Blade Runner - Genre Theory - Seminole Cinema: SEHS Film



IB Film 2: W59.2Blade Runner—The Future as MetaphorHere is an interesting analysis of?Blade Runner?(1982) that takes into consideration Philip K. Dick's and Ridley?Scott’s familial past, artistic influences, and social issues that face modern society. Runner (1982)Based on Philip K. Dick's novel?Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep??(1968), it has many influences from the Film Noir?Genre, it is most clearly associated with the Science Fiction?Genre.We will be approaching?Blade Runner?from a number of different theoretical and historical perspectives.Why? ?Well, there is more than one way to view and understand a film.As you have seen in your Theory of Knowledge course, there are different kinds of knowledge.Some knowledge about films is aesthetic - films are examined to see how they function as examples of Art.But, knowledge about film can also be ideological in nature - more focused on how the film is reflective of the society and culture from which it came, rather than how the world of the film is created.We want to try a number of different approaches to one film to model different ways you may choose to approach a film - especially as you prepare for the Presentation Assessment and particularly, the Individual Study documentary script in which you will have to use a specific film history or film theory approach to complete your study.Genre TheoryGenre theory generally looks at artistic qualities of a film and the way the film fits into its genre and exploits the genre's conventions to tell a story.Exploring the film this way means examining the effect of a genre and its conventions on an audience.We can reason from the choices made in the film about both the Director's intent and also, about the expectations of the audience at the time of the film.Blade Runner?is dystopian?Science Fiction. This is the opposite of utopian?Science Fiction.Instead of imagining a perfect future, the artists imagine a future where things have gone disastrously wrong.Though the period when the film was made had seen the end of the Vietnam?War and a thawing of the Cold War, clearly it was not hard for the audience to imagine a dark future, particularly in terms of the environment and scientific experimentation.Philip K. Dick was first inspired to write the novel when he was doing research for his novel?The Man in the High Castle, an alternate history in which the World War II Axis powers won the war.When reading the diaries of SS men in Poland, and encountering matter-of-fact passages like -"The cries of starving children keep us awake at night"- he came to believe there were people who, though in all respects seemed to be people in appearance, were not people inside.This idea, paired with his observations about the way the North Vietnamese had been described in dehumanizing terms during the Vietnamese War, led him to begin to speculate how human beings could be identified from identical-looking beings who had no empathy for other human beings.This led him to imagine an 'empathy test',?which we see at the beginning of the movie, that can isolate a human from an artificial human.This idea led to further ideas in the book about what qualities make us human in the first place.Note, 'replicants' must be improving and becoming human, as it takes over 100 questions to determine Rachel is a replicant, whereas most replicants can be identified with about 16 questions.At what point do replicants become human?Science Fiction, as a Genre, deals in metaphors all the time.As we have seen before, Aliens would not be very interesting if they did not, in some way, represent us.While stories may be set in imaginary futures, just like?Blade Runner?and its inspirations in Nazi diaries and the Vietnamese War, they are based on contemporary problems.Blade Runner?remains one of the greatest film depictions of the difficulty of judging who is human and who is not, and whether the act of judgement and execution does not actually steal your own humanity.In the Director's cut of the film, Deckard dreams of a Unicorn.This and other details ( note, the Unicorn in J. M. Sebastians toy collection and the origami Unicorn at the end of the film ) lead to the idea Deckard may be a Replicant himself. Like Rachel, he has false, implanted memories.The question is not simply?can we tell if other people are truly human?. The question is whether or not we can even tell if?we?are truly human.Besides this generic concern, there are many other visual elements in the film that are central to the Science Fiction Genre.William Gibson, author of?Neuromancer,?Count Zero, and many other Cyberpunk?novels ( the inspiration behind films like?The Matrix?), tells the story that he walked out of?Blade Runner?after the first 20 minutes.Apparently, its similarities were so close to what he imagined in his own work he was afraid of the film's influence on him. Certainly, many of the visual ideas in the film relate to primary concerns of the Science Fiction Genre.Visually, the future is implied by items like massive buildings and flying cars.You have seen?Metropolis?(1927) and will recognize the visual depiction of social class by the device of having the poor live on the streets ( if not underground ) and the rich living high above them.Both the future and the over-population of the world is hinted at by the composition of crowds and languages within the film.Listen carefully, and you will hear Gaff, the policeman who comes to get Deckard at the beginning of the film, speaking a language composed of many different languages.Apparently, this idea of a language, called 'gutter speak'?( composed of many different languages ), was an invention of Edward James Olmos, who plays Gaff.Certainly, it plays well in the future that is portrayed here, in which Los Angeles is a city that is openly influenced by many different cultures.The other major influence on the film is, of course, Film Noir.Key characters are Noir archetypes, like the Detective and the Femme Fatale.The visual style of Film Noir is also a key influence on the film.Discussion:Blade Runner - Genre TheoryWatch the prescribed film?Blade Runner?(1982) and answer all 3?of the following questions.Make sure to post a meaningful comment on a classmate’s discussion item and answer any posts related to your own.Take a moment to explore the visual elements of the film?Blade Runner.Which elements are derived from the Film Noir Genre?Which elements are derived from the Science Fiction Genre?Ultimately, how do all these elements act in a metaphorical way, not predicting the future, but actively commenting on western society today?Make sure you post an initial comment answering the prompt. Then, read through the other posts and respond to a classmate’s comment. ................
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