“Blade Runner” (1982) is a Hollywood film based on Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (1968). Film noir meets science fiction. Rick Deckard (a young Harrison Ford) is a bounty hunter in a gritty, dystopian Los Angeles of 2019. He kills androids – but then falls in love with one. The film was great at making the future look real rather than wow. Ridley Scott of “Alien” (1979) directs.
- Philip K. Dick: the Hollywood films “Total Recall” (1990) and “Minority Report” (2002) are also based on his stories.
What Dick calls androids the film calls replicants – humans genetically engineered to be slaves. They are born fully grown and live only four years or so. Some have false memories planted in them which makes them think they are human. They are supposed to lack feelings. They live off-world – those who flee to Earth as runaway slaves are hunted down and killed by people like Deckard.
A Future Without Black People? Los Angeles in 2019 is a mix of all kinds of people, mostly stereotyped Asians, but few if any are black. Unless, of course, you read the replicants as allegorically black.
I saw “Blade Runner” for the third time last weekend. It is not as good as I remember it. That might be because there are different –
- Versions: There are seven altogether. In 1982 Hollywood made Scott put in a happy ending. In 2007 Scott put in the ending he wanted on the DVD.
But, of course, the book is better.
In the book:
- One of the androids is an opera singer – important to the theme of the book. Hollywood made her a stripper.
- Deckard makes love to – but does not fall in love with – an android. He is married and goes back to his wife in the end.
- Androids are utterly heartless and see religion as fake.
- The love scene is more interesting – what is it like to make love to an android?
- Most of the action is set in metropolitan San Francisco – post-apocalyptic, but solidly Anglo.
- Androids have issues of “passing”. Deckard calls them “illegal aliens”.
- Roy Baty, the lead android of the runaways, is not white but has “Mongolian” features.
But most of all, the film leaves out the religion and nearly all the philosophy in the book. While the book is built on a police story – something Hollywood is good at – it goes much deeper into questions of what it means to be human, drawing the line between man and meat machine at empathy and, arguably, religion. Fakeness – of people, of American culture, of way too many things – is a huge theme, one that went right over Hollywood’s head.
Dick got the idea for the book when he read a letter by a guard at a Nazi German death camp. The guard complains:
We are kept awake at night by the cries of starving children.
It shocked Dick that anyone could be that inhuman. When the Vietnam War came it was apparent that the same fake humanity had spread to America.
See also:
Abagond, i also too, watched Blade runner just recently, about a month or so ago on my apple TV.
It wasn’t as good as i remembered when watching it as a young boy, i even noticed the absence of black people.
I am more conscience of Hollywood’s, racial discrimination of black people as an adult.
I do however, like the film’s gritty and realistic depiction of a 2019 Los Angeles, which gives the movie its charm.
A young Harrison ford was very good in the film, i don’t think anyone else could have done it better in this role, than him.
Rutger Hauer as Roy, played the role of a bad guy, perfectly.
I hope to god, they never create a sequel, which would ruin the legacy of Blade runner.
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Despite its hollywoodesque fails, still one of my favorite movies. Naturally it is stripped and hollowed out version of the book, but still enjoyable. Rutger Hauers performance is very very good as Roy.
The lack of black people is as weird as it was when I first saw the movie but from todays perspective it is obvious that the makers thoughed that asian influx to California would boom and missed completely the fact that the major influx of new people come from the south of the border. As I have not read the book I do not know was this missing from it too?
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yes, good time to see the movie & read the book again.
The movie which left me a bigger impression was Soylent Green. Already in the early 70s they addressed overpopulation & global warming.
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Book sounds like a winner but don’t act like the film wasn’t great.
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I have much better memories of watching “Total Recall” (the original one) for the first time, and found it more visually appealing and much more hopeful of a decent future for mankind than “Blade Runner”.
An excellent analysis of Blade Runner, though! It’s got me considering watching the movie through to the end this time.
