Badmington 2009 Blade Runners Blade Runner

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Blade Runners blade runners*

NEIL BADMINGTON

Abstract

Who but a nostalgic reactionary would take an interest today in the version

ofBlade Runner that was originally released in 1982? With its anchoring

voice-over and happy ending, the film appeared to retreat from posthu-

manist subjectivity into a humanist shelter, where the lines between human

and inhuman are firm and clear.

In the wake of Blade Runner: The Directors Cut (1992) and Blade

Runner: The Final Cut (2007), the impostor that has been on the loose

since 1982 appears to have little hope of survival. The real thing is appar-

ently here, unafraid to depict authentic posthumanist subjectivity.

To approach the earlier version of the film in this manner is to ignore the

flickering of subjectivity running through the text. This essay oers, there-

fore, a reading of the 1982 version that draws out how, regardless of its

yearning for humanism, the film baes the anthropocentric understanding

of subjectivity. I am not seeking to rescue Blade Runner in the name of

nostalgia, and my point is not that the version released in 1982 is actually

the authentic text. My argument, rather, is that Blade Runner frustrates

all attempts to limit its depiction of subjectivity to the space of humanism.

Keywords: Blade Runner; subjectivity; posthumanism; humanism;

authenticity.

Blade Runner has met its blade runners.1

The arrival in 1992 ofThe Directors Cut of Ridley Scotts film imme-

diately threatened the survival of the version that had been released ten

years earlier. Here at last, it seemed, was the authentic original thatwould triumphantly retire the impostor that had been at large for a de-

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between human and replicant is unsustainable. Here, finally, appeared to

be the real thing. No longer would there be a need to settle for second

best, a hesitation after a hint, a compromised retreat, a final flight back

into the arms of humanism. The faint pulse of the fake became weakerstill when, in 2007, Ridley Scott unveiled The Final Cut, an even more au-

thoritative version of his film. Time, indeed, to die. Who but a nostalgic,

necrophilic reactionary, it might be asked, could possibly take an interest

in Blade Runner in the wake of such excessively authentic alternatives?

Why favor the fake?

To bury the earlier version of the film in this manner is crudely to ig-

nore the nuances of the signifier, the flickering of subjectivity that runs

through the text. I want, therefore, to oer a reading of Blade Runner

that draws out the ways in which, regardless of its obvious formal yearn-ing for the subject of humanism, the film baes the anthropocentric

understanding of subjectivity (in which human and inhuman stand in sim-

ple, natural, hierarchical opposition to each other). I am not seeking to

rescue Blade Runner from The Directors Cut or The Final Cut in the

name of nostalgia, and my point is not that the version released in 1982

is actually the authentic text. My argument, rather, is that Blade Runner

frustrates all attempts to limit its depiction of subjectivity to the space of

humanism.

1. Blade runners

There is not space in this essay to tell the tale of how there came to be

dierent versions of the film. This ground has already been covered at

length, moreover, in Paul M. Sammons Future Noir: The Making of

Blade Runner (Sammon 1996), which relates how negative responses

from preview audiences in early 1982 led to the workprint ofBlade Run-ner being modified in various ways before its ocial release. The two

most obvious alterations consisted of a voice-over spoken by the protago-

nist and a more optimistic conclusion in which Rachael and Deckard es-

cape into a pastoral beyond. Although Sammon emphasizes that these

changes were not made simply at the insistence of the studio (a happy

ending had been discussed, and two dierent voice-overs had actually

been recorded, for instance, long before the previews), many critics have

founded their readings of the film upon such an assumption. Robin

Wood, for example, reads Blade Runner as a moment of opposition tothe mainstream cinema of Reagans America. And yet, he ultimately has

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demanded by the studio after the films completion because someone felt that the

audience would have diculty in following the narrative ( justifiably, alas: our

own conditioning by the contemporary media is centered on, and continually re-

inforces, the assumption that we are either unwilling or unable to do any work).(Wood 1986: 183)

The ending, furthermore, marks the eruption of a more general tension:

The more often I see Blade Runner the more I am impressed by its achievement

and the more convinced of its failure. The problem may be that the central thrust

of the film, the source of its energy, is too revolutionary to be permissible: it has to

be compromised. The unsatisfactoriness comes to a head in the ludicrous, bathetic

ending, apparently tacked on in desperation in the last minute. (Wood 1986: 187)

