This past semester I took a University Writing class, and during the course of research for the various essays I wrote, I came across some of the dumbest shit I have ever read.
I found this, the worst of it, while doing research for my essay about Blade Runner. It made my face hurt just reading it. The upside is there are unintentional guffaw-inducing bits here and there, if you can slog through it to find them.
Wow.
It was kind of a relief when the paper finally started talking about Blade Runner.
Since you did a paper on the film, do you think Deckard was a replicant? I hadn't gotten that from watching the film. The origami thing, to me, was just the detective telling Deckard that his every move was being watched.
Since you did a paper on the film, do you think Deckard was a replicant? I hadn't gotten that from watching the film. The origami thing, to me, was just the detective telling Deckard that his every move was being watched.
I think he's human.
Deckard isn't particularly strong, which one would expect if he was a Replicant.
The only reason Pris, who wasn't even designed to be deadly, didn't manage to kill him is because he had a gun. Roy Batty picks him up like a rag doll to keep him from falling. Batty was just toying with him in the Bradbury; If he truly had wanted to kill Deckard, he could have taken him apart like a stuffed animal.
It's rather self-defeating to have blade runners be Replicants. Unarmed, peaceful Replicants like Rachael are a no-no, but blade runners packing high explosive heat on the open streets are okay?
He was retired before the start of the film. Why would a being created to do a job be allowed to retire?
He was retired before the start of the film. Why would a being created to do a job be allowed to retire?
Answer: he wasn't. Perhaps he was created very recently, purely in order to catch the Nexus 6s that had just arrived. Probably given the memories of a retired, maybe dead, human bladerunner to do so.
Not saying this is definitely the case, just that this particular objection here does not really resolve the issue.
Personally I see no need to answer the question: human or replicant? The interesting part for me is the ambiguity.
Deckard is human in the Phillip K. Dick novel, though he is at one point accused of being a Nexus Six android, and for a time suspects a fellow bounty hunter of being an android.
The screenwriter Hampton Fancher wanted to leave the replicant or human question ambiguous. Ridley Scott said in his vision he saw Deckard as a replicant. It is strongly suggested by the dream Deckard has of a unicorn (in the director's cut, not in the theatrical release), and then when he returns to the apartment near the end of the film the detective Gaff has left an origami unicorn- suggesting Deckard's memories are implanted, and known- like Deckard earlier in the film revealing to Rachael his knowledge of her implanted memories.
Certainly it is open to interpretation; when I saw the theatrical release I never questioned his human status; it was only when I saw the director's cut years later that there appeared a strong implication that Deckard was a replicant himself.
I find it interesting because it is a contested plot line. If they intentionally wrote in a dubious plot twist to tease us with then we can play back by trying to determine the answer.
That he gets the crap beat out of him on a regular basis is a big point in favour of Deckard being human. The unicorn dream does not seem conclusive because the dream could have been a premonition of the next origami and is symbolic of healing, which is what Deckard and Rachael ran away to do. The other main support for the replicant theory is that they say six replicants were on the loose yet only five are accounted for but that was due to cutting out a character after the scene was shot where they said six.
Gaff didn't seem to do anything in the story except watch Deckard and leave origami figures as a silent commentary on what he observed. He also left a chicken and a stick figure. Gaff is kind of a weird character. I saw him as an authority figure to Deckard and felt he lent tension to the plot by sheer creepiness.
Ultimately, it's just a story and all stories have holes or loose threads that will unravel if pulled mainly because they are just fiction.
I find it interesting because it is a contested plot line. If they intentionally wrote in a dubious plot twist to tease us with then we can play back by trying to determine the answer.
That he gets the crap beat out of him on a regular basis is a big point in favour of Deckard being human. The unicorn dream does not seem conclusive because the dream could have been a premonition of the next origami and is symbolic of healing, which is what Deckard and Rachael ran away to do. The other main support for the replicant theory is that they say six replicants were on the loose yet only five are accounted for but that was due to cutting out a character after the scene was shot where they said six.
Gaff didn't seem to do anything in the story except watch Deckard and leave origami figures as a silent commentary on what he observed. He also left a chicken and a stick figure. Gaff is kind of a weird character. I saw him as an authority figure to Deckard and felt he lent tension to the plot by sheer creepiness.
Ultimately, it's just a story and all stories have holes or loose threads that will unravel if pulled mainly because they are just fiction.
Doesn't him being weaker than the replicants he faces really only mean that he isn't a normal replicant?
Doesn't him being weaker than the replicants he faces really only mean that he isn't a normal replicant?
It could mean that but it would only mean that if there was a reason to believe he was a replicant. So far I don't see enough compelling reasons. Technically, McClane in Die Hard might have been an alien reptile in a convincing human disguise but we have no reason to think he isn't human so assuming he is an alien would be odd.
Doesn't him being weaker than the replicants he faces really only mean that he isn't a normal replicant?
