Class #15
Literary Criticism
Today’s Menu
I. Blade Runner
II. White Noise
III. Coda
Blade Runner
By Ridley Scott (1982/1992)
http://www.elsew.com/data/bladr_b.jpg
Plot Summary (1)

The film describes a future in which
genetically manufactured beings called
replicants are used for dangerous and
degrading work in Earth's “off-world
colonies." Built by the Tyrell Corporation to
be 'more human than human', the Nexus-6
generation appear to be physically identical
to humans — although they have superior
strength and agility — while lacking
comparable emotional responses and
empathy. http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/BladeRunner
Plot Summary (2)


Replicants became illegal on Earth
after a bloody mutiny. Specialist police
units — blade runners — hunt down
and "retire" (i.e., kill) escaped
replicants on Earth. With a particularly
brutal and cunning group of replicants
on the loose in Los Angeles, a reluctant
Deckard is recalled from
semiretirement for some of "the old
blade runner magic.“
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Blade-Runner
The "Director's Cut"
Released in 1992
 The voice-over narration is excluded
 More mythological ambiguity is
introduced (with the inclusion of a
scene of a unicorn running through a
forest)
 The finalé of an escape into nature is
removed.

http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/content/v14.4/jenkins.html
What’s left out


Based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by
Philip K. Dick
It is never explained in the film that
(1) most healthy humans have emigrated off a
pollution-ridden Earth; only the sick ones stay home,
such as the prematurely aging robotics expert,
Sebastian
(2) nearly all animals are extinct; most surviving
animals are artificial. The movie makes reference to
it notably in the android empathy test, where lack of
sensitivity to animal life is a key clue to the androids'
supposed lack of real feeling.
(3) the possibility that Deckard himeself may be a
"replicant"
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~ntucs82/PEOPLE/b2506017/sf/0.html
Discussion Questions
 1.
What’s the major theme of the
movie?
 2. Describe the city landscape. Is it a
postmodern city? Why or why not?
 3. In what ways are the replicants
“more human than human”?
 4. What’s the function of memories in
the film?
Genre
Science
fiction
Dystopia
Film noir
cyberpunk
Film Noir

Originally a French term (literally "black
film"), now in common usage, to indicate a
film with a gritty, urban setting that deals
mainly with dark or violent passions in a
downbeat way. Especially common in
American cinema during the late forties and
early fifties, its themes of existential
alienation and paranoia have often been
read as signs of postwar malaise and Cold
War anxiety.
(http://webpages.csus.edu/~abuckman/filmnoir.htm)
Cyberpunk

a sub-genre of science fiction that
focuses on advanced technology such
as computers or information
technology, usually coupled with some
degree of breakdown in the social
order. The plot of cyberpunk writing
often centers on a conflict among
hackers, artificial intelligences, and
mega corporations, tending to be set
within a near-future Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
Postmodern
City?
http://www.leninimports.com/metropolis.jpg
Metropolis
http://artchangesbracknell.org/pn/modules/gallery/albums/album27/Metropolis.sized.jpg
Gotham City in Batman Returns
http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/expressionism2.jsp
Traffic also takes to the sky in this filthy, rainy, and
dark Los Angles of 2019. http://www.ecosensual.net/drm/ideas/future1.html
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/techn
oculture/pomosf.html
The high-tech
future of a polluted
planet being
abandoned
for off-world
colonies and the
remaining society
run as a
police state.
http://www.ecosensual.net/drm/ideas/future1.html
http://i.timeinc.net/time/2005/100movies/images/blade_runner.jpg
Capitalism
http://www.nationmaster.com/wikimir/images/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
en/thumb/0/04/BladeRunner_Spinner_Billboard.jpg/550pxBladeRunner_Spinner_Billboard.jpg
http://www.putlearningfirst.com/br/
http://www.brmovie.com/Magazine/BR_Magazine_P17.htm
An Advertisement
new life awaits you in a
golden land of opportunity. It's a
chance to begin again. Let's go to
the Colonies!”
 “A
Characters
Rick
Deckard
http://home.comcast.net/~fosteronfilm/blade.htm
Roy says to
Deckard:
"Quite an
experience
to feel fear.
That's what
it's like to
be a slave."
http://www.physics.hku.hk/~tboyce/sf/films/Blade_runner.html
Is Deckard a replicant?
There are two main reasons for this:
 1 that his minder, Gaff, seems to know
about his dream of the unicorn. He
leaves an origami unicorn outside
Deckard's flat and could only know
about the dream if it had been
implanted
 2 Deckard refuses to reply to Rachel's
question "Did you ever take the test
yourself?“