I do have to wonder about the tendency of movies which are set either in the past (but well after 1619) or future to have few, if any, Blacks. Or of TV shows such as “I Love Lucy”, which (for the most part) was set in NYC but, where the rare time a Black person was shown, it was in the role of a porter on a train.
“The Untouchables”, I believe, was one such movie where it was claimed directors were going for *authenticity* by leaving Blacks out of the film altogether — as if during the 1920s-1930s there were no Blacks in any capacity in areas where the Feds were running around like a chicken with its head cut off after Al Capone.
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Prior to the early 1960s, nearly all blacks were depicted as servants or porters on trains.
I remember taking the train down South in the 1960s, and indeed, the majority of porters were black. I suppose that is how most white people encountered blacks in their daily life. It would have looked strange to cast too many white people in that role.
But by the 1980s, that thinking should have been gone already. Blacks started to appear in new roles by the 1970s (remember Room 222 and the Mod Squad?). But the 70s & 80s marked the rise of Japan. Perhaps the renewed rise or the Yellow Peril filled the minds of white people at that time. After all, that was the time period of the Vincent Chin slaying.
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blade runner is my favourite movie of all time. i think that yes, the androids are metaphorically black, or metaphorically gay. any group of people that is deemed to be “sub-human” because of their origins.
look at the way the replicants are looked at. on one aspect they are viewed as superior (think, the magical negro), but on the other hand they are viewed as soulless, emotionless, as all one in the same. sound familiar?
but in the end of the movie, you realise that the replicants have emotions, have a soul, just like everyone else does. you’re also faced with the question— is the protagonist of the story, deckard— a replicant himself? since he was the one you were rooting for the whole time, it really makes you think, am i a “replicant” (metaphorically of course). are these distinctions that we make between each other, black, white, jewish, arabic, aborigine, etc.— just distinctions that we make up to separate each other? the movie’s answer is a resounding “yes”.
there are multiple levels in this movie that watching it twice will not reveal. check out the foil figurines left on the ground in certain parts of the movie. i really believe it’s one of the best movies of all time. of course, i had a hard time explaining that to kids in high school.
“he did it with a robot, man! gross!”
“i don’t get it. there wasn’t enough action”
these kinds of comments really show that they didn’t understand the film at all.
the 1982 theatrical release contained a film-noir type narration that helped explain some of these things, but at the same time distracted from some of the film’s most poignant moments. the studio insisted that scott add the narration in to help people understand the film. it’s really a film that you can’t understand the first time you watch it unless you’re just incredibly observant.
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Very interesting article indeed, it’s nice to revisit this true classic every once in a while, they just don’t make films like this anymore. Speaking of which, what are your thoughts on the Blade Runner sequel – http://www.bladerunner-2.com?
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@ Pete Benjamin
I have not seen it and do not think I could bear to watch it. How do you think it compares?
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@abagond it’s not out yet it’s just in development and few details are known thus far. The general consensus online is that people don’t want it to be made, but I feel that it may surprise a few people.
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@ Jefe
Good point about the Yellow Peril. Most of the Asians in “Blade Runner” seem to be Japanese – and it was made at a time when Japan was seen as an economic and technological threat by many Americans. But I do not know the director’s reasoning. It is certainly not in the book, where America is solidly Anglo.
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Bladerunner is one of my all-time favorite films. It does have its problems and the book is, without question, much deeper than the film, with or without the narration.
I do remember that in the film with narration there was that statement Deckard made about “skinjobs and the n-word. I always thought of the movie as an allegory for slavery and had no problem with the idea that LA would be taken over by Asians. So few movies about the future mentioned any PoC, that I was willing to accept that premise.Over the years there have been some interesting revelations made about Deckard that have deepened the film for me too.
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The full on reason I wanted to write Sci-fi. I always wondered where the black people were. However you can get on Lando in sometimes.
