Himmelberg, Blade Runner Blog

Blade Runner is a very interesting sci-fi movie that dives into one possible future for planet earth and us. It is so weird to see how someone percieves what the future will be like and how we will percieve human life. In this movie they have two different types of beings, Humans and Replicants. Replicants are like humans except that they are only replications of humans or clones of humans, they have a set lifespan and are supposed to not have or show any emotions. They deal with the android by using it for their own purposes (to populate the new frontier, do the dirty work much like slaves) and then killing them (either physicially because they have gone arye or by giving them a set very short lifespan of 4 years). They seem to disregard that replicants are ,in almost every respect, the same or better than humans and therefore should be treated with similar standards. It goes back to the idea of slavery , why does one person or one group of people have the right to rule over others and make them do anything. The only real differenctiation is that replicants are "made" by humans so some may think that if you create something then you have some authority over them(when you have children you are responsible for them and have authority to tell them what to do), but on the other hand you do not have authority over them forever, if you treat them like a child, then you have to nuture the replicants and then let them live just like us, side by side with us. In Blade Runner, they simply believe that the replicants are lower and inferior to them, but the replicants don't like this and they want to control their own lives, much like any human does.

In the article "Blade Runner and Cyberpunk Visions of Humanity" by W.A. Senior, he talks about how the ideas of Humanity are blurred. In the article he says that the movie simply magnifies the extremes of humanity, from the dirty street rats found on earth in the dilapidated Los Angelos to the superhuman replicants, which are what humans strive to and have always wanted to be. It is funny that on both sides of the spectrum the middle "normal" people are controlling both sides both the lowly ones and the superhuman ones. It seems to say that it doesn't matter what you have we as humans will alwasy try to control others and rule over others. Especially the ones who are different from us.