Artificiality, Blade Runners, and Capitalism
Examining the Postmodern in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner
By Larisa Coffey-Wong
“It is currently fashionable to state that Ridley Scott gouged the core
from Philip K. Dick’s book and threw away the rest.
But this simply isn’t true.” (Sammon 19)
Despite the numerous, well-documented differences that exist between Ridley Scott’s loose filmic adaption of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, as first and foremost an adaptation, Blade Runner necessarily has some points of similarity with its source text. In disagreeing with the above statement, Paul Sammon insists that “the philosophical, ecological and social concerns” of the novel have been “faithfully transplanted” into the film, particularly noting the preservation of themes such as paranoia, alienation, and ecological ruin at the hands of mankind (20). Specifically, this paper will focus on two elements that remain defining features of both texts: the reliance on Capitalist modes and structures in the presentation of a dystopian world, and the concern surrounding the real/artificial dichotomy, both of which are key elements of Jay Clayton’s postmodernism (55). In spite of these key points of similarity between the texts, a closer analysis reveals that Scott’s film and Dick’s novel have, crucially, different central concerns. Blade Runner’s foregrounding of the uncertainty regarding Rick Deckard’s status as human constructs this as the film’s central concern, while Androids concentrates on the protagonist’s struggles regarding the morality of both creation and destruction of artificial life. It is ultimately these divergent central concerns that account for many of the disparities between Dick’s novel and Scott’s film, and this is demonstrated in the following examination of the points of variation between Androids and Blade Runner, focusing particularly on setting, the characterisation of the protagonist, and the representation of women. However it is not just the texts’ different central concerns that reveal themselves where novel and film deviate; the postmodern also emerges at the points of divergence between Blade Runner and Androids. Thus an examination of the differences between Dick’s novel and Scott’s film will demonstrate that in spite of their varying central concerns, both texts can be firmly situated within the category of postmodernism.
Dick’s novel portrays a dystopian, post-apocalyptic view of future Earth, in which the majority of the human population have migrated to a better life on the off-world colonies. Those who remain behind are the unfortunate ones; either too poor or too obtuse to emigrate, they inhabit a dust-clogged, deteriorating world. As a small-time bureaucrat within the Police Department, protagonist Rick Deckard fits into the former category, yearning for enough wealth to purchase a genuine animal (all but extinct in this future world) to secure both his and his wife’s happiness. After a senior member of the Police Department is incapacitated by an escaped android from the off-world colonies, Deckard is called upon to finish the task of discovering and ‘retiring’ the rest of these fugitive, superior robots known as Nexus-6 types. The remainder of the narrative sees the protagonist’s initial indifference to his targets become more and more compromised, especially after his meeting, and subsequent relationship with, a corporation Nexus-6 android named Rachel. Scott’s adaptation follows the same basic plot as Dick’s novel, but has several noteworthy differences, which will be outlined and examined in what follows. Although it may have been these divergences from the novel that resulted in the film’s initial flop at the box office due to “befuddled” audience members, there is no doubt that Blade Runner has gained momentum and accreditation over time to become a “science fiction cult film turned classic” (Kaplan). However, the film’s standalone success does not render it detachable from its source text, and thus this essay will analyse Dick’s novel and Scott’s film in conjunction with one another.
Setting Up the Postmodern
While the settings for both Blade Runner and Androids are quite different, both texts succeed in producing a postmodern aesthetic. From the very opening sequence of Scott’s film, Blade Runner establishes itself as a split from Dick’s novel with regards to setting. Text across the screen informs the viewer that it is the year 2019 in Los Angeles, but the “de-familiarised urban landscape” does not reflect the 1992 San Francisco setting that is described in Androids (Lussier & Gowan 165). Instead of the pervasive dust, there is the omnipresent rain, and where Dick’s universe is a mostly uninhabited one that falls, day by day, “into greater entropic ruin,” Scott’s is a “portrait of ecological disaster and urban over-crowding, of a visual and aural landscape saturated with advertising, of a polyglot population immersed in a Babel of competing cultures” (Dick 15; Clayton 54). Mirroring the work of other critical commentators, Kevin McNamara notes that Scott’s visually striking juxtaposition of the primitive and the technologically advanced, as well as the miscellany of cultures and images, succeeds in embodying Fredric Jameson’s postmodern notion of the pastiche, in which the postmodern text “cannibalizes all the […] styles of the past and combines them in overstimulating ensembles (66).
