Rickert, Blade Runner

The film Blade Runner deals with the out casted android in a futuristic dystopian society. The android outcasts are called replicantes. The replicates were engineered to serve as soldiers in the off world colonies. Their life span last 4 years because of this short lifespan, they are unable to have the same emotional feelings as humans. In the film, four replicants escape to Earth, and Harrison Ford is contracted to “retire” them. This destruction is the method of removal and treatment of these outsiders (replicants). The society urgency to remove these outsiders stems from different factors. There is an apparent fear of the replicants, mainly because they are different. The humans fear their intelligence, for the replicants intelligence may supersede the humans own intelligence. The replicant Rachel however, seems to have developed emotions that other replicants have not been able to. In the article, Bladerunner and carpunk versions of Humanity, “Deckard thinks to himself that "Replicants weren't supposed to have feelings, but neither were bladerunners." Yet it is clear that both do and develop powerful emotions through contact with others. And "in science fiction the ultimate sign of the human" is the expression of "emotions and feelings" (Bruno 61). This explores the ideal of the replicants actually being humans because the presence of emotions, although they did not originate in the same manner as real humans. This debate of replicants as actually humans echoes current discussion of the morality of abortion and stem cell research. The human fear of “outsiders” is followed by the immediate destruction and removal of these “outsiders”. The movie blade runner mirrors the innate human fear of the creation of technology that could possibly one day be more intelligent and stronger than humans.