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Interesting that someone brought up “Total Recall”. This film and “Blade Runner” both depict troubled near future scenarios. “Solyent Green” might go with these two to make a good home theater trio. “Outland” might be another good addition although it is more strictly a science fiction story.
A extremely disturbing dystopian story which never has been made into a adequate film is Huxley’s “Brave New World”. Read it only recently after starting and not finishing it when I was a teenager in the 1960s. What struck me the most was the absolute mediocrity of the supposed “alpha” class of males, apart from their ability to perform the functions they were bred and trained for. Still, there is plenty of material in the story for anyone who wants to treat it instead as a cultural allegory.
Huxley said he based the story on his observations regarding Southern California society in the 1930s. That means white, middle class and upper middle class Southern California society in the 1930s. Huxley captured the formative stages of the Anglo Californian society which would proliferate in the 1950s and 1960s during the Cold War aerospace boom. This subset of society is on the road to extinction today. In Santa Clara County (San Jose-Silicon Valley) today you would be hard put to locate the descendants of the aerospace workers of the Postwar era, especially any who are children today.
Back to “Total Recall”, I once had a kid in a line at fast food joint ask me if I thought Douglas Quaid had actually gone to Mars. I said, “No, it was only a movie.” So he said, “C’mon. You know what I mean.” So I said, “Yes”. Well, that is my opinion, but other people may think different.
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“Back to “Total Recall”, I once had a kid in a line at fast food joint ask me if I thought Douglas Quaid had actually gone to Mars. I said, “No, it was only a movie.” So he said, “C’mon. You know what I mean.” So I said, “Yes”. Well, that is my opinion, but other people may think different.”
– – –
Interesting!
My sister and I discussed this same aspect of the movie and we came to the conclusion that either Quaid was simply experiencing his chosen Total Recall scenario — “Blue Skies Over Mars” -.and the EVERYTHING he experiencesd was a part of that program. Or that the only part NOT written in was where that guy with the sweat bead rolling down his face tried to tell Quaid that something had gone wrong and that he needed to be brought back to reality or his brain would be fried. And, that, after this point, Quaid actually did suffer brain damage, which in turn caused “Blue Skies Over Mars” to play out over and over again in his mind, like a loop recording, while he lay in a coma.
Or something like that…. lol
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Hmm. Now that I really think about it, I think everything that happened after Quaid was hooked up to the device, was a part of the program as it was written — including the nervous sweat bead guy who said he’d entered Quaid’s consciousness in order to warn him….
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sorry not one of my favorite sifi films ,and I loves me some sifi ;and as for the comments about where are the black people – its a hollywood meme ,either zero or degraded/subordinated when it comes to black people.
@Fiamma
cosign on your comment except for the desire to eithier view the film ,read the book or add it to my collection.
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Good point. But then there is the scene where Dr. Edgemar sweats. Or was that part of the impanted scenario? Doesn’t seem right. And what about Arnold Schwarzenegger himself? Why was he always making movies involving altered reality? Was this a little personal psychodrama? Was his transition between cultures a little more mind bending that he lets on?
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Well I guess “A Brother from Another Planet” would qualify as black sci-fi. Watched that one at too young an age. When I was a kid it was strange that sci-fi and Westerns wouldn’t have any black people. TV would also make you think we didn’t know how to fight either. Books were just about as bad.
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Anonymike,
The scene with Dr. Edgemar is promblematic. He might have been telling the truth, but Quaid figures he’s lying due to the sweat rolling down his face and kills the doctor. Whatever ther case, I believe that what Quaid experienced was the programmed scenario of his choice, and that he actually never left the confines of Earth.
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Mbeti,
Blade Runner also didn’t seem to be my type of film. I was very young when I saw it for the first time as a video rental; I watched a little of it, became bored, wandered off, and avoided it whenever it came on TV.
Even abagond’s analysis of it makes it sound like “not my kind of movie”, but, I’m now thinking that maybe there’s something I might learn from it, if, now that I’m an adult, I could just manage to sit down and pay attention to the entire movie….