Scott’s use of this visual pastiche has two effects: firstly, it results in the creation of “a world in which the body cannot locate itself in space, or consciousness in history” — another characteristic typical of Jameson’s postmodernism, which he calls the ‘postmodern hyperspace’ (McNamara 423). While Blade Runner is much more effective at conveying this sense of an overwhelming, unidentifiable landscape than Androids is, it must be noted that Scott had the benefit of using a multitrack medium which included moving visual images and sound rather than Dick’s reliance on the written word as a single method of expression (Stam 56). Thus, while the hyperspace is discernible in Dick’s novel, as evident in the presence of the permeating, suffocating dust that renders the world of the book largely unmappable, it is Scott’s film that extends and foregrounds these elements. Secondly, the use of the iconographic pastiche denotes an “increasing convergence of cultural and the economic,” which Aris Mousoutzanis suggests is “symptomatic” of the cultural logic of late capitalism (161). Thus, while the setting of Scott’s film and Dick’s novel is a point of variation between the texts, the divergent landscapes both include notable features of postmodernism.
Capitalism and Career
As indicated earlier, the use and representation of Capitalist modes, a key element of postmodernism, is one of the strongest points of similarity between Blade Runner and Androids. Of particular note is the emphasis placed on production and commodification, especially in the case of the artificial humans. Termed “androids” or “andys” in Dick’s novel, and “replicants” or “skin jobs” in Scott’s adaptation, these artificial beings are created largely for slave labour on the off-world colonies and are viewed as commodities to be exploited for labour until their pre-programmed lifespans expire. In fact, the high demand for these humanoid robots constructs them as a key catalyst for technological research and, consequently, economic developments in both the book and film (McNamara 422). However the constant demand for development and refinement in the sphere of production in an attempt to meet the “growing wants of the new market” introduces complications for humankind (Marx 35) — or, more specifically, for the protagonist, Rick Deckard.
In both Dick’s novel and Scott’s film, Deckard has made his career as a dispatcher of escaped artificial humans. In both instances, like the rest of the society, Deckard initially views his targets as objects: “A humanoid robot is like any other machine; it can fluctuate between being a benefit and a hazard very rapidly” (32). This boundary between a benefit and hazard is complicated when the production of androids reaches a level such that they are almost indistinguishable from humans. This new model of superior artificial beings, known as Nexus-6 in both novel and film, is at least of the same standard as a human in terms of intelligence and physically superior in many ways, such that Deckard wonders if “the servant had in some cases become more adroit than its master” (23) — highlighting the anxiety that exists surrounding the real/artificial dichotomy.
The narrative of both novel and film begin after a senior member of the police force in charge of the eradication of androids is incapacitated following an attempt to identify and “retire” a group of escaped Nexus-6 robots. It is here that another point of divergence occurs between the texts; as a ‘Bounty Hunter’ in Androids, Deckard is presented as a “petty bureaucrat” who eagerly takes on the job in the hope of increasing his income levels, but as a ‘Blade Runner’ in Scott’s adaptation, the protagonist is a “brooding, burned-out detective” who is coerced into taking on the assignment by an authority figure within the police force (Sammon 20). This alteration of the protagonist’s character and career situation in Scott’s film is significant because it changes Deckard’s motivation for undertaking the retirement of six androids.
