Blade Runner

In class last week several people expressed certainty about Deckard's being a replicant based on references online and to Ridley Scott's own words. One of the premises used to support this argument, or statement, referred to the unicorn dream; however, we never discussed, and those people never revealed, what they thought that dream actually signified. I suppose the dream is there as an answer to the actual question, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" If Ridley Scott chose to use Deckard's dream as the answer, then Deckard is an android and the answer is "no," which leads to more questions than answers.

However, the unicorn dream may actually be calling attention to the question, not answering it. In drawing the audience into the question of whether or not Deckard is human, Ridley Scott portrays him dreaming, and a dream about a unicorn can not be an implanted memory because that is not a real-world/life image. Therefore, if Deckard is human his dream signifies the greater distance between humans and cyborgs by calling attention to the originality of a human dream vs. the unknown of what happens to an android when it sleep. Or, if Deckard is actually a replicant, the dreams signifies that cyborgs do not dream of electric sheep. I think an alternate title for the movie could have played with the title of the book more, saying something like, "What if Androids Dream of Unicorns?" Although, that would ruin the ambiguity about Deckard's identity, it more precisely addresses what this concept insinuates. What is the difference between an android, specifically the replicants in Blade Runner, and a human being? Why, for my part, was I so unsure of Deckard's origins?

I do not know if Ridley Scott meant the audience to know one way or the other, and though I realized the question was there, I did not draw any conclusions from the imagery in the movie. I saw that Deckard had a rare human ability to recognize replicants, something a cyborg could be programmed to be able to do. I saw that he had a strange attraction for Rachel, even though he knew she was a cyborg. He apparently felt that being a cyborg, or non-human, did not diminish her value or potential for humanity, emotions and love. However, he showed strong emotions towards her, a human quality. He was weaker than the other cyborgs, but maybe he was just an older model. He did not have a fear of death as the other cyborgs, the Nexus6 generation, had to fear, and those specifics were never clarified. If Deckard could be seen as a human, his dream calls attention to the question about the differences between android and human; however, even as a human, his actions and attraction to replicants suggests a close link between man and robot. The human body is "created," given that it develops into the grown-up shapes that the replicants are originally produced as, but the organs and functions of the body, given time to learn, develop, and experience, are all the same yet unique for each body, human or replicant. A cold, reserved person may seem more mechanical than a four-year-old android, and an android left to live as long as it will would, according to the movie, become unidentifiable as an android. Therefore, the unicorn dream does seem to answer the question, that, whether Deckard is human or not, androids are not so different from human beings that they dream of electric sheep. And , if Deckard is meant to be a replicant, then they not only dream of real sheep, but dream of creations of the imagination like unicorns, which suggests the infinite potential of the human body once endowed with life, human or non-human, to create, imagine, and be like-human.

All of this seems to lead to more questions such as how much "life" do we endow into robots, machines, computers? How like-human are machines; how like-machines are humans; how valued will/should human creation and imagination be when machines have their own minds to create unicorns and dream; how do we make machines that dream and do we want to? And, can any of these questions be answered?

Tron

The issues of corporation, originiality, and individuality, as presented in Tron, have become prominent in our world of technology. I wish I had the background knowledge to throw out names and company names as we did in class; however, the everyday consumer sees the limits (in selection) in technology consumerism when shopping for a computer, an ipod, or any technological-breakthrough product. Tron made me think about the authors, the creators of technology, and in thinking of names mentioned in class, the big names, I am sure there are hundreds of names lost in the process of production and sales that are the artistic inspiration and originiality behind the progress of technology, even behind the big names. Just as in THX1138, today names are lost, individuality blended behind the black and white brief-case-like laptops everyone carries around. Come to think of it, we all have a "screename" or some chosen expression of our identities on computers (that usually includes a number or two) that comes to represent the individual like a number among millions online, like THX1138. However, the names we give ourselves represents the individual behind it, just like a name, allowing individual expression and identity to continue to exist in a digital world.
The world in Tron, in incorporating reality and humans into the world of systems, bites, and programs, presents a concern for the individual and his/her ownership of ideas, while at the same time representing individuals within technology. This correlation between people in the real world and pieces of a system inside the computer relates the concept of how the user impacts and individualizes the piece of that system he/she controls. Representing the pieces inside with the same actors that play characters on the outside expresses an ownership and the reponcibility of a "user" to his/ her program. This connection not only accomplishes recognition for creators and artists, but suggests a greater meaning behind what people put into machines and computers. The pieces of an individual that they put into a creation(specifically into a computer) are still representative of the individual, whether digitized or still inside a person's head as an original idea. In this light, the representation of an individual as the pieces he she controls, as a user, in the computer, conveys a close connection between people and programs, one that would encourage people to express themselves through computers, computer games, and digital technology.

reflections on THX1138

Being a Lucas fan, I really enjoyed watching his first production not because it was that great of a movie, but, as was brought to light in class, because of the risks he took and the doors he opened with THX1138. I am aware that Lucas does not write the best scripts, yet I have always loved his movies (whoever says they didn't love Star Wars is liar). After our discussion last week I understand why people are drawn to Lucas Productions. The sound, light, and elemental imagery Lucas includes in his work creates a foreign, imaginative environment out of everyday materials. In this way, his film THW1138 relates how the future may become a technological, emotionally stifling, prison, but the present we live in already contains the elements of that prison. Therefore, by creating a futuristic scenario, Lucas not only anticipates or imagines the future, but warns or at least presents the reality of the present. If, in the lat 60's technology already promised the type of world Lucas presents in THX1138, his production presented one possibility of a thousand outcomes in the future. By portraying the dystopic effects of technology, Lucas may not be protesting technology (the source of most of his creative expression), but more likely wishes to warn against the impersonal, product driven, faithless direction the present points towards. Technology does not have to create a dystopia, but with the quick production of computers and machines, without warnings or portrayals like THX1138, humanity could forget to stop and appreciate the immateriality of love, intimacy, and faith, or the materiality of the human body in contrast to machines. Lucas, seemingly intensionally, contrasts the vivacity of the human body and the comfort of human intimacy with the senselessness of the white prison-like environment, reminding his viewers of the potential danger of the impersonal relationship technology creates between people and their environment (as I sit at my computer typing this article, rather than joining a friend for lunch). Likewise, most of Lucas' imagery collaborates to create this emotionally stifling, alienating world that seems to convey the message that meaning in life requires that which he portrays as absent from his futuristic dystopia: love, intimacy, individuality, and faith. These qualities can exist along with the production of technology; however, Lucas can convey the lose of these qualities only because their absence already exists in many modes of life at the time the movie was made. What I mean to say is, if Lucas creates these futuristic worlds out of elements already present, then his portrayal of loneliness, "something wrong," in THX1138 points to the already looming presence of this futuristic fate in the 60's and 70's in California, USA.