Analysis of the Film Blade Runner - Essay Example

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it’s like to live as a slave.” These are the words of Roy, a replicate in the movies Blade runner addressed to the hero, Deckard in a moment when the latter was hanging at a precipice at the mercy of Roy. Surprisingly, Roy who had been deeply wronged by Deckard instead of letting him die saves him just before dying. His words strike a familiar cord in the debate about what is real freedom and whether one can really be free if they have things that they fear, powers greater than them which directly or indirect control them. In the film, the theme of fear seems to be a key element of most of the characters and in several ways, it reflects on the reality of modern times. Human societies believe that they live in freedom and concepts such as slavery are long forgotten and antiquated only useable in a metaphorical context. The blade runner however provides a profound insight into the overt and covert manipulation and enslavement of a society where everyone is secretly driven by fear and by authorities constantly controlling and spying on people through technology reminiscent of Foucault’s panoptic ideas and even violence. For all intents and purposes, Deckard the hero is presented to the audience as a typical macho hero, he is a retired policeman a hardy and trained fighter not only capable of protecting himself but others. He has problems like anyone else but he cuts the figure of independence and freedom, a man who is a master of his universe, so to speak. However, despite his macho and fearless image quickly erodes when he is strong-armed and subtly manipulated by Bryant to go back to Blade running a job he has no intention of doing. Bryant exercises power over Deckard in the same way the Panopticon does to the prisoners, keeping him in permanent visibility by denying him a chance to retire so that he can sustain automatic power functioning. (Foucault 156). From this, one can surmise that he in spite of his physical power and intelligence he is enslaved by the fear ha drives him to seek out the replicants although he would rather not be involved. His is however not the only fear, every other character and even the intended ground on which the movie was founded is based on fear. Human beings create the replicates so they can carry out tasks that are impossible for them such as mining in other planets, however, since they recognized that the replicants were potentially more powerful, they made them such that their lifespan could not extend past four years. Essentially humans had created a system that forced the replicants to live in perpetual fear and dread knowing that what-ever they did they could not live to enjoy it for more than the four years allocated to them . This fear drove Roy to go hunting his “father “and creator Tyrell, in a desperate attempt to discover the secret of life, this quest is a parallel of human attempts to discover the secret of immortality since they live in perpetual fear of death’s inevitability. The the blade runners who are tasked with duty of “retiring” them was in an attempt by the authorities to consolidate their power and ensure there is order in society by eliminating and elements that could potentially challenge power in the future. Similarly, in the panoptic world, modern society is described as series of prison systems which have been instituted by the authorities and so that they can control people in a limited environment. In the context of the movie, the power of the authorities is not absolute and they are only able to gain power through violence, threats and murder disguised and retirement. At the end of the day, they are not only driven by their desire to dominate but also the fear of their own creations which they cannot control as well as they would like to. To this end, they put up mechanisms and laws that will institute a sense of control while in reality, they are enslaved by the system they have created. Tyrell’s may appear to be an ideal autocrat patriarchic but even he lives in fear that the replicants he manipulates will one day take over from him, this turns out to be true to some extent and his fears come to pass. When Roy learns he can be of no use to him in as far as solving his mortality problem, he blinds him and violently kills him (“Blade Runner”). This is intended as punishment for the crimes that Tyrell had committed against the replicants but also to prevent him from making any more of them to suffer because of their short lifespan. Several other of the concepts presented in the blade runner seem to directly reflect on Michal Foucault’s Panopticism, the society is constantly surveyed by authorities and this is signified by the huge close up of an eye looking over the city of Los Angles. In the book, Foucault proposes a building which makes surveillance operation easy to perform on the ignorant public. The owl with a revolving eye is also symbolically used to represent the power of Tyrell over the inhabitant of the city in a typical panoptic scenario; he can see and control everyone but he is camouflaged in the “natural” environment which makes it impossible for them, to see or perceive his control. In one of the scenes, there is a moving image of a Chinese woman on a billboard, to some it has been interpreted as an allusion to the power of china which was growing exponentially at the time; in fact many Americans expected that the Asian nation would take over form America in the near future. Like many futuristic films, the blade runner plays on the fears of the public about the possibilities of world destructions and calamities in which the world is taken over by diabolical forces or even aliens either who use their control of technology and resources to manipulate the world. Throughout the film there is a high level of paranoia which is a reflection of the predicted manifestation of power and control by the corporate and government forces that perpetually spy on citizens and hold almost absolute power over individuals. This is can be aligned to Foucault’s assertion that our society is no one of surveillance and which invests a great deal in training forces and technologies that are used to control the citizenry (Foucault 10). In the film, the idea of control is taken to the extreme level, the authorities have elevated themselves to a point in Foucault hypothetical building in which they can control eventually every aspect of an individual life including their thinking. For example, Rachael is a replicant who has however been fed with false memories and she believes that she is a human, however, when Deckard come to the factory to try out the test for distinguishing between humans an replicants she begins to fear she could be a replicant (Maslin). Finally she goes to Deckard how to prove her humanity to him but she is shocked when he reveals information about her past that he could not have known, it dawn to her that she is no more human than the rest of the replicants and for a time shatters her and she almost losses control over herself due to the emotional anguish. Ultimately, the film is close reflection of the realities of day to day life in the contemporary world; the media is rife with cases of government projects designed to spy and control the public as well as corporate plots to manipulate the public. This is done through a variety of methods such as brainwashing through mass media and advertisements as well as more diabolical and violent tactics designed to silence those who attempt to go against the powers that be. At the end of the day as long as society is kept in constant fear and control overtly and covertly, it will remain enslaved to the wiles of the powerful. Works Cited Maslin, Janet. "FUTURISTIC 'BLADE RUNNER'." New York Times. Jun 25 1982.  Web. 12 Dec. 2013 . Foucault, Michel. "Discipline and Punish, Panopticism." In Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, edited by Alan Sheridan, 195-228. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Print. Blade Runner. Dir: Ridley Scott. The Ladd Company. IMDB. 1982. Film. Read More