Blade Runner 2049 is a movie about a lot of things, and I probably ought to do a full
analysis of this film at some point, but today we’re gonna look at just one of the many
questions it raises: what makes emotions real?
In the original film, the presence of emotions in replicants was the principle evidence that
questioned the prevailing definition of human.
If these artificial creations can think and feel, which they clearly do, are they as human
as we are, despite being different in almost every other way?
I think the film is pretty unequivocal about this, which is why I find the debate about
whether Deckard is a replicant to be painfully misguided.
The point is that it doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t.
To be replicant is to be human.
Real human memories are what give birth to a replicant’s complex emotional consciousness,
and thus their humanity.
It doesn’t matter that the memories aren’t theirs; the memories are real and the emotions
they create are real, and these emotions are never doubted.
Nobody in the film dismisses the emotions of replicants, they just don’t care.
[Tyrell] We began to recognize in them a strange obsession.
After all they are emotionally inexperienced, with only a few years order to store up the
experiences you and I take for granted.
If we gift them with a past, we create a cushion or pillow for their emotions and consequently
we can control them better.
[Rafa] This lack of empathy between oppressor and oppressed has clear real world parallels,
which Blade Runner 2049 articulates in surprisingly nuanced ways…which I won’t get into because
that’s not what this video is about.
[Coco] Sorry.
[Rafa] I’m only bringing this up to say that the film assumes that we, unlike the
organic humans in the film, are enlightened enough to accept that K's humanity is real
and deserving of our empathy, despite being told that the memories they have are now synthetic
as well.
Having made that assumption, the film then presents us with a new dilemma.
A dilemma by the name of Joi.
Of course, an AI who fully deserves the label of “human” is hardly an original idea.
Pop culture has primed us to believe in her humanity just as we have been primed to believe
in the replicants’ humanity.
The key difference between them, though, is that we are given absolutely no evidence that
Joi has a mind of her own.
With replicants, we know they routinely reject the purposes they were created to serve.
It happens so often you have to wonder if making them is really worth the trouble.
Even the ones who don’t still show signs of their individuality.
Take Luv, for instance.
Since she is built to obey her master’s bidding, a fact one of the promotional short
films takes care to spell out for you…
[Wallace] You must make a choice: your life or mine.
Do you understand?
[Replicant] Yes.
[Wallace] Do this now.
[Rafa] …her tears offer compelling evidence that she has an interior emotional life distinct
from her programming, perhaps even opposed to it.
But Joi’s tears are different, less evidence than mystery.
Everything she says and does is totally in line with her programming.
Her purpose is to become the perfect girlfriend, tailoring herself (often literally) to fill
the void in her customer’s heart.
When she’s with K, she’s impossibly perfect: sweetly, swooningly, selflessly romantic.
[Joi] I’m coming with you.
But not like this.
If they come here looking for you, they’ll have access to all my memories.
You have to delete me from the console.
My present; put me there.
[Rafa] She’s never bored with him, never mad at him, never hurt by him.
Becoming the Bonnie to K’s Clyde when he goes on the run could be a risk she takes
because she genuinely loves him and therefore is alive enough to risk death.
But what evidence do we have?
Every scene that teases us with the possibility of her free will can also be understood through
the lens of that programming.
Even the one scene in which we get to see her existing separate from K doesn’t give
us any clues.
All she says is…
[Joi] I’m done with you.
You can go now.
[Rafa] …but whether Joi needed her in order to satisfy K’s desires or her own remains
unknown.
Worse still, this passionate moment…
[Joi] A real boy needs a real name.
Joe.
[K] Joe?
[Joi] You’re too important for K. Your mother would have named you.
Joe.
[Rafa] …is undermined by the revelation that calling K Joe is just a part of her basic
programming.
[Joi] You look like a good Joe.
[Rafa] But the ambiguity in their relationship goes both ways.
K is fully aware of the artifice of her, never denying that she’s a product selling
a lie.
[Joi] I’m so happy when I’m with you.
[K] You don’t have to say that.
[Rafa] He plays along with it, though for what reason, we can only guess.
Compared to her effusive affection, he’s a stone-faced enigma whose feelings for her,
if they exist, are locked away beyond anyone’s reach.
And yet, despite all this, in Joi’s final moments, he reaches for her…
[Luv] I do hope you’re satisfied with our product.
[Rafa] …and she reaches for him…
[Joi] I love you!
[Rafa] …and we feel something.
Is this bond between them real, despite its artificiality?
If K feels loved by her, does it matter if her love is an illusion?
[Joi] I wanna be real for you.
[K] You are real for me.
[Rafa] If her programming makes her feelings invalid, well, what about ours?
Aren’t our emotions also a product of our social programming?
How different are K’s feelings for her from our own, as we suspend our disbelief while
watching an actor pretend to be hologram that pretends to love?
[K] I missed you, baby sweet.
[Rafa] Thank you so much for watching.
If you wanna help support the channel, I have just launched a brand new Patreon page, so
please check that out.
Now for those of you who wanna know what’s happening next, I have a few clues for you.
First up.
More specifically.
And then, there’s this.
And this.
That’s right, I am returning to the world of Godzilla with a Comparison video that I
am so stoked to share with you.
So please stay tuned for that, and thank you for watching The Long Take.