Bryan Howley English 1200

English 1200

Wilson-Okamura
The Motives Behind the Making of Blade Runner

Blade Runner, filmed in 1982, depicts the future as a very dark and gloomy place. The film takes place in the year 2019, in the city of Los Angles. The director, Ridley Scott, creates a city that has passed its technological peak, and is filled with a combination of cultures from the old world, new world and “off world.” Almost every scene of this movie takes place in the dark or rain, as if the sun does not exist. The air is always smoggy and the rain never stops pouring. People walk the streets of Los Angeles hopeless. Many scholars have taken part in the discussions of comparing Blade Runner to the basis for the film, Phillip Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. However, this discussion still does not answer the question of Why? Why would someone have such a pessimistic view of what the world is becoming? What could possibly dictate these views shown in the film? I will explore the political ideologies, social views, personal experiences and other possible motives that would lead Ridley Scott and Phillip K. Dick in to creating a bleak and depressing future.

The novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was written at the start of the Vietnam War, a time when many Americans were unsure of our commitment to this fight. This novel served as the main basis for creating the film Blade Runner during the beginning stages of production. By the end of the scriptwriting processes, only some similarities from the novel were evident in the movie. Both the book and film shared a futuristic setting of a postmodern world; it also shared similar themes such as replication and what it was like to be human. The novel takes place in a postwar era, where a nuclear holocaust had left millions dead. With such a mass extinction of people and animals of all kinds, corporations have come up with a way to genetically replicate anything and everything. These artificial humans become ban from earth because of the possible havoc they could wreak (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). While reading this book, Ridley Scott met with Phillip Dick and told him, “I actually couldn't get into it… You know you're so dense, mate, by page 32, there's about 17 storylines”(Greenwald). Scott said that he had a problem trying to turn the novel in to a three-act script that needed to be filmed, but still used some underlying themes about morality. Phillip Dick has done many interviews that document his deep personality that Scott pointed out.

Many of theses interviews, Dick talks about his experiences with the government and politics, as well as he overall view of society which he incorporates in to all his works. In one interview, he talks about his encounters with the authorities, which were caused from earlier publications that opposed people in powerful positions. An example of these challenging publications was, The Penultimate Truth, which is about a phony war between the United States and Russia, where citizens were kept under ground while the country’s leaders lived a lavish lifestyle. He got “many friendly visits from Mr. Smith and Mr. Scruggs of the FBI” (Vitale). The agents were members of the “Red Squad,” a group of different types of authorities put together to gather intelligence about communist groups. It is suggested that a robbery where many of Dick’s personal papers were taken and destroyed is connected with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but little evidence is available to prove this (Vitale). Dick also talks about his major influences while writing, which are “Philosophy and philosophical inquiry… That's the premise I start from in my work, that so-called ‘reality’ is an mass delusion that we've all been required to believe for reasons totally obscure” (Vitale). These feelings are shown in almost all of his writings, depicting reality, and in this case a very grim future. Many of the ideals Dick conveys can be linked to his drug use during the 1950’s and 1960’s, but he denies that accusation in the interview so his work does not loose validity.

In the last interview done with Phillip Dick, before his death he reflects on the private partial screening of Blade Runner and on society’s collapse. "All I can say is that the world in Blade Runner is where I really live“ (Bulluck 4). He believes that it is a world that many people live in, but do not realize it, yet. He says it is a freighting reality that the way people live their lives is destroying the life chain. The smog-covered air is the result of all the gasoline-powered cars. “One day I woke up and realized that there are 47,000 barrels of nuclear waste that have been dumped in the Atlantic and about half of that in the Pacific” (Bullock 4). He also talks about the hypothetical tool, the Voight-Kampff machine, used to test empathy. It shows that people have what is called emotional intelligence and have genuine concern for other living things (Bulluck 4). It is a world that Dick said he experienced everyday to a lesser degree, but if things continue the way they are going, the world will end up how Ridley Scott depicted it in the film.

