by Joe Rapoza, © Copyright 1993-2024
Of the many dualities found in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner by far the most outstandingly complex one, occurs in the idea of the simulacra. The most interesting ones being the human simulations or androids. Symbolic interpretations abound concerning the polarity and merging of aesthetic qualities regarding the "blade-runners" and "replicants."
In Blade Runner, we know of only three blade runners: Deckard, Gaff, and Holden. Each one expressing his own individual symbolic qualities that makes each a polar opposite of the replicants. However, this opposition merely serves as a mirror that metaphorically embodies them with android-like qualities. For instance, Gaff appears as an introvert, who in Blade Runner acts a menial Lackey for Captain Bryant (Deckard's ex-boss). Holden, however, only appears briefly in the film as he administers the Voight-Kampff test on Leon Kawalski (a replicant).
The scene ends when Leon shoots Holden with a concealed gun from under the table. More importantly, later, when Deckard is "summoned" to captain Bryant's office, we discover the outcome of Holden’s fate. Bryant asks Deckard to come back as a blade runner, but Deckard simply says, "Give it to Holden, he’s good." Bryant replies: "I did! He can breathe okay, as long as nobody unplugs him."
From this, we can assume from this scene that Holden is on a life-support device and Deckard is needed to "retire" the remaining replicants. This scene foreshadows Deckard's fate as he's thrust into a situation of man vs. machine and the possible dangers of himself becoming one. Holden's life now depends on a machine to sustain his body, he becomes a metaphorical embodiment of artificial life.
Deckard's character however, as he's placed into the role of the hunter, takes on a more complex nature. "In pursuing the enemy android with a View to kill or be killed, [Deckard] takes on the characteristics of the enemy and becomes himself an android."1 This quote embodies a clear picture of the human android roles. More importantly, it points out the "reflected" nature of each. For example, on the one hand, humans created the android with themselves as the model, thus the simulation or "mirrored" aspect of a humanoid frame or human prototype is applied to the creation of a separate living entity manifested as a cybernetic organism (the android/replicant). In this role, man has engaged himself as deity and has created a form that resembles his own. The creation myth "God created man in his own image" springs to mind as humans apply their own views of "perfect self" into their own views of their own creation. The human simulacra is born. Also, the androids’ desire, need, ability, etc. to kill, merely reflects upon its creator/programmer: the human. Thus, androids only know how to kill because they have acquired it through their human creators.
The reflective nature of the human/ android duality causes not only the android to mimic the human, but also allows the human to mimic the android. "Thus...a metaphor for machines as destructive humans; [and] a metaphor for humans...[as] destructive machines." (Warrick, p. 196). In actuality then, the gap or dividing line distinguishing human from android is tightened. Androids have the ability to acquire human traits, feelings, attitudes, motives, etc. and conversely the human now has a model to become less human or "quasi-human." Therefore, through our own creations to become "perfect" or "god-like" we discover through our creative reflection that we are nowhere near this state of transcendence. Our human desire to transcend only reveals our faults, our own imperfections, our own limitations through the creation of a mechanical human simulation that in some way appears more human than our own human selves.
In Blade Runner Ridley Scott plays with this dualistic idea of "reflective learning" or learning through others resembling one's self. Deckard is metaphorically turned into an increasingly machine-like entity. His re-enlistment in the blade runner unit carves out his life, his destiny, his purpose. Deckard's actions throughout the film become automatized, he is soon the epitome of a human automaton, an android-like human: an "anthromoid." This reflective quality "suggest[s] how the human penchant for artifice - that is, for analyzing, understanding, and synthesizing all things, even man himself - seems to promise a reduction in man to no more than artifice." 2
Just as we can see the humanness of the android, we can also grasp the idea of its opposite: the android-like human. What helps the audience to grasp Deckard’s characteristics as machine is of course the mirroring with the other replicants, especially Roy Batty. J .P. Telotte explains that "when [the] fascination with doubling becomes a dominant force in man's life, he clearly run the risk of becoming little more than a copy himself, potentially less human than the very images he has fashioned in his likeness." (Telotte, p.50).
Interestingly, both novel and film drift away from the master narrative of protagonistic and antagonistic roles. Concerning Deckard and Batty both characters essentially become one in the same through their dualisticness or "reflective nature." Both Phillip K. Dick and Ridley Scott purposefully manipulate both roles of protagonist / antagonist and interchange them between Deckard and Batty. I would like to elaborate now in some detail on a few symbolic principles linking Deckard as an anthromoid. Simply stated, an android is basically a human-like simulacra, while an anthromoid is just the reverse of that: an android-like human. For Dick the question of what is actually human has always disturbed him and becomes evident in his writings. Do Androids Dream... is no exception, for in a 1972 speech at Vancouver, British Columbia Dick asked: "...what is it, in our behaviour that we can call specifically human?. . .And what is it that, at least up to now, we can consign as merely machine behaviour,...or reflex behaviour?"3 The very confusion between human / machine in the mind of the novel's own author challenges the post-modernist thinker to sort out this confusion, but also allows a certain sense of freedom in understanding and interpreting its dualistic complexities.