http://www.putlearningfirst.com/br/clips.html
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Boulevard/7920/unicorn.jpg
http://www.putlearningfirst.com/br/grape/unicorn.jpg
origami
http://www.putlearningfirst.com/br/grape/gaffsunicorn.jpg
Roy Batty:
Satan or Christ?
http://scribble.com/uwi/br/brfaq/batty-grab-big.jpg
Roy celebrates his
memories:
“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.”
http://www.creativescreenwriting.com/
csdaily/csdart/images/2004-08August/Blade%20Runner%20%20Roy%20dove%20(200w).jpg


The characters are surrounded by
genetically engineered animals fakes.
Only the pigeons scattered by Roy's
pursuit of Deckard at the end of the
film are authentic. Roy delivers his
soliloquy as he sits holding a pigeon in
his hands so different from Tyrell's
well-engineered observing owl. When
Roy dies, his hands relax, the pigeon is
released, and . . . Roy's soul is
liberated.
http://www.muse-apprenticeguild.com/august_2002/donaldwilliams/literary_magazine.html
Rachel
"It's too bad she
won't live. But
then again, who
does?"
http://www.seanyoung.org/i
mages/filmstills/blade1a.jpg
http://www.tyrell-corporation.pp.se/
Adam and Eve?
http://dandalf.com/dandalf/BLA_0006.gif
Motifs:
The
eyes → “I” (Identity)
Photographs → a narrative of “self”
Memories
Roy to Chew,
“if only you
could see what
I've seen with
your eyes.”
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywo
od/Boulevard/7920/ojo.jpg
http://jeu.frcd.free.fr/jpg/09s04i01.jpg
a Voigt-Kompt test which checks their irises to see if they have emotional reflexes
http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/pictures/tv.film/Bladerunner/Bladerunner-03.jpg
http://www.tyrell-corporation.pp.se/
White Noise
Don DeLillo
 The
Most Photographed Barn in
America: 12-13
 Knowledge/epistemology: 22-25, 129131, 171-72
 Consumerism: 7, 20, 36-38, 82-84,
154-55, 325-26
 Elvis vs. Hitler: 70-74
 TV: 16, 50-51, 64-66, 92, 104-105,
161-62, 222-23
SIMUVAC simulation: 138-42, 204-7, 27071
 Tabloid: 5, 142-46, 160, 326
 Fire (insane asylum): 239-40
 Orest Mercator: 181-82, 207-8, 266-68,
297-98
 Déjà vu: 116, 125-26, 133, 151, 162-63,
176, 221
 Dylar: 52-53, 123, 187-89, 192-203, 211
 Identity as copy/simulacrum: 16-17, 82-84,
214-15

Car crash: 40, 217-19
 Gun: 252-54, 274
 Consumer trash: 258-59
 Willie Mink: 304-13
 Sister Hermann Marie: 317-20
 Wilder: 322-324
 Cloud/Sunset: 127-28, 157-58, 170, 227,
324-26
 Death: 6, 15, 26, 37-38, 47, 72-74, 97-98,
140-42, 150-51, 198, 216-17, 228-29, 28295

 Other
motifs:
The American home
Murray Jay Siskind
Barbette
Children
Hitler Study
White Noise
Coda
“The golden age of cultural theory is
long past.” (1)
 “For the moment . . . We are still
trading on the past – and this in a
world which has changed dramatically
since Foucault and Lacan first settled
to their typewriters. What kind of fresh
thinking does the new era demand?”
(2)
(After Theory, Terry Eagleton)

The End