{"id":68900,"date":"2017-10-09T21:52:04","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T18:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/?p=68900\/"},"modified":"2017-10-09T21:52:04","modified_gmt":"2017-10-09T18:52:04","slug":"whether-harison-fords-character-replicant-far-reaching-implications-film-series-says-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/en\/news-el\/entertainment\/whether-harison-fords-character-replicant-far-reaching-implications-film-series-says-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Whether Harison Ford’s character is a replicant has far-reaching implications for the film series \u2014 and for what it says about our own society."},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Harrison Ford’s\u00a0Blade Runner\u00a0<\/em>character a replicant or a human? It’s a a question that has spawned years of impassioned fan debate, though the answer was not all that important within the world of 1982’s\u00a0Blade Runner\u00a0<\/em>for people besides Deckard himself.\u00a0Blade Runner 2049\u00a0<\/em>does not answer the Deckard question, but it does turn it into a matter with far-reaching implications, not only for the film, but what it says about our own society.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Blade Runner 2049<\/em>,\u00a0replicant blade runner Officer K (Ryan Gosling) is volleyed between a number of parties with different agendas all searching for a child \u201cmiraculously\u201d born to the replicant Rachael almost thirty years prior and Deckard. K\u2019s boss, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), fears knowledge of the child\u2019s existence could lead to a literal societal collapse. Meanwhile, Freysa (Hiam Abbass) and her burgeoning replicant rebellion see the child as a figurehead for their movement. Finally, industrialist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) sees the child as the key to discovering how to make a self-replenishing replicant population capable of exponential growth, a secret that the original film’s Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel) had unlocked shortly before his death only for that knowledge to be lost due to a technological black-out.<\/p>\n

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Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures<\/div>\n
Jared Leto in\u00a0Blade Runner 2049<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If Deckard is a replicant, his and Rachael’s daughter Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri) represents everything Wallace hopes and nothing Joshi fears, while her usefulness as a figurehead for Freysa\u2019s rebellion becomes somewhat debatable. Replicants being able to reproduce amongst themselves would prove that they truly fit the biological definition of being alive. Would a new generation of replicants capable of reproducing alarm some people as Joshi fears? Perhaps. But plenty would see huge benefits to having a replicant population capable of self-replenishing and expanding, as Wallace does.<\/p>\n

If Deckard is human and Ana is a human-replicant hybrid, everything changes. Joshi\u2019s fears are well-founded, Wallace is as hopelessly nearsighted as every Frankensteinian creator before him, and Freysa without a doubt has the mascot she hoped for. To illustrate this, we need to racialize the human\/replicant situation, which is warranted since replicants are slaves. And in the U.S., where both\u00a0Blade Runner\u00a0<\/em>films are exclusively set, the historical line between slave and not-slave was always racial.<\/p>\n