Blade Runner and Postmodernism

In the first paragraph of this essay, the essay talks about how Ridley Scott's Bladerunner which was produced in 1982, talks about the postmodernist aesthetic which is included within the narrative, set design, dialogue, special effects and literary forces which have been explored by other theorists. "The cultural logic of capitalism" is a phrase which is used to portray postmodernism in a specific economic and industrialized period which has actually created/determined the character. A dialectical space is used by Jameson to discuss the postmodernist theory, as he uses Ernest Mandels Marxist theories associated with capitalist expansion, such as in 1840, we used steam power. In this paragraph it states how, this stage is ultimately congruent with the beginnings of realist thought as explored through mechanical reproduction of the photograph. The second stage, marked by the emergence of electric power, and the condensation of disparate business ventures into conglomerates, starts in the 1890’s. However here lies the first flowering of modernist philosophy. Whereas the third stage is the 1950's, is of how we are still living in a postindustrial consumerist society developed in a shadow of the atomic age. Jameson then states how we have the widest cultural examples in graphic arts, literature and cinema etc.

In the second paragraph, Jameson tries to answer the question of how we need to define a new cultural moment which actively splinters its forebears and resists continuity in the classical sense. Jameson attempt to answer the question by explicating clear constituent tropes in the typical postmodernist work. Jameson talks about the depthlessness onto original cultural elements which have been projected or duplicated. He then goes on to state how obvious this is in the work of Andy Warhol. Secondly their is the de-emphasis of linearity which is also embodied by patische and the schizophrenic state of mind and how our daily existence has been constructed through a puzzle. Whereas thirdly, Jameson points out in the essay how humans mind isn't able to grasp the growing awareness of the world. For Jameson this tripartite formulation is about the epitome of postmodernism. He also explains how he seens film scholars have taken up the challenge of applying these ideas to the media format or medium, as they have found an iconic example of this within Bladerunner. He also talks about how he will also analyse the theoretical work of Giuliana Bruno, Vivian Sobchack and Scott Bukatman. All these film scholars, concentrate on the different aspects which is associated with Jameson's postmodernity thesis, using the essay for his own intellectual ends.  While they manage to bring out subtle distinctions of his theory on application to the film, Jameson’s unaltered creations are remarkably durable.

So what is Blade Runner about?

Blade Runner is a science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott set in the dystopian city of Los Angeles in 2019 and is based on the book of Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep by Philip k. Dick, whereas pollution and nuclear waste fallout has pushed the population to off world. People which live on earth, are considered to be weak and too poor to afford transport, or are considered to be genetically inferior as they are forced to live their because of their fear of contaminating colonists. In order to facilitate exploration and Terra forming initiatives where humans are able to grow synthetic humans to compensate for their lack of work. The synthetic humans are also useful in comforting soldiers and to citizens and are used to provide protection the interest of their human masters. The replicants have also been created by the humans with a four year span of life, in which Roy Batty finds his creator, Sebastian and attempts to find the secret to a longer life span through various means. For replicants, this is a fact in which the replicants rebel against their makers. For this they are hunted down by the Harrison Fords Blade Runner character and are made to be retired to spare humanity for humanity's outcome of playing God for their indulgence in the advancement of their technology and the destruction of their world.

In the next parargraph, it states how Scott Bukatman is interested in Blade Runner and its fractal geography as we have a clear fascination with Jameson's notion of spatial deflation. It also points out that their are differences between the high modernist and the elements which are associated with postmodernism. As he points out, how he see's the first and most evident is the emergence of a new kind of flatness etc. In this paragraph he points out that during the modern phrase their were new types of surfaces in almost a fetishitic mode, which are conveyed through commodities and a fabricated desire. Their is also the affect/element of emotional attachment in Bade Runner  of a subject which is a suggested warning of effect, this is displayed between the characters of Rick Deckard and Rachel.He also states how we come to watch the film, we come apart of it and engaged in it that we actually alienated from our surroundings. It is then argued that postmodernism is actually fractuaring our relationship with the image which we find so pivotal in our lives that we aren't able to recognise the composed fragments in synchronicity which are attributed to our world. In this sentence the author goes on to say how we as a species have lost our sense of purpose and life within the world as we aren't able to contribute to elements such as we have lost the diachronic impulse which fosters education and life experience, it also points out how are modern lives are so dependent on technological advancement such as the internet and televisual landscape have come to define what we are as a species. Scott Bkatman also states how he has located a hidden profanity in the media saluted screen which associated with that of Deckards Esper machine and in the eye itself.

