Neo Noir and Genre in Blade Runner

The conflict at the heart of Blade Runner is like that in most noir, neo-noir and detective films -- a fight between good and evil. In Blade Runner, this conflict is particularly compelling because the distinction between these two forces is ambiguous at best. The film uses the man vs. monster motif put forward in Shelley's gothic masterpiece Frankenstein (in Blade Runner it is updated to man vs. machine to fit the futuristic setting), and this motif allows the film to explore the question of what makes us human, intelligent, sentient, and mortal. The film's underlying philosophical tone is not used in a pedantic manner but rather to elicit sympathy for the film's most interesting characters -- the replicants themselves -- as well as the individuals responsible for creating them and destroying them. The hero of the film, Deckard, is one of the latter -- yet even he is conflicted in his quest (he does not even want to do the job -- but is pressured into it by his former police chief. Deckard goes on to fall in love with a replicant, further blurring the line between reality and illusion, human and machine, good and evil. This line is blurred completely in the film's climax when the main villain, the replicant Roy Blatty, displays heroic empathy (he saves Deckard's life), gives a speech in which he expresses longing for life, and describes in vivid terms what could only be identified as his soul thirsting for rest. Yet for Roy the replicant, there is no hope. Deckard meanwhile escapes with the machine he loves leaving audiences to wonder if Deckard himself is not a machine ("Blade Runner" 65). Thus, this paper will show how Blade Runner is a complex film that defies categorization and yet remains true to the tenor of the detective, noir and neo-noir genres by adhering to the good vs. bad paradigm and leaving the audience with more questions than answers.

As Paul Schrader points out, American cinema's focus on the darkness began well before Blade Runner hit the screens: a "new mood of cynicism, pessimism and darkness . . . had crept into the American cinema" (8) in the post-War period. Instead of brightening, the darkness turned darker as the years went by. Gritty realism and narratives expressing fatalism and hopelessness became common. From The Sand Pebbles to The French Connection, films showed that greater forces were at work, blinding and misleading central characters, thwarting heroes from fulfilling their seemingly good and heroic destiny. With Blade Runner, this sense of thwarted destiny is projected into a futuristic world where even the clear sense of what it means to be a human being is gone. A sense of self, of identity, of purpose, of love, of life, of being is pursued both by heroes and villains in the sci-fi neo-noir. Schrader echoes Raymond Durgnat's sentiment that "film noir is not a genre" so much as it is a cinematic expression of "tone and mood" (8). However, film noir does tend to typically focus on these forces that are internal and external to the main characters -- whipping in and out of them to such a degree that the ending lines of Touch of Evil reverberate through virtually every well-made film noir and neo-noir: "He was some kind of man." The lesson that noir teaches is exactly that: the more one looks, the more inscrutable and impossible to judge becomes every man's character. Noir is like the stylistic setting of the facts before God and saying, "It's all yours -- we don't know what to make of it." Or, as Doll and Faller put it, "genre functions through a set of codes that are recognized and understood by both the spectator and the filmmakers" (89). Blade Runner is recognized as a neo-noir because it respects those codes -- the centralization of conflict between two opposing forces and the ambiguity that results from an extended and empathetic examination of that conflict.

The conflict that is inherent in the noir genre is considerably spiritual when approached in this manner. In Blade Runner (as in Shelley's Frankenstein), the scientists have worked to extend life, to create life, to mimic it (how noble, how intelligent, how sophisticated and advanced these scientists must be) -- and yet they cannot even save themselves (nor do they really resemble any of the nobility that one might expect from a Creator). In many ways the head of Tyrell resembles Shelley's Frankenstein -- expressing an almost inhuman aversion for anything that actually reflects light, heart, or real life. His focus is on playing God. The result is a wide range of replicants -- some that look human and are kind (Rachael), some that are seductive (Pris and Zhora), some that are brutal (Leon) and some that are complicated by a mixture of intelligence and violence (Roy, the main villain). Yet, true to the genre, the main villain must be a mixture of intelligence and violence to pose as a sufficient threat to the hero. This is true of the Joker in The Dark Knight, the sin-obsessed killer in Seven, the amoral Chigur in No Country for Old Men, and so on. The villain represents the dark side -- and the more intelligent and human he is made the more the audience finds that character compelling and even beloved. The Joker is one of film's most loved characters -- as beloved, in a way, as Iago, the villain of Shakespeare's Othello. Neither is good -- yet they are witty, funny, down to earth, bold, intelligent, and deadly. They encompass a range of qualities, a tenth of which most ordinary persons would be more than happy to possess. The lure even as they repel -- just as Fitzgerald's Gatsby and his world did.

