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Blade Runner as Cyberpunk

By on February 13, 2013 in Film

While I wouldn’t call Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner a work of cyberpunk, it definitely has elements of the genre.

I’ve always thought Blade Runner had the look-and-feel of cyberpunk. This aesthetic might be its greatest contribution to the genre, thus making it the film’s best cyberpunk characteristic. The world of Blade Runner is post-apocalyptic — if not literally after World War Terminus like in Dick’s novel Androids — then certainly human progress has become like a virus for planet Earth. Humanity is dense and dirty on the streets, and represents a mélange of cultures all boiling together in a stew of languages, cultures, styles, tech, and vices. It’s now a wasteland dominated by industry, vague cityscapes supported by crumbling technologies. At its top sits the Tyrell Corporation: its two buildings dominating the landscape, like twin Mount Olympuses dominating the technoscape.

Eldon Tyrell is the god of his world: that of “more human than human” replicant production. The replicants are meatspace hacks, cyborgs of flesh and bone to Tyrell’s Dr. Frankenstein. The longevity of his monsters is a built-in four years, enough time to be slaves, but not enough to become human beings. The Tyrell Corporation makes zombies for service in human colonies: techno-slaves for a brave new world practically indistinguishable from the humans they serve; these slaves are supposed to be devoid of emotion and empathy and therefore easily controlled. This has cyberpunk written all over it: the programs trying to rewrite their code in order to postpone death. The replicants are victims of their own dying meat, and they have stolen a ship and come back to meet their maker. (Is the maker ever able to help though?)

Yet, returning to earth is illegal. I wonder why? Is this to keep the monsters out of the Eden in which they were created? Punishment for returning is “retirement”: death at the hands of the Bladerunner. Enter Rick Deckard: our cyberpunk hero with a gun. The male protagonist in cyberpunk literature is often geeky and not physically imposing. The cyberpunk hero’s domain is headspace, usually leaving the physical challenges of meatspace to the female protagonist. Deckard fits this characterization fairly well: he is physically ineffectual, most of the time getting the shit kicked out of him by the replicants, running from them himself, or using his big gun to give him the predatory advantage. Against Leon and Roy, Deckard would have met his end without outside intervention. Physically, he was no match for them. This might be true, too, for the female replicants Zhora and Pris, but he had his gun for those encounters; he shoots Zhora in the back as she flees through the streets, and Pris he shoots in the stomach, letting her flail around on the floor for a moment before the actual kill shot. Deckard does have a way with the ladies.

It’s Rachael that saves Deckard from Leon. After Leon watches Deckard murder retire Zhora, the replicant confronts the Bladerunner, easily disarming him. Leon beats Deckard for a bit before going in for the kill. Rachael shows up with Deckard’s gun, and shoots Leon in the head.

Up until this point, Rachael has been a pretty solid cyberpunk heroine. When Deckard first meets her at the Tyrell Corporation, she is smooth, confident, and styling. She handles herself and Deckard with the ease and grace we might expect from Gibson’s Molly. Also like Molly, Rachael has a crisis that determines her future; however, while Molly was able to gain strength from her experiences as a meat puppet and Johnny’s death, Rachael’s new-found knowledge that’s she’s a replicant cripples her. For some reason, she goes to Deckard — the guy least capable of showing her empathy or compassion — after Tyrell ostensibly kicks her out (just like a god). Deckard handles her much like he does Zhora and Pris: dominating her with his gun — this time the fleshy one in his pants. Rachael loses her identity, becoming more like one of J.F. Sabastian’s toys rather than an autonomous entity. “Too bad she won’t live,” Gaff says to Deckard at the end, perhaps knowing that the Bladerunner killed her already.