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@fiamma
the thing about all media content fiction or nonfiction is I usually let my intuition or subconscious be my guide and 95% of the time its correct.
There is a lot of science fiction and fantasy I like very much ,I’ve liked it since childhood,however just like with music ,food ,people etc some I like ,a few I love and the rest ,don’t much care about.
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Just watched the 1990 version of Total Recall. I see a huge amount of material at the beginning which indicates that Quaid’s adventure is real. In the premise of the world the story takes place in, it is established that the colony on Mars and the issues it has are real. The action itself, while unrealistic, is however typical of action movies of the period, which themselves operate on the premise that the events are real and take place in the same real world we live in.
The 2012 version may put a different spin on it, but in the 1990 version the weight of the material seems strongly on the side of the idea that the adventure is a real experience, not an implanted memory. Or so I think anyway.
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I’ve seen it more than once, but it has been years since I last watched. I’ll see if I can stream it on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
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Anonymike:
I’ll watch it free on my jail broken, apple TV. Total Recall
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No luck finding the video.
It just came to me, though, that Quaid had been experiencing unsettling dreams about being on Mars even before he went to Total Recall. So, you are definitely on to something about the experience being real, Anonymike!
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I was lucky. My apartment building has an excellent library of VHS tapes. Speaking of total recall, there it was, right in front of me. I was thinking as I watched the beginning, Rekall might have READ QUAID’S MIND as he walked through the door and came up with the “Blue Skies on Mars” scenario on the spot. In the 20 plus years since the movie came out, the psychological aspect of its premise has become more plausible, not less. To me, the weight of the evidence that Quaid’s adventure was supposed to be taken as real is just very large.
On top of that, “Total Recall” (the 1990 version) was a touchstone in the browning of America.
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[…] Blade Runner […]
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Super-stylish film.
As others have implied, it’s no accident that there are no black people in the film, because the slave-androids perform the function of “blacks” or “skin-jobs” in it. The film has a few themes, and race is certainly one of them.
No accident either, that it’s an actor like Rutger Hauer playing the anti-hero.
I remember him from Inside the Third Reich and Fatherland , too, when he seemed perfectly cast as the perfect and beautiful “Aryan”.
It’s no surprise that he is perfect, beautiful and super-human in his heroism in Blade Runner, too.
Then there is Rachel, who seems to stand in, almost, for a black person who can pass as white, all confused and pitiable, not knowing what she is.
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Jefe
Absolutely. Notice too, how the East Asian characters in the film are represented: old and not in good shape, they all have “accents” and seem to scurry around in the steam and darkness. Totally unlike the android super-men and super-women who are so much more human in the film.
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Ridley Scott directed the film “Alien” (1979), its sequel was the plural “Aliens” (1986).
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@ Dylan H
Ah. Thanks for the correction!
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The director’s cut was on a few nights ago, and as I watched the film, I was strangely reminded of the Planet of the Apes film, another film which is actually about race but using the apparent absence of race as a device to make it about “something else”.
Blade Runner is outwardly more sophisticated, and inverted. We have French artist Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) to thank for that, along with Rutger Hauer’s poetry.
In Planet of the Apes, the place of the “other races”, somewhat distastefully, are played by a variety of apes. The white people get to be humans. Well there’s a surprise. The blacks are probably the gorillas. The jews and white Communists get to be chimpanzees? The orangutans — are they Asians? Everything is displaced but familiar.
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@Bulanik
I found your comments in regard to this film and its relation to race (phenotypic groups) very informative,also your comments in regard to Rutger Hauer seem quite accurate as well.
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I also should have mentioned my favorite Of the planet of the apes series of films is Conquest of the Planet of the Apes 1972,if anyone here is familiar with this series of films it may be quite obvious why,although from a purely entertainment and enjoyment aspect the planet of the apes series was quite enjoyable to me whereas blade runner ,quite less so.
