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 Section A

  On the other pages
  A treatise on trans
  Postmodernist Bladerunner?
  Editorial 1 from LAIC
  Editorial 2 from LAIC

Section A - Five postmodern references in Blade Runner: Further detail.

Post-industrialism: Most vividly embodied in the Tyrell Corporation, Blade Runner makes clear references to important changes in the dominant modes of production and the organisation of commerce under what may be called ‘advanced’ corporate capitalism (Davis, 1992). In particular, Harvey (1989c) talks of how ‘flexible accumulation’ establishes the postmodern economic reality of ‘overwhelming corporate power’ in stark contrast to what Blade Runner accurately portrays as scenes of ‘seething, small-scale production’. What is more, the technology which is considered the central driving force behind the information-cum-service orientation of post-industrial society is also clearly pointed to in Blade Runner; the film is saturated with technology, from video-phones, to high-tech photo-enhancers, to hovercraft police vehicles, to huge electronic advertising blimps. Notably, the connotation is that of post-industrial technology as a means of increasing control and surveillance (Lyon, 1994).

Spatial relations: As a result of the unevenly distributed advantages of post-industrial economies, postmodernity is characterised also by an extreme class polarisation; the rich and the poor becoming increasingly socially and economically isolated from each other. Accordingly, say geopoliticians such as Harvey (1989a), this relationship manifests itself in the ‘concrete’ spatial relations of postmodern cities such as Los Angeles. In Blade Runner this is portrayed vividly in the architectural mise-en-scene, most notably with the monolithic ivory tower of the Tyrell building dominating the otherwise impoverished urban landscape.

The Downtown hyperstructure is programed to ensure a seamless continuum of middle-class work, consumption and recreation, with unwonted exposure to Downtown's working-class street environments. (Davis, 1992, p.231 - speaking of present-day Los Angeles)

In the film, this ‘layered’ city may also be taken either as a visual metaphor for the pronounced, hierarchical class division; or as the vertical expression of what, in practice, is an emerging, horizontal fact - what Davis (1992) calls the ‘South Africanization’ of cities. These are the sharp, concrete lines drawn between classes and subclasses of people in cities - between rich and poor, between dominant ethnic groups and dominated ethnic groups, and so on. As Harvey (1989c) says, "distance [becomes] both a barrier to and a defence against human interaction (p263)."

Time compression: Perhaps the most explicitly portrayed ‘condition’ of postmodernity in Blade Runner is the effect of accelerated exchange and consumption on the experience of time. Bringing with it an accentuation of volatility and ephemerality (Harvey, 1989a), postmodern society is forced to adapt to the demands of flexible accumulation which necessitates instant obsolescence and disposability. This is embodied most obviously in the replicants who are forced to live in what Bruno (1990) calls a ‘disconnected temporality’. It is this lack of secure temporal continuity (Jameson, 1985) that is, in fact, represented throughout Blade Runner: from JF Sebastian’s accelerated ageing disease, to the neurotic preoccupation of its characters with (photographic) personal histories. In this way, "the temporary contract in everything becomes the hallmark of postmodern living (Harvey, 1989a, p.291)".

Urban decay: The increased speed of development, production and life-span of commodities necessarily brings with it their rapid, ineluctable decay and death (Bruno, 1990). Herein lies another postmodern concern of Blade Runner: the decrepitude of what Bruno calls ‘ramble city’. The film portrays a future Los Angeles in terms of post-industrial decay rather than the usual sci-fi shiny surfaces of ultramodernity. It presents the dual processes or outcomes of urban deconcentration and immigration - what Bruno (1990) calls ‘geographical displacements and condensations’. As the middle classes vacate vast tracts of inner-city space, these fast become occupied by the impoverished, the mentally ill and the new ‘Third World’ immigrants. The film’s ‘Off-World colonies’ may well be metaphoric extensions of the increasing trend towards the vacation of the city in favour of a commuter-land of home-based work - as one advertising blimp proclaims, "A chance to begin again!".

In this way, the characteristics of the cities in the 'most advanced' urban economies increasingly approximate to those of what were once called 'Third World' cities, at least in the degree of economic, social and spatial polarization, in the extent and complexity of their ethnic, social and racial mixes, in the occupational structures of their de-industrialized, or non-industrialized populations, and in the chaos of the built environment. (King, 1995, p.120)

Pastiche Consumption: This is where the relationship between postmodernist culture and postmodern socio-economics starts to reveal itself as particularly ‘difficult and uneven’ (Connor, 1989). Nonetheless, it is arguably as a result of the intensified, accelerated consumption of post-industrial societies that capital expands into ‘hitherto uncommodified areas’ (Jameson, 1985). With this transformation of everything into commodity (Byers, 1990), producers are compelled to revert to scavenging the past.

In a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum. (Jameson, 1985, p.115)

In Blade Runner, this consumption of pastiche images and styles from the past and present is portrayed most notably in the ‘mish-mash’ architectural designs of the urban landscape - prompting Bruno (1990) also to call it ‘pastiche city’. Similarly, Rachel is pointedly clothed in a style which blends 1940’s ‘utility’ clothing with 1960’s ‘space-age’ fashion. (The same is true of the ‘retro’ bar were Deckard eventually finds Zhora.) Blade Runner also presents an extremely heterogeneous, ‘Creolized’ vision of street-life seemingly serving the dual function of portraying urban ‘decay’ and pastiche. (Importantly, the notion of pastiche is present also in the postmodernist ‘intertextuality’ of Blade Runner.)

Please now return to the main essay.