Bukatman goes on to decribe how he see's the fractal as a phenomen which subdivided parts of a geometric shape are identical to the whole, implying an endless depth of form and structure. Bukatman also states how the new monument is no longer the substantial spatiality of the building but the depthlessness surface of the screen. Bukatman also states how the screens conveyed in  the movie are a reflection of the mass culture of the media an example of this is is the screeen portraying a Japanese women popping pills enticements to enjoy Coca Cola, or Stalinst entreateies to begin the process of colonization and humanity reverting to discovery through exploration in the off world colonies. Bukatman then states how these projected light shows have replaced the significance, cultural marker and meanings associated with buildings. Bukatman also goes on to explain how advertisements have come to mimic the psychological characteristics which are usually associated with humans. He also see's them as having more function inits society as it sustains its mores and rythms.

Deckard uses the Esper macchine to find out where the other fugitive replicants are, through analysing a photo found in Leon's apartment. Like an entrance to our own memeories, the machine scans images, focuses on significant details and comes to important conclusions. Bukatman see's the machine as a link to determining the existenial to the replicants. In a way those the machine determines whose human and who is synthetic. The machine is also confirming to it being dialetical which is opposite of the Voight-Kampff machine, which is seen as taking humanity through the emotion of empathy, taking away the humanity from the replicants and reasserting their superficiality. The fear is obvious, on Byrants face as Deckard ponders whether the machine will work on the Nexus 6. He then goes on to state, if the humans keep on playing God through the creation artificial intelligence when will actually come to an end, and how both these mechanical contraptions work through the exengencies of the eye.
The close up of the eye reflect Hades like Los Angeles, which we are about to enter. As stated briefly before, the eye is also a vital part of the Voight-Kampff testing procedure which reads unknown gradations in ocular activity (jargonized by Tyrell as “capillary dilation of the blush response, fluctuation of the pupil, involuntary dilation of the iris”). It is Batty's declaration “If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes” to Chew at EyeWorks and his eloquent final speech detailing those visions that, I argue, ensure his humanity. Bukatman describes the eye as a way for humanity to scrutinise its world from the Tyrell building to serial number on the artificial snake skin, seen through the microscope. He labels various elements of this space, as cinematic an impression associated with that of allegiances to Jean Epstein’s photogenie. The dimensional shifts in the film compel the audience to indulge themselves into the image. We are almost brought back to positivist rationale for photography in the nineteenth century, which claims how humanity would be able to visualize or see the world in a variety of different ways.

Bukatman doesn't go in detail about the representational of the replicants themselves. Rachel is seen by Bukatman to symbolize the ultimate stage of replicant evolution/advancement. Although she is made in man kinds image, she is incerted by her maker/s with human characteristics such as her feelings and her memories and therefore isn't able to recognise herself as a replicant but as a human. But in this story she isn't projected on to the audience in her consumerist society as a human being but as a product.  “More human than human is our motto.” This slogan by Tyrell is used by the author and director to connote how the audience is being lead into some kind of maze/puzzle, which makes the audience question Rachel's human existence. By the replicants not being able to take control of their own lives, they are to a degree being punished by humanity for their creation and existence and by humanity's guilt, which is conveyed through their enslavement and life span. They are therefore depicted as manifestations of humanity's repressed guilt coming back to humanity.

However Bukatman ignores the neon lights etc which sustain Jameson's original observations. The constant repetition of the neon dragon’s flicking tongue offers no escape from the suffocating diegesis.There's also an interplay between the horizontal flatness of the Tyrell building or the street scenes and vertical depth of the world with no bottom or top. In this film it also shown how new architectural buildings have been built on those of the old. The characters’ clothing, mode of address, and mannerisms also seem to be bred from film noir conventions of the past, with a thin veneer of futurity applied to situate them in this new world.
In Guiliana's essay of Ramble city:Postmodernism and Bladerunner, she employs Jameson's exploitation of pastiche and schrizophrenia to sustain her arguments. Jameson also discusses the postmodernist reliance on pastiche to create new artistic forms to create new artistic forms out of an amalgamation of previous historical events, as their is a copy of the original which results in a simulacrum. This ia postmodernist entity, which can no longer be distinguished from the original as the original doesn't exist. The disconnected temporarily of the replicants and pastiche city are all effects of a postmodern city. Pastiche is an aesthetic quotation, incorporates dead architectural styles (Egyptian and Roman), attempts a rellocation of the past of memory and history and eneters the life's of the replicants. Which is obvious as Rachels memories are those belonging to other human beings. As for the criminal replicants, they know what they are, as photographs are used to represent some time in the past when they existed before the present. These images allow them to retain a semblance of personality and indiuviuality, shich are considered human characteristics.
The replicants are also trying to avois schizophrenia. Jameson defines their psychosis through Lacan as a breakdown in the signifying chain, which is interlocking syntagmatic series of signifiers consistuting a utterance or meaning. The linguistic order of the signifiers allows a human to describe their temporality. Replicants have a limited lifespan as this leads to their own destruction as they aren't created naturally. Which is why they aren't able to avoid schizophrenia as they only have access to life as a series of presents. Batty is denied a future because of his meetings with Chew, J.F. Sebastian and Tyrell because he refuses to submit to language and is only able to communicate his needs through violence and is contrasted to a neglected child. Bruno emphatically concludes, “The schizophrenic temporarily of the replicants is a resistance to enter the social order, to function according to its modes. As outsiders to the order of language, replicants have to be eliminated” (Bruno, 70).