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Mbeti, re the Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
Oh, I think I know why it’s satisfying. I could well understand when those truncheons came down hard…crack!
You know there are 2 endings to this film? Which ending are you referring to?
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I didn’t know that,I am currently in the process of reacquiring a copy of this film and now that I think about it the whole series ,it may take a few weeks however and then I will have to view them all,particularly this one.
So in a few weeks or sooner I will be able to discuss them more authoritatively.
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however as I recall ,I was impress by how the character ape named ceaser was intelligent enough to lead the success rebellion and how “justified” he and the apes where , this also bring to my mind the cyclic nature of this moral conflict.
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@Bulanik
about the planet of the apes films
I’ve been able to download (for free via the evolution of the internet which supersedes even my local public library’s dvd collection) and watch all of them now .
Several Issues come to mind now (as apposed to when I was younger and couldn’t see as I see now – and by see I mean interpret)
media (film,music,writing(fiction),art,comics) and religion – current vs past myths and fiction in which both variants in this eurocentric culture idolize white males, and at the expense of all others including all females.
apes as black/brown people — duh
gorillas as violent and aggressive ,very black ,but zero females, contrary to known data
chimpanzees as most human (white) like ,with females that favor white males,gentle not as violent ,contrary to known data
orangutangs – old males only no females no youth
black males – no females as usual in hollywood films.
conquest and my wish fulfillment/fantasy (and white males fear/nightmare) of black violent uprising ,overthrow and eventual complete subordination of whites – the last part (complete subordination) I’m not very interested in even as fantasy – I not interested in emasculating white males or raping white females nor do I want or need a slave (I don’t care how difficult the work ,doing it yourself makes you stronger and smarter in my book).
Naaa I just want to be free of their (and anyone else’s) oppression.
Still have not got that alternative ending to conquest ,but the way the internet is evolving its just a matter of time.
My second favorite (actually its a tie between the two) beneath the planet of the apes.
In beneath the planet of the apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes references are made to deformity and beauty.
In beneath the planet of the apes the muted humans are hideously deformed ,live underground and have developed pyshic abilities.
This is also the film in the series in which the earth is destroyed by the “inadvertent” launching (by normal human Charlton Heston no less) of the last remaining nuclear missile ,worshiped by the mutant humans.
The is in line with some tentative hypothesis’s I’m forming as well as supporting conclusions reached by other researchers as well as my own experiences.
While some might say these are just movies and entertainment but I think they provide insight into the mindset of the people who produce them as well as the audiences that consume them.
Our hopes fears etc.
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@ Mbeti,
Lol! These are man-stories, of course. We’ve all sat through films in which one line might be spoken by a woman and no one finds it strange, whereas if it were the other way round, it would be a “chick-flick” or some such.
(Much like the way many, or most, women will read and own books by men AND women, but male readers may have not, favouring books by men far more — I remember hearing once about research that cited that.
I’ve seen those 2 Planet of the Apes film a while back, but the Planet of the Apes films are awkward to watch because I switch between who I identify with — the “animals” or the humans. The humans have done wrong, but we’re supposed to root for them regardless because they made mistakes but they are basically good, and the Apes are just un-entitled and imitative of all that is great about about “us” (the supposedly superior humans watching the film). It’s so mixed up!
The Planet of the Apes (and Blade Runner) are morality stories. These are parables airing white supremacist guilt, punishing white supremacist sin caused by white supremacist evil.
You know how cinema works: it directs us to identify with whatever perspective it portrays, and if that perspective is “uncomplicated”, then we understand who the villain is. But sometimes there are tricks, some tricks are in the plot, like a “twist” at the end, and then, there are more subtle, psychological ones that just mess you up — that are written into the sub-plot, beneath the surface and these twists only catch up with you long after the film ends.
They make for the most memorable of films.