Artificial Anxieties
The nature of the protagonist’s job necessarily situates him within the “unstable boundary between humans and androids”, which threatens to compromise not only his physical safety but also his status as human (Vint 125) — so why does he do it? In the case of Dick’s novel, Deckard’s primary motivation can be understood through the modes of Capitalism — put simply, he desires wealth. From the very beginning of the novel, it is clear that Deckard is unsatisfied. Though he is fortunate enough to have a large, comfortable apartment, a pet (though artificial), and a wife, the domestic argument that opens the novel suggests underlying tensions. It quickly becomes evident that the primary source of this discontentment is Deckard’s inability to acquire a real animal, which are all but extinct on this future Earth. As a result, a real living creature is not only absurdly costly, but commodified to represent the ultimate status symbol (Vint 116). This desire for an authentic animal is so strong that the protagonist develops an “actual hatred” for his own electric sheep, resenting the reminder that it brings of his inability to realise his dream (33). However, in his discontented musings, Deckard draws a parallel between his electric creature and the humanoid robots: “Like the androids, [the sheep] had no ability to appreciate the existence of another” (34). It is this comparison between the two artificial creatures that begins, for Deckard, the spiral of “diminishing certainty with which the demarcation lines between animal, android and human can be agreed upon” — a realisation that leads him to consider the moral implications of his extermination of the androids, an act which he ultimately rejects (McCarron 264).
While it is Deckard’s desire for an authentic animal that drives much of the narrative plot and feeds the central concern in Androids, the motivations of Blade Runner’s Deckard are not so clear. The Blade Runner depicted in Scott’s film is a retired member of the police department, who, in the brief opening moments of the film, seems to be living a rather mundane, purposeless life. However this soon changes when he is coerced into visiting the police headquarters, where a superior, his former boss, explains, “You wouldn’t have come if I just asked you to”. In the conversation that ensues, the superior, Bryant, tries to convince Deckard to take on these four “skin jobs”, to which Deckard refuses several times, insisting, “I don’t work here anymore”. However, eventually the old Blade Runner begrudgingly gives in: “No choice, huh?” he asks, to which Bryant responds, “No choice pal”. It is unclear whether this acceptance is a favour for an old friend, simply something to break the monotony, or, as McNamara suggests, a necessary effort to maintain the “social privilege” that comes with being a retired cop (431).
In any case, while Deckard’s own motivations for agreeing to retire these advanced replicants are not as clear as those of Dick’s protagonist, his divergent professional and personal situation in the film suggest that an alternative central concern may be at stake. As suggested above, Scott’s film is primarily concerned with the identity of its protagonist — specifically, whether he falls into the category of human or replicant. It is the representation of the Blade Runner as a character with an indistinct past, and as someone who is not particularly anchored anywhere — emphasised both by his preoccupation with photos, and his frequent placement amongst the polyglot, lower-class masses throughout the film — which indicates that these small variations in character portrayal from the novel can be seen to enhance the uncertainty and anxiety surrounding Deckard’s human status.
The Importance of Women
The postmodern anxiety surrounding the real/artificial dichotomy is perhaps most pronounced in the portrayal of women in both novel and film, who are also key actors in constructing the central concern of each text. In many cases in both the print and cinematic versions it is women who emerge at this point of the “unstable boundary” between humans and androids, though the manner in which the two texts address the representation of women is quite divergent (Vint 125). The dystopian landscape of Scott’s Blade Runner features very few female characters, and it is prudent to note that all of these representations of women are highly sexualised and artificial. Existing almost exclusively as the female presence in the film, the three female replicants, Rachel, Pris and Zhora, are all depicted as seductive, desirable beings that pose a threat to Deckard in some form or another — key characteristics of the cinematic ‘femme fatale’ (Bade 10). The film does not attempt to subdue this characterisation, but makes it overt: “Talk about beauty and the beast”, Bryant says of Zhora, “She’s both”. The lithe movement and partial nakedness exhibited by both escaped female replicants furthers their sexualisation, but it is Pris’ creation as a “pleasure model” that firmly establishes the female androids, and, by extension, the women of the film, as “models produced by economic domination and male fantasy” (McNamara 439).
