into the robots, which times them out on a certain year, day, hour. Batty is facing the end of his mortality, and, as is common to the human struggle in the face of its own mortality, he is looking to survive.

What is very interesting in this science fiction film is that technology is not used to detect the technological life of the robots as much as is a test of humanness, which is done through a series of questions to the "person," and answers. The only way to reveal the robotness of the person, if they are indeed a robot, is to ply them with a set of psychological teaser questions they must answer. If the question is so human in nature that the robot's own emotional experience cannot find the answer in its memory banks, then the robot will self-destruct in a sense, by revealing his or her self as not human by their inability to connect emotion to the experience.

So the true test of their roboticness lies not in the grinding of gears and technology that drives them - and, the assumption is that they are so human in nature that their bone and physiological structure is so closely in the image human as to make it virtually impossible to detect that way. Rather it is the betrayal of the very emotions that have been imbedded into them, that drives them to seek to be a part of the sociology of mankind that betrays them to the blade runners like Deckard.

One of the most striking and memorable scenes in the film is when Darryl Hannah as Pris poses in a workshop and she uses what she knows is her robotic abilities to take on the appearance of being non-human, an imitation, in order to avoid detection by Deckard. Then, she goes into action in an instinct driven mode for survival and performs a series of acrobatics that made this scene and this film famous, as she attacks Deckard.