I think the first time I remember experiencing this was when I watched “Rosemary’s Baby”. Oh, this film lingered in my thoughts! What disturbed me was that seemingly normal people who loved and cared for Mia Farrow end up being — enemies. It reminded that the world can be pulled out from under you. It makes the viewer internalize how shaky and illusory social cohesion (and personal relationships) can be, because the fabric of those them can be so threadbare, though they appear convincing.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoXLXMbOgiU)
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What do these films tell us about the makers of the Planet of the Apes films?
I searched YouTube for some clips.
When I watched the original films, they were really entertaining.
I really liked the masks and the muffled voices of the actors underneath! I was particularly fond of Urko, the gorilla’s military leader. He had gravitas! And the orange Orangutans reminded me of one of my friend’s dad! 😀
These films were like a racial satire more than anything else, sly commentary where the White Supremacist World was turned on its head. The humans (aka white people) could be flawed “humans” reaping the whirlwind of what they had done. It was a world of karmic payback in those films.
They knew it. They deserved it. They knew they had it coming.
So, clearly, the makers know that white supremacy lives and breathes.
The “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” with mutant humans and the atomic bomb is recognition (again) of having gone too far, having gone against nature.
The more modern Planet of the Apes films though are more sophisticated, but less entertaining. Because the apes are more “human”. They aren’t wearing make-up so much now as creating real ape-people through computer-generated human-apes. You can see their humanity in their eyes and facial expressions…so, what the film-makers are making the viewer see AND believe is that although the ape is another SPECIES — and not just trifling variations of the same human race — as a species the ape is capable of humanity because “humans” artificially advanced their IQs.
When that happens, disaster is around the corner.
It is another way of saying that because the ape is so different, so primitive, as “apes” they can never be safely integrated into “our” society. It’s the ape’s nature to be primitive and to f*ck-up human (in other words:WHITE) society.
Segregation is the way forward out of that mess. It’s so simple.
But no, it’s not simple, it is simplistic, and offensive in its manipulation.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TsHcomGhpM)
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^^ Mbeti, imo films like these also show up that apart from full awareness of white supremacists’ white supremacy, there is also full recognition of selective empathy which is essential to racism. For example: I have looked at those photos of white people laughing and smiling on a day out at a black person’s lynching, with the corpse swinging from a tree in the background, and asked myself “what happened to these spectators’ human feelings?”
By “selective” empathy, I mean human beings have always attributed human emotions to non-humans since ancient times. Anthropomorphic stories were always a feature in African folklore, zoomorphic figures were part of Europe’s early religion, think of Genesha, the Hindu god of success with the elephant’s head, and more modern characterizations like the ones seen in “Lord of the Rings”, children’s toys like Barney, or Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, etc., etc.
So, human beings have always tended to transfer emotions onto what are considered non-humans, instilling them with humanity, and they do that to make sense of their world and because it’s pleasing.
With apes, I think since western science tells us more and more about what we are and what apes might feel, perceive or experience subjectively, there might be a greater sense of guilt and “responsibility”. When I heard of white primatologists like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey (“Gorillas in the Mist”), ( wondered whether they might have had little time for Africans — sentient beings — but boundless compassion for the apes?
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VRdDFwxwTg)
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@ Bulanik
Excellent point about “selective empathy” in your last comment. I agree when looking at the white faces during African-American lynchings in the South it makes no sense. No apparent empathy for fellow human beings?
This type of phenomenon cannot be explained simply on the basis of all human beings share the same emotions. We do…But other assumptions need to be questioned and challenged otherwise it just makes no sense.
The preoccupation white people have had with their need for inferiorizing Black people needs greater research.
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@ Kwamla
This need and preoccupation of white people to inferiorize black people does needs much greater interrogation, without doubt..
Yet, where to start?
Because selective empathy and “Othering” is all around us.
I used to wonder about how it must have been for villagers who watch over, if not participate in mass killings and mass rapes, say in a pogrom, and feel pleased with themselves or merely nothing, afterwards?
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS7CxfWLWIs)
A couple years ago I was listening to 2 Kurdish friends from Eastern Turkey.