In Blade Runner we are meant to sympathize with Deckard's character since the point of view of the film is centered around him via his voice-over. One may then perceive the bounty hunter as the "hero" or protagonist of the story, however Roy Batty’s character can be seen as similarly empathized by the audience, thus creating another protagonist. Alternatively, both Deckard and Batty represent equally antagonistic attributes due to their protagonistic oppositions. In sum, any distraction made between the master narrative devices concerning protagonist / antagonist cancel each other out. Deckard's role as blade runner puts him back in the ranks of Gaff and Holden whom I have already related in some way as machines. Thus, Deckard is on the road himself to becoming a machine and ultimately appears to relate better with the replicants (especially Rachael) than with his "human" counterparts.
Deckard's duality with Rachael is also complex. Though he seems rather stern when they first meet, his hidden attraction to her, before administering the Voight-Kampif test at the Tyrell corporation, grows rapidly as the film progresses, regardless of the fact that he has discovered her true nature as a replicant. The "mirror" between Deckard and Rachael is in a sense double that of which he shares with Batty. Not only is Rachael a replicant, but she is a female one. Deckard's desire for her beauty (although a manufactured one) quickly thrusts him into a state of empathy for an android, and Rachael undoubtedly acquires an equal attraction towards him. In a conversation at Deckard's apartment Rachael asks, "Did you ever take that test yourself?" causing him "to reflect on his own humanity, on the nature, that is, of a hired killer." (Telotte, p.49). Dick’s question of humanness therefore becomes an important one. What are the qualities of humanity? What makes a human a human? What makes him / her not?
Yet, still another factor found in both novel and film attributes some of Deckard's “machine-like" qualities to his society, the world around him, mainly a capitalistic world. "Phillip K. Dick's writing is an example of...a breakthrough, not only in the sense of a deconstruction of the science-fiction novel, but also of a breaking through the psychological and perceptual confines imposed on us by capitalism."4 In the novel Do Androids Dream...? Deckard is obsessed with acquiring a genuine animal to replace his electric sheep thereby accelerating him up the social ladder. Since genuine animals are worth extremely more than an artificial one due to their scarcity, Deckard traps himself in a capitalistic world of commodification, whereby in a sense the more material objects of worth one owns, the more social worth one has.
Deckard's obsessive nature concerning this theme of "necessary commodification " can be witnessed by the way he carries around the Sidney's animal price guide to nearly every place he carries his own laser tube. Deckard is also employed by the city, he is a police officer, a blade runner. He himself is reduced to a social commodity and inevitably leads to his own artificiality.
In Blade Runner however, Ridley Scott utilizes slightly different themes that places Deckard on the road to de-humanization. Deckard first introduces himself as an ex-cop, and ex-blade runner, and ex-killer. We also learn that Deckard has an ex-wife, making him an ex-husband. This view of Deckard foreshadows his own struggle with humanity, both figuratively and socially. He is symbolically an ex-man, an ex-person, no longer with social substance. In Deckard’s meeting with Captain Bryant, Deckard is given an ultimatum by his ex-boss: "You know the score pal. If you're not cop, you're little people." Deckard's reply is somewhat quick and premeditated: "No choice, huh?" Deckard's haste in re-enlisting as a blade runner doesn't seem too inconsistent with his character since the first time we see him he's thumbing through a newspaper, possibly looking for a job as a hired bounty-hunter. He exclaims in voice-over: "They don't advertise for killers in the newspaper." Now Deckard is quickly thrust back into the corporate world and must fulfill his role as an android killer. "Both Deckard and the replicants, therefore, exist in a similar relation to the dominant social power in society."5
Ultimately what all this vast simulated duality and opposition creates in the narrative is a schizophrenic world of numerous pastiche and reflexivity. The replicant’s complex makeup symbolically vaults the human back to his basic form. Deckard better understands himself in a schizophrenic world by relating to the embodiment of all that he has stood in opposition of: the replicants. Deckard himself then becomes split and reflected, he is transformed by his capitalistic world into a schizophrenic human being. Dick's personal explanation of schizophrenia may be summed up as follows: "The shizoid personality overuses his thinking function at the expense of his feeling function (in Jungian terms) and so has an inappropriate or flattened effect; he is android-like." (Warrick, p.200).
Deckard's basic opposition in the story is by far the replicants, however as he is slowly transformed or "related" to them in both book and film he becomes android-like, thus launching him into a schizophrenic situation as he loses his contra-position with the replicants and shifts into a polarity with the very system he works for. Deckard’s "anthromoidism" also places him on the replicants’ level of schizophrenic reality since "the replicants exist, in short, in that schizophrenic rush of time that James, Deleuze and Guattari, and others see as so central to postmodern living." (Harvey, p. 309).