Woods conclusions were repeated several years later by Richard Meyers,

for whom Blade Runners mise-en-scene makes it a strong, endlessly

interesting movie to watch (Meyers 1990: 244). But then, suddenly, he

adds:

the movie takes a Damnation Alley turn in its last sixty seconds. Just outside the

city is the most beautiful acreage this side of Shangri-La. Rolling hills and lush

foilage [sic] abound without pollution in sight. The amazing stupidity of this finale

. . . negates all the rich attention to detail that went before. Blade Runner was a

collection of film sets in search of a movie. (Meyers 1990: 244)

Like Wood, in other words, Meyers records a sense of regret that Blade

Runner ultimately retreats from its most radical propositions. Promises

become compromises; the voice-over and the happy ending negate the

challenging elements of the text and bring it into line with tradition.

The more daring version ofBlade Runnerto which criticism of this type

forlornly alludes would probably have remained an obscure object ofdesire were it not for a moment of serendipity in 1990, when a 70 mm

version of the workprint was accidentally released to a cinema in Los

Angeles. The excitement caused by this event and subsequent showings

in San Francisco eventually led, two years later, to the release ofThe Di-

rectors Cut. Paul M. Sammon has meticulously problematized many of

the common assumptions about the relationship between the workprint

and The Directors Cut (Sammon 1996: 349371). Above all, he stresses

that the two texts are significantly dierent from each other, for when

Ridley Scott learned in 1991 that what he saw as an incomplete roughcut was still circulating in California, he asked for it to be withdrawn

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realize (a deleted scene in which Deckard visits Holden in the hospital, for

instance, was to be restored, but its soundtrack could not be traced),

which meant that The Directors Cut ultimately matched neither the

workprint nor, curiously, its directors intentions. The real thing, thatis to say, was faked.

It was, nonetheless, widely welcomed as the lost, authentic original.

Publicity posters, for example, announced the coming of The Original

Cut of the Futuristic Adventure, and this line has since been repeated

on video and DVD packaging. The Washington Times, meanwhile, con-

cluded that the film achieves a coherent thematic vision when left to its

original narrative devices (quoted in Sammon 1996: 369), and Steve

Beard celebrated the original directors cut for its lack of voice-over

and . . . phoney happy ending (Beard 1992: 114).I find this approach problematic, and not simply because it ignores the

complicated history of the workprint and The Directors Cut recounted

in Sammons book. Above all, it assumes that Blade Runners formal ad-

ditions (the voice-over and the happy ending) succeed in stilling the post-

humanist potential of the text. It seems to me, moreover, that any critic

who invokes authenticity and originality as determining factors in a

discussion of the relationship between Blade Runner, The Directors Cut,

and The Final Cut has learned nothing from the texts deconstruction

of the opposition between authentic and inauthentic. I want, therefore,

to reread Blade Runner the apparently compromised film for the

moments at which it runs free of its humanist reins.

2. Listening to the voice-over

Blade Runners voice-over appears to bring humanist order to a poten-

tially posthumanist film by making Deckard the guide, the centre, theprivileged speaking subject. I think, though, that a close reading of what

Deckard actually says reveals that the humanist model of subjectivity is,

against all odds, disruptedby the voice-over. (Because I wish to engage at

length with Deckards words, a transcription of the voice-over is given as

an endnote to this essay.)2

In the first and fifth of his eleven interpolations, Deckard discusses his

professional and personal history. However, as Leonard G. Heldreth has

pointed out, his use of the signifiers killer and killing threatens the ab-

solute dierence which is intended to hold Deckard apart from the repli-cants, for the blade runner eectively identifies himself as a killer hired to

kill th kill (H ld th 1991 49) F th th fifth ti f th

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manism: Id quit because Id had a bellyful of killing, he says, revealing

an inability to treat replicants as inhuman objects.

Heldreths point is developed by Thomas B. Byers, who observes that

Deckard consistently refuses to take refuge behind the term retirement(Byers 1987: 330). Indeed, while the voice-over refers to killing on four

occasions, it mentions retirement just once. And when the latter term

is used (in the ninth passage), its inadequacy is recorded, for Deckard

speaks of a gap between the ocial terminology and his own feelings

about his profession. By refusing the anthropocentric linguistic distinc-

tion, by refusing to dierentiate at the level of the signifier between the

lives and deaths of humans and replicants, by eectively retiring the

term retirement, Deckards voice-over begins to overturn the subject of

humanism.This continues in the eighth passage, where it is announced that blade

runners are not supposed to have feelings. Policing the line between hu-

man and inhuman, in other words, requires emotionless behavior. In this

respect, Deckards narration voices a curious contradiction: blade runners

ought to be emotionless in their pursuit of individuals who are deemed in-

human precisely because they are emotionless. The human, that is to say,

must become inhuman in order to serve and preserve the distinction of

the human.