Bruno extends the Lacanian analysis by putting the replicants in a world that is imagined. Moreover, their desire, characteristic of the Imaginary, is to be human but this is impossible. Ensuing is a profound sense of loss that causes a mental rupture from which the replicants can’t recover. The symbolic order is out of their grasp because to have language they need history. Therefore the laws of man, have no place upon the attainment of the language,meaning they have no purpose/meaning within the world. Even those the replicants have been given adult bodies their emotional capacity is infantile. Bruno reveals a phenomenological link between mother, history, and photography in the narrative.All these events are events of the past such as childhood etc. Leon and Rachel who fail the Voight-Kampff test succumb to their synthetic personality when confronted with the apparation of mother-Rachel by way of a living photograph and by Leon answering through a question about his history. In a sense when Lacanian'sanalysis is used, the replicants represent morality, nurture and home but the replicants are excluded from these realms.

Bruno those doesn't discuss nostalgia for a motivation of pastiche. The design of the replicants references to a time when humans weren't hobbled by the effluence and conflicts of the industrial age. Technology in 2019 is seen as advancing but the humans have become more frail as they over rely on the replicants to do the majority of their tasks. There's a nostalgia inherent in the film noir aesthetic of the film. Deckard is seen as a reference or even a modern equivalent to that of Humphrey Bogarts rumpled dectives and Rachel is portrayed in the femme fetale role that has never mislead a dective on celluloid. Jameson's intertexuality bestows the characters with more emotional depth to the point where we align ourselves with Deckard's actions or motives. The confident egotists of the roles in Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark are a contrast to Deckards brooding anxiety.
Bruno also references the cityscape in relation to pastiche but it should also be relevant to schizophrenia as a clearly established language system. We are told that the vernacular is spoken by other inhabitants of the city. However, as an imaginary language created by Edward James Olmos just for the film, we have no way of deciphering it. Cityspeak functions as a link between  the motives of the police department and those of Gaff as related to Deckard. Consequently, we enter into a schizophrenic relationship with these authority figures and have no sense of their history as it relates to this unfamiliar world. Although we don't know why the replicants need to be retired and why they have chosen Deckard to do this but Gaff's origami figures remain enigmas(puzzles) as we have no language to descipher them. The inability to comprehend constitutes Jameson's final boundary between art and postmodernity.
Jameson name the unprecievable network the sublime. The nexus of the idea revolves around a conceptualization of the divine but thats only one application. There is an unbridled dread and incredulity which invades the human mind when confronted with a deity, a universe, a planet, or any infinitely branched system which we cannot comprehend. Jameson finds ideal literally representation of sublimity inthe cyberpunk expulsiom of William Gibson. The intangible bytes which surf through cyberspace exist in a world that the human psyche can’t quite control. This connection to electronic signals leads to paranoia as subjectivity is destroyed. In a sense, Blade Runner preceeded and influenced the cyberpunk movement.
Vivian Sobchack in her final chapter, “Postfuturism,” from Screening Space outlines the shape of the unfathomable. Vivian see's Blade Runner as being one paradigm which is used to fulfil the metaphorical space. As we are surrounded by electronic gagets and the vestiges of the sublime. A constant reminder of another existence beyond physicality as transformed humanity. Sobchack believes our mediated insertion into cyberspace has transformed human beings into being a myriad of visible and active simulacra” (Sobchack, 229). These apects of simulacra doesn't bound to the indexical and can exist autonomously from us in a world where our bodies can’t travel. In a culture where humans can be alienated from themselves, the alien or the other no longer signifies the same fear it once did,as this portrays humans as being aliens and replicants being us.

