Re: Machines that think...

Wade Riddick (riddick@MAIL.LA.UTEXAS.EDU)
Fri, 16 May 1997 09:09:48 -0500

> or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by P.K. Dick which I polished off
> last night.
>
> Matthew Lawrence

<Please skip this post if you haven't seen the film _Bladerunner_; I'd
hate to spoil one of the best pictures ever made for someone.>

While Dick's novel probably explores more religious themes in a more
Percyesque way, I found the film adaptation (_Bladerunner_) far more
compelling, where the androids become far more human and the human
protagonist has to struggle to regain his humanity. (Although Rutger
Hauer's death scene is far more powerful than Roy Baty's in the novel). I
suppose, in some sense, David Web People's script has a Percyesque twist
in it after all - Deckard, the man hired to retire the replicants, is the
edgy kind of film noir Humphrey Bogart character who's lost his compassion
after years beating the streets. The two most important lines in the film
- as far as understanding his character's transformation - center around
Rachel (his Beatrice):

1. "How can *it* not know what *it* is?" (to her creator, Tyrell, who
never does take the empathy test...)

2. "Kiss me... Tell me you love me." (to Rachel)

(Or something to that effect; it's reconstructed from memory).

He goes from treating her like a replicant to a lover... And indeed, these
are replicants and not really androids - biotechnology confuses the issue
so much in the movie that it's no longer clear if they aren't actually
human - People's script gives it a kind of "Six Characters Trying to Kill
Their Author" twist.

Memory is also excellently treated as a theme. In the novel, the focus is
on the authenticity of religious experience, which I think Percy would
enjoy. But the movie for me is much more interesting. The replicants are
given implanted memories and begin to transcend and outgrow their original
programming by the end of the film (redemption in another light). This
brings back the old mind-body problem that Percy skirts in a tantalizing
but ultimately unsatisfying way for me. *Who are we?* How much does *what
we are* matter? What's important about being a "creature," having a place
in the world.

It's funny, isn't it, how contemporary science fiction, goes after the
same problems in modernity that Percy highlighted... then again, I suppose
it all springs from Shelly's _Frankenstein_, the grandfather of all s-f
and the wellspring of "creature" themes.

And wouldn't it be a shame if, in the sequel, the rumors are true and it
turns out that Deckard was a replicant too? (Why even make a sequel? The
original's as close to perfect as it gets.) The original film works so
much better if Deckard is actually *human*. It serves as a wonderful
foil, particularly when Rachel, remembering the lessons of Tyrell's niece,
sits down and starts playing his piano... and we see the photos of
Deckard's grandparents resting above the keys of this antique - photos
just like Leon (another replicant) carries with him, only Deckard seems to
have forgotten what they mean. What good is being human if you can't
treat other people like humans too? If you fall and forget who you are?

Wade Riddick
Department of Government
University of Texas

(c) 1997 By Wade Riddick