Thursday, September 5, 2013

"It's too bad she won't live.., but then again who does!?"

Film: Blade Runner - The Final Cut

Where should I start?  Blade Runner has been beat to death with countless conspiracy theories and different analyses so I will attempt to not beat the dead horse - (err, uh unicorn...) -  here, but since this film is over 30 years old my efforts may be in vain...  What does it really mean to be alive?  Who really "lives" anyways?  I suppose to answer these questions we must first define what "LIFE" actually is.  There was a time when human life was thought to begin when a baby takes in its first breath, but now many people identify human life much earlier in the stages of fetal development.  Some groups define life so early that the undeveloped human fetus is nothing more than a cluster of replicating cells; so I must ask, how does replication of the most simple form of life constitute human existence, and additionally what does it mean to be human? These questions are the underlying foundation of the entire film even though the specific statement by Gaff , "It's too bad she wont live, but then again who does?" isn't posed until the final frames of the film. -  (time: 108:52/117:28) and then again when Deckard remembers - (time: 112:07/117:28) and ultimately realizes that he too is a Replicant... (I will provide some proofs later)  The Replicants are almost genetically identical to the humans but yet they are treated less than human, and ultimately feared and hunted down because they constitute a direct threat to what it "means" to be a human. 
Let us take a step to the side and think about something briefly; when the world first witnessed the successful cloning of "Dolly" the sheep, we didn't all of a sudden label it something different because it had been "created by man" rather than "naturally by nature," we simply acknowledged the fact that it was an astounding scientific achievement and moved on to how this new technology could eventually help humanity; but ultimately the debate of cloning humans entered the picture and many people were extremely outraged, therefore it was (in many parts of the world) deemed illegal to do so.  Now this may seem like a far tangent from the Replicants in the film but essentially they were the exact same thing - genetic clones of humans (not exact clones of a specific individual but still organic creatures none the less) created to do the menial labors of the day. Once the threat to humanity was acknowledged, or even proposed for that matter, the Replicants became illegal and the eradication of the species ensued.  The main difference is we, probably for matters linked to religion rather than the welfare of humanity or the advancement of science, determined cloning to be a threat to humanity before we ever successfully cloned a human.

Deckard IS a Replicant:

1)  Watch for his eyes, they do the "glow" briefly in one of the apartment scenes with Rachel. (time: 66:34-66:40 EXACTLY)
2)  When Deckard is escaping from Roy he pulls himself up onto the building (his entire body weight) with the use of only 2 fingers on a hand that is broken!!!  (time: 102:40/117:28)
3)   When Roy saves Deckards life he says "kinship"  (time: 105:34/117:28)
4)  The Deckard unicorn daydream that is revealed to have been known by Gaff because of the origami unicorn.  Essentially this says "hey, I read your file bro.., I know what's on (in) your mind."  (the single biggest give away...)

MTG

2 comments:

  1. I like what you said about Dolly the sheep and how you were able to compare the movie to our own society. You have a lot of valid points and you do a good job supporting your argument that Deckard is a replicant but personally I don't think that it matters that he was a replicant. One of the most profound messages that I got from the movie was that there was really no emotional difference between the replicants and the humans. I feel that by not knowing whether Deckard was a replicant or not added to the theme of ambiguity in the movie.

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  2. The decision people made on cloning is a perfect example according ethic of science. This is a dilemma of science and technology. We always trying to apply science and new technology to make our life easier and better. But on the other side, new technology sometimes is double-bladed, which also brings us new problems. In this case, the replicants is becoming a threat to human existence and identification, which is a corner stone of our society. Thus, even cloning being one of the cutting-edge technologies in science, it is the most serious taboo in all societies and cultures worldwide.

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