According to movies like Blade Runner,
our gritty cyberpunk future is going to be just as racist
and sexist as the present day.
But on the plus side,
there's going to be noodle shops--
so many noodle shops!
Fans of classic science fiction, rejoice!
The Hollywood Nostalgia Machine is about to deliver
a sequel to Ridley Scott's incredibly influential cult film,
Blade Runner.
35 years after Rick Deckard first escaped
from a grimdark Los Angeles
with the world's fanciest fembot in tow,
Blade Runner 2049 is finally gonna give us some answers
those burning questions that have plagued
our collective psyche for years.
Questions like,
Shouldn't there be more Latinx people in the
Los Angeles of the future?
Are we just gonna pretend like Deckard's
assault of Rachel was A-OK because there was a romantic
saxophone wailing in the background?
Do androids dream of electric sheep?
But before we immerse ourselves in the grim future
of Blade Runner 2049,
let's spend a little more time in the grim future of 2019.
Wow, that's really soon!
In the original film,
Harrison Ford plays the titular Blade Runner,
a cop who hunts down and kills rogue androids,
called "replicants."
In 2019, replicants perform
dangerous, grueling manual labor in off-world colonies --
and surprise, surprise, provide sex to humans.
So when they go rogue, it's kind of a big deal.
And I know it may sound like something out of
our sci-fi cinema nightmares,
but soon, this kind of thing may happen in our own
dystopian techno-future timeline.
According to the totally reputable New York Post,
we're creeping on the day when sex robots
might kill their owners.
Man, can't a guy just enjoy his deeply sad, misogynistic
desire for a "woman" that he can have sex with
any time he wants, who never ages, complains,
or has a single thought of her own in peace??
Anyway, enough about Reddit.
In Blade Runner, replicants have thoughts,
feelings, and desires just like people do.
But society doesn't want to acknowledge that
they're basically human,
because that would mean acknowledging that
using them for slave labor is wrong.
Blade Runner uses the existence of replicants
to explore questions of what it really means to be human.
And in many ways,
it's a rich, complex, and fascinating film.
But the way it tackles those issues
is by focusing on the humanity of white men,
like so much media does.
As a result, it effectively leaves women and people of color
on the margins of who is really deserving of
being considered human.
"You'd be surprised what a guy would go through
to get a glimpse of a beautiful body."
"No, I wouldn't."
Of the four rogue replicants Deckard is hunting,
two are female:
Pris, designed as a standard pleasure model,
and Zhora, who works as an exotic dancer.
Because of these roles Pris and Zhora find themselves in,
you can argue that Blade Runner offers
valuable critique of how our culture oppresses women.
Both Pris and Zhora are prisoners of patriarchy,
who have pigeonholed into roles to please men.
And they're punished with violence for trying
to live their own lives.
Both die at Deckard's hands after
desperate fights to survive.
Their deaths are painful to watch,
and even though Deckard is the film's anti-hero,
we're supposed to be somewhat sympathetic to
Pris and Zhora's efforts to escape their destinies and design.
But then, unfortunately, there's the replicant Rachel,
Deckard's love interest.
"Now you kiss me."
That's our moody hero preventing a woman
from leaving his apartment and forcing her
to accept his physical advances.
Meanwhile, the movie itself tries to frame this
mind-boggling scene as a seduction.
You know, just because there's cheesy
romantic saxophone music playing,
that doesn't make it any less assault.
It's still totally assault!
Yet in the end, despite his reprehensible behavior,
Deckard gets the girl,
and the two of them run off together --
totally undermining any concerns about patriarchy
that Pris and Zhora may have raised.
Ultimately, the story isn't really about the women.
They may be on the sidelines of Blade Runner's
future society,
but they're also on the sidelines of the script.
It's Rick Deckard and Roy Batty,
the leader of the rogue replicants who
the film focuses on in its exploration of humanity.
"Nani ni shimasho ka."
"Give me four."
"Futatsu de jubun desu yo."
"No, FOUR. Two, two, four."
The film takes place in Los Angeles,
one of the most diverse cities in the world.
And despite being an overwhelmingly white film,
Blade Runner knows it's a diverse city.
The streets are full of Japanese noodle shops.
Advertising targets people of different cultural backgrounds,
and hey!
They even gave Edward James Olmos and James Hong
really small parts!
Yet race doesnt enter at all into the film's concerns
about oppression.
And despite being such a diverse city,
all of that diversity is nothing but background texture.
But it's not as if the film is unaware of racism.
The original theatrical release actually had a
voiceover from Deckard that equates the persecution
of replicants with racial persecution.
"I've got four skinjobs walking the streets."
"Skinjobs: that's what Bryant calls replicants.
In history books, he's the kind of cop
who used to call black men "n*****s."
Ironically, by centering whiteness so much,
the film subtly perptuates the very real life issues
of oppression and marginalization
that it appears to be concerned with.
Have things improved on the race front in Los Angeles
in the time between 2019 and 2049?
Or will the sequel still serve up a vision of the future
that seems to have been hatched from
the minds of white men
who think neon signs with Japanese characters on them
are cool and futuristic,
but don't want to actually have signifcant Japanese
characters in their movie.
I guess we'll see.
The cast has some actors of color in it,
and who knows?
Maybe Edward James Olmos has a
slightly bigger part this time.
But it's also possible that the film
will focus almost entirely on Ryan Gosling,
Harrison Ford, and Jared Leto.
We hope that, if this new Blade Runner
explores issues of humanity and oppression
like the first one did,
it doesn't do so almost entirely through
the experiences of its white male characters.
Science fiction gives us the chance to imagine
brave new worlds.
So why are we limiting ourselves
to the same old stories?
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