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 Section B

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

Section B - Identity in Blade Runner: Its redemption?

Without wanting to appear to be making a last minute about-face, there is, one sense in which I think that Blade Runner begins to engage more creatively, and complexly, with postmodernity and postmodernism. I refer here to its possible interpretation as a portrayal of the ‘crisis’ of postmodern identity - what McRobbie (1994) calls the ‘rupturing of identity’. Again, it needs to be said that the perspective offered is still largely negative and middle class, with little direct consideration for potentially new identity formations. Nevertheless, it is around the issue of identity that I think the film best portrays not only the experience of postmodernity but also its intersection with postmodernism, "as the structure of feeling of late capitalism (McGuigan, 1994, p.221)".

As a result of socio-historical changes and cultural shifts, individual identity appears to lie trapped, and buffeted about, between the Scylla and Charybdis of post-modernity and postmodernism. Kellner (1995) and Harvey (1989a), for example, identify a number of postmodern/ist forces which beleaguer traditional concepts and experiences of identity: time-space compression (hyperreality); the fragmentation of the subject; the supremacy of the image (and simulacra); the death of the (teleological) metanarrative; and the atrophying of community-based or collective identity. So, although identity has always been problematized, says Kellner, "the quest for identity is arguably more intense than ever in the present moment (p.258).".

In this instance, Blade Runner is, I think, better at letting its audience decide what to make of each of the film’s central characters - even though most of them are more or less revealed to us through the eyes of Deckard. Throughout the film, a number of contemporary issues around identity are portrayed in such a way that a reasonably coherent discourse on identity may be pieced together, gleaning from each of its central characters a number of aspects specific to their respective circumstance. In this regard, I offer the following character sketches to indicate how each character might be seen to designate one or more aspects of postmodern/ist living:

JF Sebastian: individual alienation and loneliness; the desire for a collective identity, for community - from the character who is forced literally to ‘make’ his friends; begs the question, is our only option to seek friendship in simulacra - in that which is not real?

Dr Tyrell: like JF Sebastian, representing the loneliness of the individual, but also, the isolation of a class of people; the dangers of playing God; the threat of neo-conservatism as a social response (Lyon, 1994) - from the character who is shown embedded, literally and symbolically, in his antiquarian chamber - both gothic and candle-lit, it represents a mixture of the erroneously interwoven and romanticised desires to return to the past and to go ‘back to basics’.

Rachel: the pain and confusion of the familiar (reality?) being brought into doubt; the forced recognition of the precarious, constructed nature of identity - in her case, identity is as easily constructed as a handful of fraudulent photographs and an implanted memory of the past.

Once upon a time, it was who you were, what you did, what kind of person you were...which constituted your individual identity. (Kellner, 1995, p.259)

Deckard: the jaded, perfunctory existence of the middle-classes; the cynicism inherent in the lazy positioning of oneself between those above and those below; the potential for redemption in the connection with ‘other’.

Roy: the experience of living in a ‘schizophrenic rush of time’ (Harvey, 1989b), of living constantly in the present; living life constantly on the edge of death; to burn perhaps half as bright but to live twice as long, thereby weighing up breadth and depth of experience: the one speaking of movement through space, the other, of movement through time; the desperate need to be recognised by another (Kellner, 1995) - some confirmation as being more substantial than "tears in rain".

In particular, it is Roy’s passion - for both life and Pris - that stands in stark contrast to Deckard’s almost mechanical narration, his blunted affect (we are told that his wife used to call him ‘sushi’ - cold fish), and, certainly initially, his heartlessness towards Rachel. As Byers (1990) notes, "the robots are more human than the human beings (p.44)". Are not, therefore, deliberately being forced to ask ourselves, in this age of uncertainty, what it is that ultimately makes us human? Alternatively, we are being asked to decide which aspects of ourselves we value most; that is, the difference between the human and the ‘robotic’ in Blade Rather is one that instead resides within the human (Byers, 1990). It is the replicants who throw this dilemma into relief, and it is their plight which best portrays one of the principle issues in postmodern/ist identity formation: Roy’s chilling cri de coeur resonates so clearly with the supposedly postmodern search for an identity that is sufficiently consistent and stable over time to recognised by others. Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, in its earliest stages of production, Blade Runner was due to be called The Android (Instrell, 1992). It is ironic (and perhaps a shame) that the film underwent its subsequent shift in focus onto the human character of Deckard and away from Roy.

Notwithstanding this, through Deckard’s relationship with Roy, the film also points momentarily to the earlier notion of collective consciousness and collective political response as potentially redeeming. For Harvey (1989a), the search for collective identity, ‘for secure moorings’, in fact emerges as a natural consequence of the pressures of postmodernity. Sadly, however, Blade Runner’s ultimate failure to engage with this type of pragmatic optimism is merely confirmed in its final scene. Hollywood-happy as it may well be, it speaks of human empathy and human values as expressible only in the individualised sphere of a (heterosexual) couple - escape from the miserable ‘conditions of postmodernity’ is "accessible only to special individuals, not to whole sections of an oppressed society (Instrell, 1992, p.169)".

Please now return to the main essay.