It could be argued, of course, that a blade runner should be able to re-

tire replicants without feeling a sense of unease because replicants are not

human. And yet, the ninth passage of the voice-over, spoken after Deck-

ard has killed Zhora, further describes the protagonists anxiety. Again

refusing to subscribe to the ocial discourse, Deckard refers to Zhora as

a woman, and his repulsion at shooting a woman in the back is com-

pounded by his feelings for another replicant (Rachael). This emotional

response becomes even more extreme by the tenth passage of the voice-

over, in which Deckards elegy asserts the lackof absolute dierence be-tween himself and Roy. All hed wanted, says the protagonist, were the

same answers the rest of us want. There is a common quest, a common

desire, a common condition.

It might appear that the final passage of the voice-over brings about a

convenient narrative closure. I think, however, that it actually works

in the opposite direction. Early in the film, Bryant relates that, because

replicants have begun to develop their own emotional responses, the

Tyrell Corporation now builds in a fail-safe device: a predetermined life-

span of four years. Although the narrative never fully explains how theemotional responses developed by replicants relate to those of their hu-

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Bryant clearly states that replicants began to develop their own emo-

tional responses [emphasis added], and immediately follows this remark

by referring to the imposition of a predetermined lifespan. It is possible

to infer from this that the replicants emotions are relatively inchoate they are, according to Bryant, under development but could, in time,

become indistinguishable from human feelings (which are, of course, tak-

en as the vital norm). By limiting the life of replicants, that is to say, the

manufacturers ensure that their creations cannot pass as human, precisely

because inauthentic, immature emotional responses will always be ex-

hibited. Any replicant allowed to live for more than four years, however,

could potentially upset the opposition between human and inhuman

because his or her emotions would be able to develop to the point where

the Voigt-Kamp test would no longer function. Replicants, as onecritic has neatly put it, dont lack emotions . . . but only the opportunity

to develop them (Boozer 1991: 214).

This is precisely why the final passage of the voice-over disturbs the

films apparent humanism. In revealing that Rachael has no termination

date, Blade Runner cuts itself open to the posthumanist possibility that

Rachael will eventually become, according to the ocial test that polices

the border between human and inhuman, a human being. In its final lines,

that is to say, the voice-over actually blurs the ocial ontological distinc-

tion between the two characters upon the screen. Deckard and Rachael

are escaping hand in hand from humanism.

I accept that I am reading against the grain. My treatment of Blade

Runners voice-over is not presented, however, as the authentic interpreta-

tion that will retire those accounts that have seen Deckards narration as

an attempt to centre, clarify, and assure the reign of the human subject.

What I am taking issue with, though, is the failure to look beyond

the formal presence of the voice-over, to see beyond intention, to find a

posthumanist alternative within the text. However much Deckards nar-ration wishes to impose a humanist framework, humanism is actually

wounded, left bleeding its own impossibility. The voice-over speaks of

posthumanism.

3. Do critics dream of superfluous unicorns?

We want the unicorn! I have a vivid memory, perhaps implanted, of a

fan ofBlade Runner shouting this phrase as a group of us queued in theblazing Californian sunshine to see The Directors Cut in the summer of

1992 Th b i f f t i th ll i t i f

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somewhat mythical status in the decade leading up to the arrival ofThe

Directors Cut. A collective gasp was heard in the cinema that afternoon

in 1992, in fact, when the great white beast finally made its entrance.

The version of the film released in 1982 was not, however, entirelywithout unicorn, for its final reel found Ga, a keen origamist, leaving a

small foil replica outside Deckards apartment. In this context, the object

might merely and innocuously be read as Ga s characteristic way of

signalling to Deckard that he has chosen to let Rachael live. In The Direc-

tors Cut and The Final Cut, however, the object takes on dramatic new

significance, for it becomes unavoidably linked to the new sequence of

the unicorn running through the forest that appears when Deckard sits

at his piano, as if it were a memory or a hallucination. Does Ga, the

viewer of The Directors Cut or The Final Cut is invited to ask, haveaccess to Deckards memories, just as Deckard is aware of Rachaels rec-

ollections? Is Deckard actually a replicant with a manufactured and im-

planted sense of history?

