Blade Runner and Moral

Drew Struzan. 1982. Online image. Internet Movie Poster Awards. 16 Mar 2010.

-Q1. Blade Runner is best known for its cyberpunk mise en scene (design aspects of the film): the incredibly dense texture of its shots. Watch very carefully and describe the 2020 culture the movie suggests visually.

The world in Blade Runner was very interesting for me because people were speaking many different language (and I noticed they were speaking Japanese as well) in a small area. As we read about dialect and language in class couple weeks ago, although there are some exception, I think most place have only few common language for a particular place. In Blade Runner's world, I felt it was too random to speak many different language in a very small place because it is very hard to communicate without using common language. I know we can communicate through non-linguistic ways but still I felt it was too chaotic because I am used to use particular language to communicate in certain place.

And I think their expectation of 2020 was pretty accurate (a little bit exaggerated though) because even now we can see globalization, 2020 should be more globalized as the advance of technology. Therefore in 2020, there is a possibility of existence of many languages in a small area, just like this movie. This is why the world in Blade Runner was very interesting for me.

-Q2. A moral message of the movie is that it was wrong to enslave the replicants and use them as forced labor since they were so human-like in both appearance and thought process. What would need to be different about replicants in order for us to feel that it was OK to use them for labor?

I agree that Replicants and human were too similar in both appearance and thought process, and since they were too similar, it is much easier to sympathize with Replicants and it seemed enslaving human. Especially, when Replicants expressed many emotions, such as fear, anger, sadness, and love, there were nothing different from human. Also, when Deckard fought with Replicants, they bled like a human. So I could not think Deckard was fighting with "Replicants."

Therefore, to feel OK to use Replicants for labor, I think they should have completely different appearances and different thought process. For example, if Replicants totally looked like a robot and if they did not have same process of thinking, especially emotions, I think we can consider them as a tool, just like computers.