Of course, now we must turn to further schizophrenic aspects of the narrative. A question springs to mind: If Deckard is slowly being transformed into an android-like human then can the replicants be far behind in their own transformation? Simply stated the answer is "no." The major difference transpiring between androids and humans are the androids' lack of empathy, thus the reasoning behind the Voight-Kampff tests to differentiate replicant from human. Does Dick believe that androids are merely androids because they lack empathy? What then if they began to develop empathic patterns? Would they become human? Rachael was asked over one-hundred questions before Deckard could be positive that she was a replicant. Deckard later discovers from Tyrell that she herself doesn't even know she's a replicant, since Tyrell has "implanted" her with his niece's memories. Rachael essentially believes she is human and she has the memories to prove it (i.e. photographs). Deckard however confronts Rachael with the notion that she's an actual replicant and that her memories are not her own. This produces a schizophrenic conflict within her as she searches her "feelings" to determine what is real to her. She, like Deckard, must reflect upon her own nature to determine what is human and what is artificial. Dick further explains this schizophrenic idea “as an attempt by a one-sided mind to compensate and achieve wholeness: [it] is a brave journey into the realm of the archetypes." (Warrick, p.200).
In more symbolic ways, Roy Batty undergoes an extreme schizophrenic transformation. Undoubtedly the leader of the six Nexus replicants who have escaped from the off-world colony, Batty clearly desires a prolonged life than the maximum four years he has been "programmed" for. He, according to David Desser in his article Blade Runner: Science Fiction and Transcendence, is associated with the Satan of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Symbolically, Batty rises from his android hell and confronts his human creator Eldon Tyrell in his metaphorical heaven at "the penthouse of the 700 story pyramid that houses his corporation."6 Batty's character is here being juxtaposed in human literature, he progressively gains human traits of empathy and emotion expressed as melancholy as he loses his replicant counter-parts one by one, first Zhora, then Leon, and finally Pris.
Just as Deckard enters the world of the android, Batty enters the world of the human. His ultimate question being: Why do I have to die? Why is my time limited? His personality takes on a dualistic nature, he becomes split between man and machine, schizophrenia takes over. Ridley Scott represents Batty's schizophrenic nature at the end of the film as a fully transformed individual when he spares Deckard's life by pulling him from his doom. Scott uses "spiritual" allusions to complete Batty's metamorphosis into an android who possibly surpasses even a human in regards to empathy and "human" understanding.
During the confrontation between Deckard and Batty it's clear that each has the intention of "retiring" the other. However, Ridley Scott completes Batty's personality with symbols of a Christ-like individual. In one scene, Batty pierces his palm with a spike to produce a rush of adrenaline to combat the cramp in his hand caused by his inevitable ageing and deterioration. The wound of course, symbolizes the stigmata of Christ and is attributed to the notion that Christ died for man's sins. Therefore, like Christ, Batty saves Deckard's life and he alone will perish, sacrificing his life for Deckard's. Batty has now surpassed Deckard’s "humanity" in a sense. If Deckard were the one in control of this final confrontation between human and machine, Deckard (the human) would have probably not spared Batty's life. He would have retired him as he did the others. Batty, in his final moments on Earth reflects back on his life and realizes his own limitations, and at that instance probably valued Deckard's life as much as he did his own.
The final emblem or symbol representing Batty's Christ-like image is the dove he holds as he dies. Batty frees the dove from his grasp and lets it fly off into the heavens as a symbol of Christ's "holy-ghost." The dove however, not only symbolizes Batty's revelation but is a metaphor for both nature and artificiality, as Desser comments in his article that “Batty..., miraculously, produces a dove from out of the air." (Desser, p. 177).
Desser is carrying this notion a little too far since minutes before this scene, Deckard bursts into a room and startles a group of doves, causing them to flutter in the room. Therefore, it seems much more plausible that Batty had caught one when he was in this area. The question comes to mind then: Are the doves real or artificial? If they are real, then why haven't they perished like nearly every other animal in the story? And, if they are artificial, how come they seem to be in the "wild” living in a deserted building? Ridley Scott does not distinguish whether the dove is real or mechanical, thus leaving its nature ambiguous, allowing it to stand as a symbol of both human and replicant nature.
As Batty's transformation comes to an end, so does Deckard's: "All I could do was sit and watch him die." Deckard realizes what he was, what he's been through, and what he's become. He's shown the nature of his humanness through Batty and transcends the overwhelming schizophrenic time and space he's been living in. "Deckard...must transcend his emotional aloofness, must finally make the ultimate commitment-to give of himself and his humanity." (Desser, p. 178). Therefore, Deckard leaves behind his capitalistic needs, overcomes his inhumanness and android self, and finally escapes his schizophrenic world.
Ultimately then, on reflecting back on both novel and film, we discover that through human creations we create tools to better understand our own nature that can become veiled behind technology. However, the simulacrum of the android eventually creates a mirror for our own use that somehow comments on our world, on our "humanness.” Dick’s question, “What is human?" becomes even more confusing as we create something so much like ourselves that we discover there really may not be an answer.
The reflecting of the simulation then turns in on itself, bends back and confronts us. A schizophrenia soon develops. We can no longer determine the reality of something. All substance and form is then reinterpreted, recycled in our psyches. Information becomes a chaotic pastiche of form, thoughts, and abstract representation.