I want to suggest that there is a sense in which the long-awaited post-

humanist fragment that exists only in The Directors Cut and The Final

Cut is superfluous, due to the ways in which Deckards subjectivity is

thrown into crisis by other moments that have always been present in

Blade Runner. This is not to imply that the unicorn is meaningless or

that I was not thrilled finally to see it in 1992. (For the record, my heart

skipped a beat). My point, rather, is that the sequence is a blow which

lands upon what is already the rubble of humanist subjectivity.

There are, it seems to me, three principal areas in which Blade Runner,

even though it lacks the running unicorn, further baes the humanism al-

ready weakened by the voice-over: visuals; dialogue; and the meditation

upon photography, memory, and authenticity.

3.1. Visuals

The Voigt-Kamp test sees truth in the eye: from the response, or lack

thereof, to questions designed to provoke an emotional response, the

blade runner determines whether or not the subject under scrutiny is hu-

man. For Kaja Silverman, however, there is a problem at the heart of the

process. Because the naked eye of the interrogator cannot detect the vital

information, the Voigt-Kamp machine must represent the eye of the in-

terrogated individual upon a screen. But, Silverman continues:



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referent. For whereas Leons eyes are emphatically blue, the eye imaged in the

video monitor is unquestionably green. In the later scene in which Rachel [sic] is

given the Voigt-Kamp test, the video monitor again shows a green eye, although

her eyes are chocolate brown. (Silverman 1991: 111)

In one respect, these discrepancies might be explained away as simple

continuity errors (which remain, incidentally, even in The Final Cut).

Indeed, as Paul M. Sammon has explained (Sammon 1996: 107), the film-

makers, in an attempt to cut production costs, decided to use generic

library footage of eyes for the Voigt-Kamp sequences. And yet, the in-

consistencies remain at the level of the signifier, and to dismiss them so

casually would, in my opinion, be to deny a degree ofBlade Runners tex-

tuality. The slippages are, quite simply, part of the text, and there is anunavoidable sense in which they trouble the project of policing subjectiv-

ities. The Voigt-Kamp test, in short, is seen to be unreliable. Subjects

slip.

As early as the opening scene, it is clear that the test in question is cen-

tral to the diegetic faith in the uniqueness of the human. There is also,

however, a less immediate sense in which the ocular is connected to au-

thenticity, for a red glow appears in the eyes of replicant characters at

several points in the narrative. It can first be seen during Leons interro-

gation, and its significance is alluded to shortly afterwards when Deckard

arrives at the Tyrell Corporation and Rachael confirms that an owl with

a similar glow in its eyes is artificial. Later in the film, as he approaches

Tyrell, Roys eyes exhibit the distinctive light, as do those of Pris during

the sequence in which she applies her raccoon-like make-up.

In terms of the films posthumanism, however, the most striking occur-

rence comes in the scene at Deckards apartment that follows the death of

Leon. As Rachael approaches the doorway of the bathroom, her eyes

clearly glow, and they continue to do so as she asks Deckard if he wouldattempt to foil her escape. No, I wouldnt I owe you one, he replies,

approaching her and passing in front of the camera. In the following shot,

Deckard is positioned alongside Rachael, his hand upon her shoulder. As

he speaks, his eyes shine with a red light. The meaning of the motif is

never explained in the film, and the glow is so subtle at times that it is

easy to overlook. I think, nonetheless, that it shines across the humanist

border that seeks to separate human from replicant, for Deckard is the

only human character whose eyes are illuminated like those of Leon,

Roy, Rachael, and Pris. What appears to be an inhuman trait actuallyflickers in the face of the human.

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things which would normally remain invisible. Sorting through Leons

photographs, Deckards gaze settles upon one particular image of a man

sitting with his face concealed behind his fist. There would appear to be

nothing extraordinary about the photograph, but Deckard inserts it intothe Esper machine, which represents the image on a video screen and

transforms it into a three-dimensional space for inspection. Exploring

the photograph, Deckard discovers the face of a replicant, and the image

subsequently produced by the machine leads him to the club where Zhora

is working. Attempting to flee, she is killed by Deckard.

The Esper machine would appear, therefore, to be an eective device of

detection: it seems to work, seems to allow the blade runner to police the

border between human and inhuman. As Sammon has observed, how-

ever, the sequence in which Deckard dissects the photograph containsstrange visual inconsistencies. First, the image of the woman discovered

within the picture does not remotely match what is printed by the

machine (Sammon 1996: 411). Second, the woman depicted in both

the print-out and the on-screen representation is not Joanna Cassidy, the

actress who plays Zhora, but an uncredited stand-in (Sammon 1996: 146).