I said that one hundred years ago that region wasn’t “Eastern Turkey” at all, it was “Western Armenia” instead. They did not wish to hear that.
Later, I learned they were also resistant to the idea that it was their grandfathers, as part of the Ottoman’s land army, who slaughtered and raped their Armenians neighbours, also appropriating their lands and farms, jewels and clothes. Their was only dissociation with that possibility. Those were family secrets and family shame; the silence would expunge the past.
Is it made possible by “splitting” the conscious mind? In this case, their own families were good people. How could otherwise good people be responsible for the Armenian Genocide? At some point neighbours stopped being that and became the hunted and less than human.
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Typo: *There* was only dissociation with that possibility…
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Did anyone notice the recent passing of Run Run Shaw at age 107? Blade Runner was the first hollywood movie that he helped produce.
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Run Shaws’ obituary was in the NYT I believe.
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@ Legion
Perhaps the greatness of the film is that it is film noir as Sci-fi.
The look and feel of those films are so memorable.
Those dark melodramatic films of the 1940s and ’50s were usually about crime and cops, set in a time of the Depression and its concomitant drabness.
Blade Runner is darkly lit and smokey-blue, and looks a lot like classic noir film’s usual shadows and faces obscured by darkness.
There was often a cynical, sardonic voiceover too, in classic film noir — and that was a device used in the first edition of Blade Runner (the director’s cut version of the film did away with that), so, those elements might resonate because they refer to the bleakness of film imagery that anyone who has watched American (or German) cinema, may have experienced before.
The emptiness of life is a strong theme in some of the most Sci-fi films.
When I was still quite young, I think I was not alone in being excited about a future world of technological advancement. I was optimistic because it would be more Utopian. That was dashed after reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. And, later, Orwell’s 1984, and Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”.
Decay, darkness and sterility.
One had to be stoical in contemplating what was ahead, I concluded.
Remember Charlton Heston in “Soylent Green”, where people are the source of nutrition for other people?
What of the regime of suppression and suspicion in “Equilbrium”? Emotions are obliterated through drugs, ensuring we all bow to authority.
It was filmed in Berlin’s landscape, full of fascist and modernist architecture.
Did you see “Gattaca”, like Huxley’s Brave New World in themes of emptiness? but looking like it should have been shot in black and white, because the mood and clothes, architecture and cars, are all elegantly retro.
When I stumbled onto Jean-Luc Godard’s “Alphaville”, I think this was the first time I saw film noir as Sci-fi AND as the landscape of the future:
Alphaville is a place and time concepts like love, emotion and poetry are individualism and banned, and free thought is abolished — asking questions and searching is OUT. If you do not conform you are executed.
A trailer of that film: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQCic5WTx-o)
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*correction:
The emptiness of life is a strong theme in some of the most memorable Sci-fi films.
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^ Was wondering, does “sci fi film noir” mean something similar as “dystopia” to you?
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No, Jefe. For example, have you seen Tarkovsky’s “Stalker”?
That in no way falls into the tradition of “noir”, but it is dystopian all the way.
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@Abagond
I would love to know your thoughts on Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. That novel has also been adapted for a TV series by Amazon’s streaming service…
Anywho, I am curious as to your thoughts because its an interesting alternative history in which Japan and Germany won WWII. He approaches race in some interesting, yet disappointing ways. It could be a potentially useful way to discuss race in science fiction, particularly the good and bad approaches of Dick.
I was put off by his depiction of slavery (the Nazis restore slavery, commit genocide in Africa) in Japanese-occupied San Francisco, but it’s still a worthwhile read. There’s also a Jewish-American character, obviously Japanese characters, but nobody else, for the most part.
I think Huxley’s Brave New World did a better job at least including all the races in the plot, even though it is also full of issues, too.
The novel also shares Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’s philosophical questions and metaphysics.
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November 2019 is the month in which “Blade Runner” begins.
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