"Blade Runner"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, in "Blade Runner", the audience realizes the fundamental moral problems of the film through the main character Rick Deckard's point of view: The definition of life and the moral and ethical codes governing that life. The author relates that key to the film are the replicants, which are androids with four-year life spans who look and act exactly like humans, replete with human memories, but lacking in empathy, a quality, which ostensibly belongs only to humans. The paper describes the characters of two replicants, Rachel Rosen and Roy Batty, whose ethical transformations are the core of the film.

From the Paper:

"The ethical crisis that arises involves Deckard's ability to define himself - is he human or replicant? - and involves the justice of his task - is it right to kill a replicant when they are, in most ways, indistinguishable from humans? The first crisis develops subtly. When Rachel Rosen, a replicant, asks Deckard if he has ever taken the Voight-Kampff test, which would determine if he is a replicant or a human, he doesn't answer but grows uncomfortable. The Tyrell Corporation gives all replicants false memories and even pictures of their "childhoods" and "families." Deckard has a row of pictures atop his piano, and various shots in the film show him studying the pictures in earnest, almost as if he were trying to determine whether or not they are real. Ethically, if Deckard is a replicant, then the whole moral structure of his job is ersatz: he should be the victim, not the hunter."

More papers on "Blade Runner":

• Film Review # 125336 : "Blade Runner" and Societal Constraints"
• Film Review # 125048 : "Blade Runner"
• Film Review # 122371 : "Postmodern Themes in "Blade Runner"
• Film Review # 45998 : "Blade Runner"

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