BLADE RUNNER
A Cyberpunk Nightmare
Ridley Scott's cult masterpiece Blade Runner is one of my all time favorite films. I love the dirty cyberpunk future that Scott lays out for his audience. Los Angeles,2019 seems torn directly from William Gibson's NeuroMancer, a novel credited with launching the Cyberpunk genre. In Gibson's novel the protagonist is first met in "Night City", a city closely resembling that Blade Runner's L.A.
Cyberpunk is an often derided subsection of science fiction and is a close cousin of Steampunk, A Victorian alternate history filled with Clockwork creations and space faring zeppelins. Cyberpunk stories are usually set in near future urban centers filled with synthetics, Asiatic cultural influences and a grim outlook on what it means to be a human living on the cusp of a post human world. The cities of cyberpunk range from "Night City" a grungy crime ridden slum to the high rises of Akira's Neo-Tokyo. Urban design is a staple of the genre but to actually live in a city like Blade Runner's Los Angeles is an entirely different matter. The reading talks about urban planners yearning to bring the design elements of the film to life, given enough time I think every major city will be a smog ridden ( if they aren't already, cough cough Beijing) fire spewing , over crowded sprawl. If these planners found the city of Blade Runner aesthetically pleasing they are morbid in my opinion, the film is like watching mankind's funeral, an entire world dead at our feet and like maggots on the corpse we too rot in the city , bitterly persecuting our last hope for survival like the post-human Replicants .The city of the film only exists as a fungus leeching up all that is left of the human world and assimilating it into the post-human sprawl.
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This leeching of the old-world is also a staple first pioneered by Ridley's film. The idea of the future for decades had long been one of glistening Hyperborian cities in the clouds devoid of decay,poverty and war except conflicts from thinly veiled space communists. Cyberpunk sees the world as a decaying carcass, long ago killed by human ambition and folly take for example this video from The Animatirix http://vimeo.com/26654247. Cyberpunk shows us a telling vision of a future in which the worst in mankind is expounded through technology. Nature is often destroyed, humans either fear or persecute synthetic life forms or alien races and everybody is searching for meaning in a world so convoluted that little out side money, drugs and violence drive them. The genre sees humans reaching their full potential by becoming gods through corporations like Tyrell and Weyland-Yutani that create new post-human life forms like Replicants or Androids like Ash or Bishop from the Alien films. These post-human organisms are often struggling as humans do with finding meaning in their lives and in the case of Roy, can confront their "Father" or creator. Roy for example rises up through the Tyrell ziggurat and essentially kills his human God and claims control over his last moments. Often times beings like Roy or Major Kusanagi in Ghost In The Shell are more "human" than those who are completely biological. In saying they are more "human" I mean that they strive more actively for meaning, they empathize far more strongly with their comrades and have a poetic outlook on their lives be they good or bad. Cyberpunk highlights that humanity's defining characteristic is it's inhumanity, humans are downtrodden, weak and hateful or worse completely apathetic. Assuming Deckard is human he is a perfect example that apathy. He doesn't even want to do his job anymore, he's just doing it because his boss has him in a twist, he really doesn't care about Roy or Pris, he's just waiting around to die in L.A.
BladeRunner is a film about how everyone is screwed, by life, by their creators and by circumstance. As a formative influence in Cyberpunk this motif has carried through much of the genre to this day. Cyberpunk shows us the next step in Darwinism, human beings becoming post-human cybernetic constructs and organisms or creating a race of sentient slaves that one day become our natural predators as they are faster, stronger and equally or more intelligent. The image of Deckard hanging by broken fingers above the world his species built and destroyed is perfect for describing the tone of the genre
BladeRunner is a film about how everyone is screwed, by life, by their creators and by circumstance. As a formative influence in Cyberpunk this motif has carried through much of the genre to this day. Cyberpunk shows us the next step in Darwinism, human beings becoming post-human cybernetic constructs and organisms or creating a race of sentient slaves that one day become our natural predators as they are faster, stronger and equally or more intelligent. The image of Deckard hanging by broken fingers above the world his species built and destroyed is perfect for describing the tone of the genre
I really love this post because we share very similar views on this film. First of all, your description of the Cyberpunk genre was very accurate. I could not have described it any better myself. I really liked how you mentioned fear of the unknown, because that is exactly what this movie is about. Throughout the entire course of the movie, we follow Deckard as he tries his best to please his boss by eradicating these inhuman replicants. One by one, we watch each of them die off in various ways. I agree with you that humans fear what they are unfamiliar with, whether it be replicants, clones, aliens, etc. I also agree that that these creatures are indeed "more human than human", because they certainly do strive for more meaning in life compared to the typical human. Money, drugs, and violence definitely seem to be what drive people in today's world. Even if people believe they are "living", what they do not realize is that there is much more meaning in life than these things which they have become so dependent on. I can agree with the point you made about these creatures being more human than human because there is a side to them that many do not see, aside from being evil and strange. Just as you mentioned, they have the ability to show compassion towards others, which is exactly what Roy did when he saved Deckard at the end of the film. This example ties in nicely with what you are saying. Also, love the photo of Deckard hanging from the building. It definitely demonstrates the tone of the film.
ReplyDeleteI love it that you know this stuff, and are able to articulate it so precisely and well. In the past, I've found both Blade Runner and Neuromancer to be virtually unteachable, because the generational experience just isn't there in the same way. The 80s seems such a distant and slightly silly neon memory with Flock of Seagulls hair. But yes, Neuromancer and Blade Runner put forth remarkably the same vision of a decayed near-future, that at the time was both revolutionary and scarily reflective of where we were headed. So this is just heartening, and your prose is lovely. I'd have liked to see you spend just a bit more time on the reading, since you have such a very good handle on these larger ideas. _Why_, according to Klein, were urban planners so fascinated with the look of LA in this film that they wanted to actually use it as a model? And also, especially from your perspective a generation later, what's the difference between the city this film envisions, and what actually happened? It's a little hard to say, living here in the Rust Belt, because Detroit of Cleveland or Buffalo or Rochester already look really cyberpunky. Drive from my hometown in southwest MI to Chicago through Gary and Hammond. It's that same exact smoking and flaming famous skyline pan. But the 90s impacted the west coast in some really interesting ways, which Klein's revisit of his own piece alludes to--specifically development and gentrification. Are we living in the Blade Runner future, or is there something importantly different and else going on? I can't say I really know anymore--I'm too close to it and again there's this whole Rust Belt thing.
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