Yet Blade Runner is more than just a noir film -- as it blends the sci-fi genre with the action genre and the melodrama genre -- so that the parts are indistinguishable from one another. What remains is a gritty tone, a noir tone, a feeling of romance, a whiff of fatality, yet a longing for hope. Woven throughout all this is an element of social consciousness and the "concern about genetic engineering and the world genetic engineering might create" (Kerman 2). The limits or boundaries of life -- the responsibility that those in positions of power should take care to respect -- these issues are interconnected with the greater themes of life, love, purpose and humanity in the film. Even the line between good and evil is erased by Batty's final monologue: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." Nothing Deckard says in the film comes close to capturing the depth of feeling and character displayed here by the replicant, whom the audience has been led to believe has been nothing more than a robot gone bad yet now, in this stunning twist of revelation, beholds a robot that is more human than the humans -- one capable of exquisite poetry, feeling, and self-awareness. This same Batty has saved Deckard from death in a confounding moment of pity that serves to catapult Deckard into an Ishmaelian position -- "And I alone survived to tell thee" -- before determining to leave it all behind, flee the Mecca of modernity and head out for a more serene setting -- even if the woman he heads out with is a machine. The revelation that Deckard has received from Blatty is that there is no difference any more between the two: each have souls -- each seek something lasting, permanent, higher, beautiful, profound, personal and real.

In this sense, Blade Runner is a detective work in the model of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex: the main character thinks he is looking for one thing (for Oedipus it is the killer of the king, for Deckard it is the replicants), yet ends up finding something else (Oedipus finds his own identity -- he is the king's son and killer; Deckard finds that replicants are just like humans and vice versa -- both have memories, wills, intellect -- the qualities of the soul). Oedipus' discovery causes him to turn away from Thebes; Deckard's discovery compels him to leave Los Angeles and take Rachael (another possible allusion to the Ishmaelian ending of the film -- for at the end of Moby-Dick, the Rachael appears looking for her lost children). Thus, Blade Runner has a distinct literary quality that runs through it as well: its Blatty is in many ways like the angry Ahab of Melville's classic work of American literature -- angrily lashing out at God, Fate, Nature and vowing to hunt down the whale. Indeed, both Blatty and Ahab shed a tear as they near then end in a profound moment that evokes incredible sympathy from the audience for their characters.

In conclusion, with all of this said Blade Runner deals with the forces of good and evil by exploring them through the neo-noir, sci-fi lens where such issues are typically embellished or emphasized so as to give dramatic weight to the narrative. It enables the film to put the good (the hero) against the bad (the villain replicants). Yet in so doing, the film acknowledges (in true noir fashion) that there really is no easy way to judge who is good and who is bad in this life -- that most human beings are far more complex than that -- and no human being is capable of judging another. Everyone is "some kind of a man" -- and the final feeling that the audience should experience in its catharsis is one of deep empathy and pity -- whether it is received from watching Tom stand silently by himself as he watches his friend drift away at the end of Miller's Crossing or whether it is Blatty reminiscing before death, prompting Deckard to depart the shallow and superficial world of rules and arbitrary regulations in Los Angeles.

Works Cited

"Blade Runner." The Canon: 50 Sci-Fi Classics: 65.

Doll, Susan; Faller, Greg. "Blade Runner and Genre: Film Noir and Science Fiction.

Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 2 (1986): 89-100.

Kerman, Judith. Retrofitting Blade Runner. Bowling Green: Bowling Green UP, 1991.

Schrader, Paul. "Notes on Film Noir." Film Comment, vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 1972): 8-13.