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Class #15

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).

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Class #15

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  1. Class #15 Literary Criticism

  2. Today’s Menu I.Blade Runner II.White Noise III. Coda

  3. Blade Runner By Ridley Scott (1982/1992)

  4. http://www.elsew.com/data/bladr_b.jpg

  5. 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/Blade-Runner

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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

  9. 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?

  10. Genre • Science fiction • Dystopia • Film noir • cyberpunk

  11. 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)

  12. 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

  13. Postmodern City?

  14. http://www.leninimports.com/metropolis.jpg

  15. Metropolis http://artchangesbracknell.org/pn/modules/gallery/albums/album27/Metropolis.sized.jpg

  16. Gotham City in Batman Returns http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/expressionism2.jsp

  17. Traffic also takes to the sky in this filthy, rainy, and dark Los Angles of 2019. http://www.ecosensual.net/drm/ideas/future1.html

  18. http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/technoculture/pomosf.htmlhttp://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/technoculture/pomosf.html

  19. 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

  20. http://i.timeinc.net/time/2005/100movies/images/blade_runner.jpghttp://i.timeinc.net/time/2005/100movies/images/blade_runner.jpg

  21. Capitalism

  22. http://www.nationmaster.com/wikimir/images/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/04/BladeRunner_Spinner_Billboard.jpg/550px-BladeRunner_Spinner_Billboard.jpghttp://www.nationmaster.com/wikimir/images/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/04/BladeRunner_Spinner_Billboard.jpg/550px-BladeRunner_Spinner_Billboard.jpg

  23. http://www.putlearningfirst.com/br/

  24. http://www.brmovie.com/Magazine/BR_Magazine_P17.htm

  25. An Advertisement • “A new life awaits you in a golden land of opportunity. It's a chance to begin again. Let's go to the Colonies!”

  26. Characters

  27. Rick Deckard http://home.comcast.net/~fosteronfilm/blade.htm

  28. 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

  29. Is Deckard a replicant? • There are two main reasons for this: • 1that 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 • 2Deckard refuses to reply to Rachel's question "Did you ever take the test yourself?“ • http://www.putlearningfirst.com/br/clips.html

  30. http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Boulevard/7920/unicorn.jpghttp://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Boulevard/7920/unicorn.jpg

  31. http://www.putlearningfirst.com/br/grape/unicorn.jpg

  32. origami http://www.putlearningfirst.com/br/grape/gaffsunicorn.jpg

  33. Roy Batty: Satan or Christ? http://scribble.com/uwi/br/brfaq/batty-grab-big.jpg

  34. 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/2004-08-August/Blade%20Runner%20-%20Roy%20dove%20(200w).jpg

  35. 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-apprentice-guild.com/august_2002/donaldwilliams/literary_magazine.html

  36. Rachel "It's too bad she won't live.  But then again, who does?" http://www.seanyoung.org/images/filmstills/blade1a.jpg

  37. http://www.tyrell-corporation.pp.se/

  38. Adam and Eve? http://dandalf.com/dandalf/BLA_0006.gif

  39. Motifs: • The eyes → “I” (Identity) • Photographs → a narrative of “self” • Memories

  40. Roy to Chew, “if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.” http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Boulevard/7920/ojo.jpg

  41. http://jeu.frcd.free.fr/jpg/09s04i01.jpg

  42. 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

  43. http://www.tyrell-corporation.pp.se/

  44. White Noise Don DeLillo

  45. The Most Photographed Barn in America: 12-13 Knowledge/epistemology: 22-25, 129-131, 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

  46. SIMUVAC simulation: 138-42, 204-7, 270-71 • 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

  47. 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, 282-95

  48. Other motifs: • The American home • Murray Jay Siskind • Barbette • Children • Hitler Study • White Noise

  49. Coda

  50. “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)

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