Deckard, too, has his headspace toys. He uses the Voight-Kampff (pictured in the photo above — note, too, Deckard’s 80s/cyberpunk clothes) to test Rachael’s emotional reactions to a series of questions: measuring her meat for the appropriate empathic responses. Since she is a Nexus 6, the meat has been programmed with memories (represented in the film by photographs) to simulate empathy — remember Tyrell’s “more human than human” for some reason. Indeed, the replicants do seem emotionally more alive than the humans in this film. We are meant to assume that Deckard is human, but hints throughout suggest he might be a replicant. Indeed, the cyberpunk hero does walk the line between headspace and meatspace, usually preferring the former. Perhaps it’s Deckard’s profession as a killer that has made him cold and machine-like, for the predator’s (console cowboy’s) life is one of necessary isolation. When he’s not out killing, he’s alone in his cave with a bottle of bourbon, maybe the film’s version of the Penfield Mood Organ.

In his apartment, Deckard uses another cyberpunky headspace toy: his photograph analyzer. Cyberpunk heroes also use the virtual world to hunt for clues, and Deckard is no exception. If photographs represent memory, then the computer probes Leon’s memory to find Zhora buried under the virtual kipple. This scene is memorable because of the technology, and it’s one time that Deckard seems almost human. After all, the meatspace in this world is pretty depressing and this machine is the closest thing to the Internet in the future of 1982.

OK, I’m sure I just scratched the surface here. In what other ways could Blade Runner be called cyberpunk? I’d like to hear your thoughts below.

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  • http://twitter.com/TaraScroggins Tara Scroggins

    Dr. Lucas, I’m very interested that you opened saying: “…then certainly human progress has become like a virus for planet Earth… It’s now a wasteland dominated by industry, vague cityscapes supported by crumbling technologies.” If cyberpunk as a genre is meant to enhance technology in regard to humans, then how is it in “Blade Runner” that the progression of humans is what is simultaneously holding them back? It seems to me like these views conflict with one another. We can clearly see the inconsistencies and transgressions of progression within the movie, even down to the ironic details like the empathy of Roy, that do not mesh with the cyberpunk genre. I’m wondering, if even though the film is based loosely on Dick’s novel, what might the director or writer of “Blade Runner” be attempting to amend considering our future world? Is it possible to have replicants that feel, replicating the “authentic” emotions of humans, no different than a realistic copy in today’s world? Is technology able to create just as much harm as progression in our near future? Or are all of these mere inconsistencies within the plot of the film? I think all of the answers could be yes; the film does portray some unique staples to the genre; however, I think it is also necessary to consider what it may be attempting to relay to the contrary.

    Deckard, the typical anti-hero of the cyberpunk genre is nothing unexpected. He is not particularly masculine, he allows his human body drive(s) to get in the way, and often, and is a sucker for feeling(s), like most humans. Unable to do his job effectively, he must rely on the very people whom he turns against, in order to survive (quite ironically, but not for cyberpunk, the first being a female, Rachel). After berating Rachel with all sorts of questions and issues, she then saves him despite his accusatory actions. Likewise, Roy finds it in his “heart” to let Deckard go after Deckard attempts to retire him, as well. I have to ask then (as aforementioned) why the director chooses for the replicants to “feel” more compassion than the human…What does this say about us as a race?

    Regarding remarks to the cyberpunk genre, I see some tropes come into play considering the angst of post-war eras. Typically the cold war and the rise of super powers globally is known to cause tension that lends to some themes of the cyberpunks, and this film’s representation of counterculture and a new consciousness is no different. The fight against the previous world occurs simultaneously with Deckard’s “right” to control the replicants that could harm his. Most obviously, because the book and film take place post-world war of some sort, and set the apocalyptic stage, the issues of human annihilation and the wiles of war are ever-present. I can’t help but think that perhaps Roy and Pris’ appearances alluded to Nazi Germany. They were created by an evil dictator of sorts, were very blonde, fair and blue-eyed, utilized to perform a particular mission without necessarily realizing their slavery. I hardly feel like their appearances were a coincidence, but rather a nod to past annihilation/annihilators who built seeming “replicants” to complete a mission.

    • 4Billingsley

      I agree with your observations about post-war angst Tara. Dick wrote “Sheep” in the middle of the Vietnam War, and his sentiment was that soldiers had become as bad as the enemy–cold-hearted and automated killers; hence his comparison to androids.