Leading up and through the production of the film Blade Runner, the United States was in political turmoil to say the least. There was the Vietnam War, the Watergate Scandal, the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, the Arab oil embargo, the leak at Three Mile Island, the Kent State shootings, the worst recession in forty years, the terrorist at the Olympic Games in Munich, the legalization of abortions, and the Cold War escalading, all these things causing controversy among the American people in the mist of bicentennial celebration (Gillis). During the final stages of production after President Regan was elected, and began to make a push for “Reaganomics,” which would give big corporations even more freedom (Reaganomics). This was something that Scott opposed because of the possibility of them becoming more powerful then the government itself. Being British, Ridley Scott was able to have an outsider’s perspective of what was happening to the United State, as well as our diplomatic relations with countries like Russia, Vietnam, and some Arab Nations. This allowed him critique the American society and the economics of capitalism. Scott “postulates that large conglomerates will have moved into space for both military and industrial purposes and that society will essentially be under totalitarian control by corporations rather than governments” (Kerman 134). He saw the actions of the United States as imperialistic and greedy, and depicts this to an extreme in the film, but feels that if it continues it will become a reality. In the movie, he creates an “off-world” territory and gives the opportunity for people colonize it, but only to those who are able to pass a physical test. (Kerman 134). This also hints at the expanding gap between the low and high class.

Blade Runner also serves a Marxist Critique. Scott shows his political opinion that capitalism, unlike Marxism or it economical equivalent is unstable and only creates prosperity for a few (Ryan). Scott symbolizes the economical status gap in several different during the film. For example, the gap is dramatized spatially, the higher you live in the sky, the wealthier, the closer you are to the ground, the lower you are on the economic ladder (Kerman 111). Eldon Tyrell, the head of the Tyrell Corp. live above the clouds and is one of the only ones who can see the sun. This is also true for Deckard; he “lives some ninety-two stories above the city.” As part of the police, he symbolizes authority and spends most of his time in his Spinner, looking down on the city. Scott also uses juxtaposition by putting both old and new goods whether it is fashion, technology or architecture (Begley). This shows that only some of the population can afford to advance.

A major part of interpreting and illustrating the future came from Ridley Scott’s personal experiences. In an interview with Wired Magazine, Scott takes an extremely in-depth look at his personal motives while creating the film. “The idea of doing a film that is not necessarily futuristic in the sense of the, futuristic science fiction, but actually more as a look into the future, and the future possibility, which can be more interesting” (Greenwald). Scott went into the production of this film with the idea that the future was like a blank slate and he was the artist (Lev). Wanting to create such a drastic interpretation of the future, Scott chose to make a film-noir genre because everyone is comfortable with cop movies, so he took something everyone liked and put it together with something that no one was ready for. He took a lot of what he had seen all over the world and tried to incorporate that in the film. In the interview he says that the basis for Los Angeles was a combination of Hong Kong and New York City. He remembers seeing; tons of trash and junk in the harbors and both cities were on overload with people (Greenwald). During this interview, he reflects on a story from when he was back in school and how he used that experience in the movie,

I used to go to art school in West Hartlepool College up in the north

of England, which is almost right alongside the Durham steel mills

and Imperial Chemical Industries, and the air would smell like toast.

Toast is quite nice, but when you realize it's steel, and it's probably

particles, it's not very good. (Greenwald).

It was always cloudy because of the smog from the industrial plans. Scott explains that the reason for all the rain was to hide cables that helped the hovering cars stay in the air.

After exploring interviews with Ridley Scott and Phillip Dick, comparing the film and novel, and exploring the symbolism in the movie, it became evident that their were several motives in creating such a dark unpromising future in the movie Blade Runner. Their political views and life experiences were both driving factors for their vision of the future. Scott and Dick’s outside view gave them the ability to see society in a different light. Also, being considered as part of the noir genre, noir meaning black, the movie lent it self to being a dark place. After this film, Scott was not recognized as an innovator until later, but is now consider being a mental architect and visionary. He created a set that is unduplicated and unrivaled. Not only did this change the film industry forever, it has influenced ideas and feelings towards globalization, ethics and architecture.