Sunday, October 11, 2009

Sartre and Blade Runner

When we started discussing Sartre I immediately thought of the movie Blade Runner. The plot of the movie centers on the escape of several replicants, or artificial humans. As the movie progresses the humanity of the protagonist, Rick Deckard, becomes more and more questionable. BY the end of the film it becomes very hard to determine if Deckard is or is not a replicant. The objects of the Blade Runner universe are the replicants which though appearing just as human as actual humans they are denied their humanity and freedom, hunted, and killed because the natural humans do not deem them to actually be people. In fact, the way Blade Runner is presented it is impossible to truly determine who is a natural human and who is a replicant, with even Deckard’s own naturalness being called into question by critics. The characters of this film have embraced their facticity while denying their transcendence. They have become so rooted in and defined by objects that they seem to be nothing more than extensions of the objects. Where humans, those possessing both facticity and transcendence, should define objects, the objects of this world define the humans. Blade Runner goes so far as to make objects into humans so that the definition that the objects are giving is reflected upon themselves; humanity is subverted by inhumanity, objects develop more important roles than humans while humans are placed in a position of unclear meaning. With this in mind is it possible that a replicant could posses both facticity and transcendence since they act like humans, fear like humans, and behave like humans?B

2 comments:

  1. First of all I LOVE this movie. Anyway, my first reaction to you question is to say, even though the meanings of objects altered in the movie to where humans' meaning is unclear, since we are meaning making beings, i still think that as much as they may act like humans, they cannot experience in the same way humans can--again, an object is not an object in the same way a human is a human. They may be able to experience facticity and transcendence because they act LIKE humans, but they cannot fully because they are replicates and cannot be in the same way humans are.

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  2. But don't humans also act like humans? Aren't we too just humaning? We don't relieve ourselves in public, we walk upright, and we sleep laying down. If they can have thoughts and make choices, does it matter that they are replicates?

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