Unlike the physical threat that Pris and Zhora pose to Deckard, realised through the close range violent encounters between protagonist and both replicants, Rachel poses a different, more subtle kind of danger: that of destabilization. It is only through his interactions and subsequent relationship with Rachel that Deckard is able to develop a level of empathy for the artificial humans, not simply viewing them as “jobs” to “retire”. The film climaxes these anxieties surrounding women and artificiality in its final scene, when Deckard, having completed his assignment, retrieves Rachel from his apartment whereupon they enter the elevator. As the doors close on the protagonist and the replicant standing beside him, the viewer cannot help but wonder what the implications of Deckard’s proximity to this “unstable boundary” of authenticity and artificiality are — thus epitomising the central concern of the film.
In contrast to the film, Androids features a greater number of women, both android and human alike. The most significant of these characters is Deckard’s wife, Iran, who plays a similar role to that of a moral compass for her husband. In the argument that opens the novel, Iran very quickly expresses her distaste at Deckard’s job, calling him “a murderer hired by the cops”, and bemoaning “those poor andys” (1). Though Deckard is initially deaf to her sympathies, after his first meeting with Rachel, his encounter with“predatory” bounty hunter Phil Resch, and then his retirement of three androids, Deckard admits his growing moral uncertainties to his wife: “I’ve begun to empathise with androids” (137). It is in this mood of doubt that he buys a genuine goat with his bounty money — a deed that, though making Iran ecstatic, leads her to pressure him to continue doing his job: “We need [the bounty money] or they’ll repossess the goat!” (138). Iran’s prioritising of a commodity over her husband’s moral conflict in this instance further emphasises the prodigious value that is placed on genuine animals in this Capitalist society. It is perhaps this temporary lack of concern for her husband that spurs Deckard to commit the crime of copulating with Rachel — a crime that exists in Scott’s film only as an act against the rule of law, rather than a moral sin; Iran, or any other wife figure for that matter, is absent from the film.
However, just as Rachel’s presence in the final moments of Scott’s film heightens and illuminates the central concern of Blade Runner, so too does Iran’s presence at the conclusion of Androids emphasise the novel’s key concern. When Deckard finally returns home after completing his “marathon assignment”, weary and disheartened, his wife is the one who provides him with some measure of comfort: “”Do you think I did wrong?” he asked. “What I did today?” ‘No’”, she replies (192). Iran’s reassurance establishes her as a site of support for her husband, but also indicates her status as the most important female character, as it is she who is there both at the beginning and end of the narrative. Primarily, though, the novel’s conclusion serves to foreground the issues of morality that Deckard struggles with, thus clearly reflecting the central concern of the novel.
A Postmodern Conclusion
The key difference between Dick’s Androids and Scott’s Blade Runner is the divergent central concerns of both texts; while the novel focuses on the protagonist’s moral struggles concerning artificial life, the film concentrates on Deckard’s status as human. As demonstrated in the above analysis, these two differences can be seen to generate many of the smaller points of variation between the two texts, particularly in the case of the characterisation of Deckard, the way in which women are represented, and the closing moments of the narratives. Although a comparison of the two divergent settings of the texts at the beginning of this paper reveals that not all differences directly inform the central concerns of the text, they do, however, succeed in establishing both texts as postmodernist. Indeed, by adopting Clayton’s approach, all major points of variation between the text can be seen to contribute to this establishment of postmodernism: “Artificial life, commodification, and gender… are places […] where the transfer from modernity to postmodernity is accomplished” (55). Thus, as Sammon contends, more than just the “core” of Dick’s novel is maintained in Scott’s filmic adaptation. The heavy reliance on Capitalist modes in the creation of the dystopian future, and the anxiety surrounding the real/artificial dichotomy are cornerstone elements of both texts – ultimately enabling the realisation of the postmodern in both novel and film.
Cover photo: Juergen Huettel