Final project - yes, this is MS Paint, so the art is not the best
Dickson He
Professor Doe
Apocalypticism in Film, Section 2
3 December 2014
A Perspective on Blade Runner
Ridley Scott
imagines the future world of Blade Runner
as hectic and helter-skelter, resulting from a malignant outgrowth and
confluence of social trends that signify both progress and the costs of
progress.
For example, while
science advanced enough to allow the creation of humanoid slaves, the
implications of their slave status are heavily questioned. Replicants are
discriminated against by being outlawed on Earth similarly to racism:
“Assigning attributes of otherness (like the derogatory name “skinjobs”) serves
multiple functions for the labelling group (Pieterse 230),” such as
justification for retiring them. Replicants live meagerly off-world, and the
off-world represents “a new life” away from the Malthusian direction of Earth. Comparing
Trimble’s analysis of cities (310) with abandonment to the off-world, “Cities
are imagined as rife with pockets of insufficiently assimilated strangers,
understood as sites of (national) vulnerability. The tenements described by
Wald have twenty-first-century counterparts in what Bauman (2007) refers to as
"ghost wards," or firmly local ghettoes that have been marked off and
abandoned by the urban elite (73).” Los Angeles is overcrowded and rains
constantly likely due to excessive pollution. This environmental discord is a
long-projected element of capitalism and dystopia, but a capitalistic forecast
that did not materialize in Los Angeles’ ad-saturated world is the global
dominance of Japan, which grew rapidly during the 1980s until crashing.
Using MS Paint and
five grayscale colors, I harken back to the film noir that Blade Runner was inspired from by including elements that made the
film iconic. Police cars and the off-world blimp fly in the landscape, while
the Japanese-inspired geisha commercial indicates an alternative economic
future. To create a sense of constant surveillance and paranoia, I drew many
searchlights investigating the dilapidated city. The sun is shown only in
Tyrell’s headquarters, highlighting his monumental God-like power in creating Replicants.
In the front, Deckard looks out into the crowd and neon-trimmed city to try and
retire Zhora. These physical elements create a new setting for the detective
plot; other significant interiors include Taffy Lewis’s bar, Chew’s eye lab,
and J.F. Sebastian’s apartment.
However, the
environment also plays important thematic roles. In the beginning of the movie,
an eye reflects the chaotic background, and the topic of eyes and seeing recurs
frequently. In Roy Batty’s famous speech, he mentions seeing as crucial for the
perception and memory of living: “I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe…”
(Blade Runner). Furthermore, there
are several religious allusions especially with Tyrell as the father of fallen
angels. Roy returns as the prodigal son, and he also mimics Christ by impaling
his hand. Beside several other references to Christianity, science and commerce’s
progress leads to questions about what it means to be and what qualifies as
human. While the Replicants are dehumanized as commercial property, they
eagerly seek longer life as an avenue for more experiences like people of
normal life spans. Through this complexity and thematic richness, Blade Runner questions scientific progress
and humanity, and I tried to incorporate this wistful, mysterious, and probing
essence in my drawing.
Works Cited
Blade Runner. Perf.
Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young. Warner Home Video, 2007. DVD.
Pieterse, Jan. "Image and Power." White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks
in Western Popular Culture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. 224-235. Print.
Trimble, Sarah. "(White) Rage: Affect, Neoliberalism,
and the Family in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later." The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and
Cultural Studies 32 (2010): 295-322. Print.