In Blade Runner, the spectator and protagonist are always re-orienting themselves to come to terms with this infinitely dense sensorium. As which is common with the human psyche, the narrative displaces society confusion into other evil.“This is space that finds its most explicit figuration in the impossible towering beauty of Blade Runner’s Tyrell Corporation Building—an awesome mega structure whose intricate façade also resembles a microchip” (Sobchack, 234). Tyrell corporation has been able to synthesize   a crushing amount of bio-engineering technology to recreate humankind. In the inter-textual world of the science-fiction film, such a mastery of the sublime is always deemed unnatural (partially by its perceived impossibility) and can only have negative consequences. We are not meant to conquer the sublime. If we do this we are personally gods.  The hyper-consciousness would render culture pointless. Postmodern logic can accommodate the sublime into our way of life.

This incomprehension is literalized in Blade Runner due to what Sobchack calls an “inflation of space,” a theory functionally identical to Jameson’s “hyperspace.” This inflation is identified by an “excess scenography” which crowds the mise-en-scéne. The fabricated space brings the spectator into contact with the sublime. Space is anthropomorphized, and like a collector classifies, gathers, preserves, and displays objects. “Trash and waste, pollution and decay, are visualized as curious and beautiful, postmodern sensibility finding aesthetic pleasure and sublimity in the accumulations and trans-formative decay of the cityscape…” (Sobchack, 263-64). In this film, Pris is seen hiding in a pile of garbage to catch Sebastian's attention, whereas Zhora is seen running through a chaotic gauntlet of cars and costumes etc. This inflation has its own consequences in the digesis.  Primary among those is a “deflation of temporal value.” Time no longer flows in a rational manner that presupposes history, language, and causal forces. Blade Runner though is ambivalent about this shift towards spatial representation. Its apparent that the inclusion of time within the narrative is pivotal to the story and the replicants four year life span, which is shown through the intercepted shots of Roy Batty hands seizing up to the deadline and through his speech on the rooftop. The spatial dominance in contemporary science fiction features a new postmodern cinematic language.

The author also talks about how they would add one element to Sobchacks inflation thesis.Cascading and ominous tones of Vangelis score simply imply a world outside the normal flow of melody and tempo. The music constantly adds expansive layers of melancholy and awe. In addition Sobchack doesn't engage Jameson's mention of derealization in her argument. This conveys how reality is represented as artificial modern forms of art.  Rachel asks Deckard early in the film whether he’s ever retired a human by mistake. There is also a question which resides on Rick Deckard of whether he is human or in fact a replicant. This question, sustains Jameson's conception of the terrifying and exhilirating as the audience try to answer this question. If Deckard is a replicant, the dissolution of boundaries theorized by the film would be complete; Homosapiens will have come to an end brought on by our own hubris.

Jameson believes the only way for us to interact with the sublime in the future will be to develop an aesthetic of cognitive mapping. This diagrammatic overlay would “enable a situational representation on the part of the individual subject to that vaster and properly representable totality which is the ensemble of society’s structures as a whole” (Jameson, 51). This system would reclaim subjectivity from the fragmenting impulses of depthlessness, pastiche, schizophrenia, and sublimity. It would create a political dynamic capable of integrating personal ideology and global awareness, all through technology. In the conclusion of the essay, Sobchack glances over “cognitive mapping” and offers Born in Flames (1982) as an idealized example of mapping put into practical use. I offer Blade Runner as a counterexample. Aren’t the replicant’s brains the beginning of this advanced cultural logic? Once they are allowed to temporally transcend, their engineered brains will be able to surpass ours. The part of their minds that is constructed will be able to hold yottabytes of information, and the part that mimics our own will have the time to craft an individualized ideology. Replicants are the perfect solution to the postmodernity crisis. They are immune to the vicissitudes of cultural logic. They will succeed despite our impotence, at least on film.

In the film, the replicants are depicted as searching for empathy and memory in a city containing memories on its walls. The humans are shown as being consistently trapped in a state of amnesia as the directions of the mind only point one way. The theorists discussed in this essay are also searching and grasping the nature of the simulacrum, as they are searching for clues in Jameson's intricate composition. Postmodernity doesn't offer answer but instead its fluid borders generate an unending cavalcade of suppostitutions. Blade Runner is interested in the decisions we make and is also a film which is invested in our contemporary moment. What counts as a human,  whether at the embryonic dawn or the “accelerated decrepitude” of dusk? Is reminiscence really a part of lived experience or more a function of the imagination? Whats the elemental spark which allows us to abstract ourselves and engage ourselves in a variety is different realities and theories. Can this ember ever be duplicated? How do we shelter emotional veracity from an increasingly coded world? Do we really want to know the answers?