It could mean that but it would only mean that if there was a reason to believe he was a replicant. So far I don't see enough compelling reasons. Technically, McClane in Die Hard might have been an alien reptile in a convincing human disguise but we have no reason to think he isn't human so assuming he is an alien would be odd.
Yet we do have reason to think that he wasn't human, but I wasn't really arguing that. I was just pointing out that him having less strength than replicants in general or some sort of poorly defined baseline of replicant strength would not in fact mean he was human necessarily. It would mean that he did not have the normal amount of strength for a replicant.
Dreams tend to be premonitions instead of recollections
eh? Also, I can't help but think that dreams might be important. I bet the original source material might have some hint as to whether or not dreams are important hidden deep inside. I will need to reread Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Yes, the unicorns are being used by the storyteller to point us to something. Sure, you can ignore it.
Or we could ask Ridley Scot who has said that Deckard is a replicant. I didn't see it in the theaters so I can't speak to the original theatrical version.
In storytelling, dreams aren't generally used to tell about the past. They are used more for foreshadowing. Also, a unicorn is a suspicious memory to have implanted since it's not something he would have seen. They don't exist in the Blade Runner world any more than they do in this world. What kind of memory would he have had involving a unicorn?
In storytelling, dreams aren't generally used to tell about the past. They are used more for foreshadowing. Also, a unicorn is a suspicious memory to have implanted since it's not something he would have seen. They don't exist in the Blade Runner world any more than they do in this world. What kind of memory would he have had involving a unicorn?
The implanted kind?
Or do you think that the director was foreshadowing some origami?
In storytelling, dreams aren't generally used to tell about the past. They are used more for foreshadowing. Also, a unicorn is a suspicious memory to have implanted since it's not something he would have seen. They don't exist in the Blade Runner world any more than they do in this world. What kind of memory would he have had involving a unicorn?
The implanted kind?
Or do you think that the director was foreshadowing some origami?
I think the oragami was symbolic of freedom and healing and Gaff's message to Deckard was that he was choosing to let him go. I think the dream foreshadowed the moment where Deckard realises he is free to escape... which is what he was trying to do before they called him back to duty.
I find this really weird:
Quote:
Wired: It was never on paper that Deckard is a replicant.
Scott: It was, actually. That's the whole point of Gaff, the guy who makes origami and leaves little matchstick figures around. He doesn't like Deckard, and we don't really know why. If you take for granted for a moment that, let's say, Deckard is a Nexus 7, he probably has an unknown life span and therefore is starting to get awfully human. Gaff, at the very end, leaves an origami, which is a piece of silver paper you might find in a cigarette packet, and it's a unicorn. Now, the unicorn in Deckard's daydream tells me that Deckard wouldn't normally talk about such a thing to anyone. If Gaff knew about that, it's Gaff's message to say, "I've read your file, mate." That relates to Deckard's first speech to Rachael when he says, "That's not your imagination, that's Tyrell's niece's daydream." And he describes a little spider on a bush outside the window. The spider is an implanted piece of imagination. And therefore Deckard, too, has imagination and even history implanted in his head
because the spider memory was not a daydream. Not at all, it was something Rachael believed happened in her past... as shown by the dialogue:
Quote:
Deckard: Remember when you were six? You and your brother snuck into an empty building through a basement window. You were going to play doctor. He showed you his, but when it got to be your turn you chickened and ran; you remember that? You ever tell anybody that? Your mother, Tyrell, anybody? Remember the spider that lived outside your window? Orange body, green legs. Watched her build a web all summer, then one day there's a big egg in it. The egg hatched...
Rachael: The egg hatched...
Deckard: Yeah...
Rachael: ...and a hundred baby spiders came out... and they ate her.
Deckard: Implants. Those aren't your memories, they're somebody else's. They're Tyrell's niece's.
Deckard: [he sees that she's deeply hurt by the implication] O.K., bad joke... I made a bad joke. You're not a replicant. Go home, O.K.? No, really - I'm sorry, go home.
Why would Scott not recall the difference between a false memory and a daydream? They are very different things.
They don't exist in the Blade Runner world any more than they do in this world.
That we know of.
I could easily see unicorns in the world of Blade Runner--after all, unicorns are just horses with a horn, how hard would that be for a genetic designer like J.F. Sebastian?
In storytelling, dreams aren't generally used to tell about the past. They are used more for foreshadowing. Also, a unicorn is a suspicious memory to have implanted since it's not something he would have seen. They don't exist in the Blade Runner world any more than they do in this world. What kind of memory would he have had involving a unicorn?
Why shouldn't unicorns exist in the Blade Runner world? James Thurber had one in his garden.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
Or we could ask Ridley Scot who has said that Deckard is a replicant. I didn't see it in the theaters so I can't speak to the original theatrical version.
Originally, Scott said he wasn't. Somewhere between '82 and '92 he seems to have changed his mind. I see this as a Lucas-ism.
Stupidity Comes in Degrees
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