      As quoted on Paul M. Sammon’s book “Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner “(p.16), Dicks says about “Sheep”: “Alongside “Martian Timeslip” and “The Man in the HIgh Castle”, “Sheep” is one of my favorite three novels. I liked it very much. Although it’s essentially a dramatic work, the moral and philosophical ambiguities it dealt with are really very profound; Sheep stemmed from my basic interest in the problem of differentiating the authentic human being from the reflexive machine, which I call android. In my mind android is a metaphor for people who are physiologically human but behaving in a nonhuman way.”

      Your comment on Roy and Pris alluding to Nazi Germany is right on the spot. Dick first came across inhuman acts while doing research for his 1962 novel, “The Man in the High Castle,” when he was given access to Gestapo and SS diaries at the University of California at Berkley. He was profoundly affected by his finds, and went on to say that the Nazis were “a defective group mind, a mind so emotionally defective that the word human could not be applied to them.”

      Androids are a perfect race, and allusions to Nazi schemes come into place. I’m sure Dick’s main ideas in the novel transferred into the screenplay and movie direction, especially during the cold war and the rise of super powers, as you mentioned.

      • http://grlucas.net/ Gerald R. Lucas

        Maybe it’s Tyrell (Rosen in the novel) with the totalitarian tendencies? Dick died before BL was finished, but he saw some of it and quite liked Scott’s treatment of the novel. Indeed, these themes are evident in Dick’s work, especially and most explicitly in The Man in High Castle.

        Would you really argue that the androids are “perfect”?

        • 4Billingsley

          Dr. Lucas, I meant androids are perfect in BR, from that totalitarian point of view, and I agree with you, Tyrell falls into that category. Even if the androids can’t last more than four years due to their limited cell reproduction, we can compare them to fruity Hitler’s aspirations of an Aryan race. Of course nothing is perfect nor it lasts forever. It has always been men’s quest to preserve their ego and heritage to better their future, through lineage, or in the case of BR, through a better version of themselves in the replicants. I would ague that by using technology to create android slaves in BR, they became slaves to technology themselves in some level. Perhaps someone should have tried McCoy Pauley’s route instead.

    • http://grlucas.net/ Gerald R. Lucas

      Thanks for the response, Tara. I think that technology is the ambiguous factor in cyberpunk. It’s the device through which heroes might bring further freedom and power, but it may also work for those who wish to assert their authority on the unwary. This conflict is present at the center of all cyberpunk narratives. Remember, the first question that I asked in my presentation was: are you a zombie or a cyborg? This is not always easy to answer.

      As far as the Arian qualities of Roy and Pris: an intriguing idea. However, despite what Roy represents to Deckard and what Roy’s actions show him to be throughout the film, he does show compassion and forgiveness at the end. Perhaps Deckard learns from Roy how to be more human himself? Maybe Deckard does change for the better.

    • http://twitter.com/gethspace Cody Gunderson

      You’ve hit the mark, again, Tara. While I was writing my own response, I read over your comments, and it never ceases to amaze me what other people can contribute to one’s own ideas of a given work. As Dr. Lucas completely flipped my mind in his observations on Deckard’s phallic power, so have you with your comparisons of the Tyrell corporation to Nazi Germany. I thought to myself, “Of course! That is so obvious!” After all, as you stated, cyberpunk was birthed from a response to absolute power, and I think Blade Runner makes some very nice additions to this response. Having this comparison in mind makes the scene with Roy and Tyrell even more powerful for me. I can’t wait to see what you have to say about the next film we watch.

