And Life is Brief: On Blade Runner

I should begin by pointing out that I am not the greatest fan of Philip K. Dick. I have always found his syntax prosaic and his thoughts far too heady and philosophical. Sociopaths (those cruel, wily creatures) make for wonderful literature, but Schizophrenics (which I've been assured from an avid reader of his, PKD suffered from and whose stories fill his texts) don't. As far as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? goes, I found the novella disenchanting. Both in its fondness for faux-philosophy and its philosophies concerning compassion. The film is decidedly more romantic (in the common, not the literary sense); however romantic one can be in LA, which is presented in its post-WWIII state, but seems in the present already dystopian enough. The lovely Rachael becomes the stories love interest that Deckard ends the narrative with, and his wife with her fake empathy machine is stripped entirely from the story. When first I saw Blade Runner, which was very long ago, I was thrown by the pacing. I was confused by its stretches of eruditness, violence and certain leaden, ruminating passages. The climactic battle of androids (Deckard and the "Aryan" Nexus-6 Roy) runs out of life at the end, and melts into poesy: Roy, clinching a dove dies with words pouring from his mouth: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...All these moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain." And there the lachrymose replicant fades. This late climax, this late linchpin of the movie seems poetic (too waxy, perhaps, a bit loud, maybe) but it does go out of its way (romantically, I'd say) to ensure that there is a hero. To install one in the story. Handsome and youthful heros are not easily found in PKD. And the most classically heroic character in Blade Runner (though Deckard seems to be reasonably gallant in the novella) is a replicant. Why is he heroic and why does he save his enemy? Because he has suffered. To be a replicant is to be a slave and the film quite eloquently summerized the psychological state of a slave. This fear of being chattel; the fear of having lost one's humanity is a fear that only those who maintain some humanity can have. And there we are; the replicant is more human than the human. (I'd go as far as to say the dolls, which Pris hides among show startling amounts of humanity as well.) Then again, how human is Deckard, himself? And how human is a replicant? Deckard shares a literary derivation with his character in Do Androids Dream and, shares an interesting daydream with Edward James Olmos and shots of his hands with Rutger Hauer. First and foremost, the character in the novella is a replicant, whose retirement is seeminly not approaching, and this man becomes the Deckard of the movie. The daydream sequence is recurrent in Gaff's origami, and most commonly associated with a ringing voiceover maintaining that Deckard's death is coming. But there are also shots of his hands (when Deckard's fists are broken and Roy's are decaying), and his opposition to the Rutger Hauer character in the final violent confrontation is also a sign; the two are classic foils, doubles almost and destine to retain similarly sythetic DNA. The two are simulacrum of themselves. (Though the geneticist in the novel and movie create their replicants with the flesh and the cellular structures of human beings.) Then there is Rachael and Tyrell. When Rachael asks if Deckard has "retired a human by mistake" Deckard, flustered by the question says no. That "is a risk" Rachael continues. And when Tyrell enters asking if this test Deckard has come to perform will be an "empathy test...dilation of the pupils." Even while Tyrell refers to Deckard's administering the test, it is Reachel inquiring about Deckard's empathy, or perhaps sympathy for his kills. It even seems Tyrell, who appears quite suddenly may be referring to Deckard's emotionality with his statement. Later, of course Rachael asks Deckard if he has taken the "Voigt-Campff" test himself. The answer is obviously no. Then again, how human is a replicant? The true climax, the destruction of the father by the son, contains I belive the most literate dialogue; this when two vastly intelligent men describe the true nature of the replicants, not only as beings that deteriorate, but as human beings, whose only distinguishing quality from the rest of humanity is the quickness, or to Tyrell, the expediency of decay. "What seems to be the problem," asks Tyrell. "Death," returns Roy. "The facts of life--to make an alternation in the evolvement of an organic life sequence is fatal." Every proposition made by the seemingly informed Roy (educated by his genetic engineer makers) is answered in the negative by Tyrell. Death, as it is commonly observed is part of life. The rest of the scene, becomes more muddled with violence, sexuality and religion; it is marked by this great rumination of science-fiction tropes. In fact, the whole rest of the film ruminates, only stopping for a moment so that Gaff can declare, oh and how life is brief! And what makes life worth living? To Deckard in the novella, it seems to be more intelectuallized (knowledge? understanding is what lifeforms desire?); but in the move it is clearly Rachael that brings out Deckard's humanity. Deckard will not hunt her down if she "goes north" in the movie. And only in the movie. The love scene however seems relatively ascetic. But then again, it is, is it not, if they are not fully human. The question of sexual desire works alongside the question of empathy, but no character ever denies that the Nexus-6 models own a certain amount of both. Empathy, the most human quality, is something denied lower replicants, but not the Nexus-6s. "A strange obsession," is found in these beings. If Tyrell acknowledges the humanity of the Nexus-6s, and he does in the case of Rachael and Roy, then does he or does he not know that Deckard is (or is not) a replicant? And are lesser replicants typified by shorter life spans? The story arc insists that they are. Deckard, Gaff insists, like anything "won't last." CMH