Blade Runner Themes - English

Themes

What does it mean to be human

Where is the boundary between artificial and real life

The identity of characteers

There are three paradox's in Blade Runner; science as a progress in the world, the replicants not the humans who rebel against the totalitarian society, Deckards exestentail crisis about being a blade runner and feeling empathy towards replicants

Post Modernism

Post modernism means age, or style which is not defined by main look, or fashion, or architecture, but a mash of styles overlapping and merging into new hybrids. Blade Runner has a visual and vast array of ethnicities in the poor lower areas mostly being asian and caucasian. But in the higher up peope in society they are all caucaisan. Punks walk amongst hare krishnas, and people are dressed in glam clothes are with poor people with odd matched clothes and rags. There is futher sonic mismatch with classic sounds of radio overlapping the sound of flying cars. Also the soundtrack is a mix between futuristic sounding synths and traditional japanese music. Even the language spoken is a polyglot, a mix between german and japanese which is spoken by the cop Deckard interacts with.

Ridley Scott uses this visual effect of postmodernism, because a swirl of differnet cultures, looks and styles create a feeling of isolation and lonliness. This is because there is no centre to things and no heart. It also creates the feeling that everything is seperate and there is no identity, which keys into the theme of the film which is the loss of identity fro Deckard.

Human RIghts

The slave traders of the future are the large biotech companies, such as the Tyrell Corp. Science serves a totalitarian regime in which human beings with real health problems, just as geneticist JF Sebastian are deprived of their human rights. Humans with health problems are prevented from leaving earth to off world colonies. Much like Nazi German Sebastian is considered sub human and the earth is his concentration camp.

Technological…