  • Brooke Manolis

    Dr. Lucas, I am particularly interested in the Frankenstein-esque elements going on in this film. Like Victor Frankenstein, Tyrell has created “monsters” that are brilliant to behold, but deadly to be in opposition against. In the scene where Roy Batty comes to confront Tyrell about wanting more life in his meatspace, he is dismissed by being advised to merely live life to the fullest while he can. I find this an interesting contrast to the cyberpunk genre. In Neuromancer, Wintermute and the neuromancer seek to fuse together to create a super-intelligence which is all headspace. Most of the cyberpunk literature we have read puts a greater emphasis on dwelling in one’s headspace as opposed to meatspace, with the exception of this film and “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

    What do you think that this film seeks to express regarding the importance of headspace vs meatspace. Does the book pose the same question?

  • http://twitter.com/gethspace Cody Gunderson

    Two major things about this film struck me: eyes and style. Close shots of Deckard’s eyes scanning the details of photographs, their
    importance in administering the Voight-Kampf, the machine-like (yet beautiful glare) of the replicants’ retinas, as well as the haunting gaze of the artificial owl in Tyrell’s tower. We commonly think of eyes as “windows to the soul,” but it is obvious that they are meant to be used in connection with the notion of implanted memories. Our eyes can be fooled as easily as our minds
    according to Blade Runner, and the only way to detect a replicant is by closely monitoring ocular reactions to moral dilemmas. Even then, we cannot be certain which character is truly human. Is it Deckard with his remorseless, killer instinct (as Dr. Lucas pointed out), or is it Roy who actually feels guilty about the steps he’s taken in order to survive? “I’ve done… questionable things.” Roy destroys the eyes of his creator in a symbolic act of revenge/redemption, and I feel this is one of the most crucial scenes of the movie. I have noticed the importance of (or, at least, the emphasis of) eyeballs in other cyberpunk stories: Molly’s mirror shades (which reminded me of Batou’s artificial lenses in Ghost in the Shell), and Major Kusanagi’s use of eyes to access cyberspace. It
    would be more appropriate, perhaps, to say, “Eyes are windows into headspace.”
    As for style, we see many references to the pre-Cold War era in means of attire.Rachel looks very similar to a movie star from the 1940s, the scene at the club screams vintage, and Roy’s style reminded me of something closer to the boom of industry in the 1920s. We could easily argue this is a juxtaposition of high-tech and low-life, but why was this particular style chosen? William Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum” constantly comes to mind during my reflections on this look. Is the society in Blade Runner trying to hold on to the idea of a “perfect past?” This could tie in with Tara’s observations on the film’s parallels with Nazi Germany, in the sense that everyone holds some idea of perfection. For Tyrell, it was a blond-haired, blue-eyed race of disposable machines, and for the film’s corporate-dominated civilization it is the classic, American era that has long been lost to us. I stand by my argument that Rachel is a product of Tyrell’s dreams (not just because her existence is based on a family member), comparable
    to the way cyberpunk caters to mythic archetypes. Deckard is our cowboy who remembers a time when unicorns galloped through the forests. I think this is one of the main themes of this sub-genre: dreams blurring with reality, myth manifested into real experiences. Cyberpunk makes us question everything, from our senses to our ideals. Honestly, there is so much that can be said about this movie, and I feel like we could spend another week or two examining and discovering everything Blade Runner contributed to cyberpunk and storytelling.

  • 4Billingsley

    The use of the eyes throughout the movie also reflect the theme of reality and what’s not real. The way the light shines on the replicants makes them look more like androids. The opening scene with the hellish landscape reflected on the eye, makes you wonder whether it is the the omniscient eye of God, the eye of Roy Batty, the eye of the Tyrell Corporation, which controls the whole city, or the eye of Big Brother. This brings to question the old saying “the eyes are the window to the soul”, which in BR would translate to who really has a soul?
    Ridley Scott made an interesting comment that the eye doesn’t belong to one person: “I think I was intuitively going along with the root of the Orwellian idea. That the world is more of a controlled place now. It’s really the eye of Big Brother. Or Tyrell. Tyrell, in fact, had he lived, would certainly have been Big Brother. The early intent [was for the eye to be Holden's]. But I later realized that linking that eye with any specific character was far too literal a maneuver and removed the particular emotion I was trying to induce” (Future Noir, 382)