Moreover, as Kevin R. McNamara has suggested, the manner in which

Deckard arrives at the image of Zhora is somewhat problematic, for the

space within Leons snapshot exists not simply within the photograph,

but within a mirror within the photograph; the scene Deckard interro-

gates is an image of an image brought to three dimensions (McNamara

1997: 426). What Deckard sees, in other words, is neither Zhora (as

played by Joanna Cassidy) nor the image of Zhora, but the representation

of a representation of a reflection of a double acting as Cassidy acting as

Zhora. The act of seeing which is so fundamental to Blade Runners

diegetic project of telling the dierence between human and inhuman is,

therefore, thrown deeper into crisis.

Humanism is further unsettled by the way in which Blade Runner isedited. This is particularly apparent in the scene following Deckards

shooting of Zhora. The protagonist approaches and looks down at his

victim, who is depicted, in the subsequent shot, from Deckards point of

view. According to the classical Hollywood shot/reverse-shot convention,

the next image in the sequence ought to be of Deckard. It is, however, of

Leon, who has been completely absent from the narrative for almost half

an hour, and whose presence at the scene of Zhoras death has not been

previously announced. Although this is immediately followed by a return

to Deckard framed in a virtually identical medium shot a certaindisruption has occurred: the inhuman has been unexpectedly found in

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For Leonard G. Heldreth, there are further moments at which a visual

connection between the inhuman and the human is established:

In the photography and placement on the screen, Deckard is equated with Leonas the replicant appears in the initial scene of the film. Deckard is in his apartment

studying the pictures he has taken from Leons apartment, and he is presented in

close-up on the left side of the screen, looking toward the right and studying the

screen of his computer, his mouth partially open. The pose is identical to that of

Leon in the opening scene in which he takes the Voight-Kamp [sic] test. Even the

stubble of beard is the same. (Heldreth 1991: 49)

This link between Deckard and Leon, Heldreth continues, is comple-

mented by the visual treatment of Deckard and Roy:

The final confrontation between Batty and Deckard . . . best emphasizes their

unity . . . Batty breaks the right hand of Deckard, rendering it as useless as the

replicants own dying hands. Deckard takes his dislocated fingers, snaps them

back into place, and screams in pain. Then Batty pulls a nail from a rafter with

his left hand and also screams as he drives it through his right palm . . . ( Heldreth

1991: 4950)

It seems to me that this particular visual equation is repeated at three fur-

ther points in the film. First, during the Esper sequence, Deckard rests his

left fist against the side of his face as he leans forward to study the screen.

As he utters the command Move in . . . stop, the film cuts to a close-up

of Roy in an identical pose (although it is true that Battys right fist rests

against his cheek). Second, during the chase through the Bradbury Build-

ing, the crosscutting momentarily creates the illusion that the protagonist,

like Roy, is biting into his hand. (This is merely an eect of the camera

angle, for Deckard, it transpires, is simply holding his damaged fingersin front of his contorted face as he sits in the ruined bathroom.) Finally,

at the moment of Roys death, immediately after the dove is released, an

image of Deckard slowly dissolves into the bowed head of Batty. For a

moment, the two are merged upon the screen. In this respect, a passage

of Deckards voice-over that was never recorded, but which ends an early

version of the screenplay, is strikingly appropriate:

I knew it on the roof that night. We were brothers, Roy Batty and I! Combat

models of the highest order. We had fought in wars not yet dreamed of . . . invast nightmares still unnamed. We were the new people . . . Roy and me and Ra-

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3.2. Dialogue

I have already shown how the films extra-diegetic voice-over speaks out

against humanism; I want now to consider the ways in which contradic-tions in the diegetic dialogue stall in a similar manner any attempt to in-

stall a humanist model of subjectivity.

At an early point in the film, an uncertainty concerning the number of

renegade replicants surfaces. Ive got four skin jobs walking the streets,

says Bryant as Deckard enters his oce. Several minutes later, however,

he contradicts himself by stating that six replicants: three male, three

female escaped and came to Earth. One of the group, he adds, without

specifying the sex, was killed attempting to gain entry to the Tyrell Cor-

poration. This leavesfivereplicants at large, of course, but the figure slipsagain when Deckard is subsequently shown police files relating to just

fourfugitives. This inconsistency is repeated at a later moment in the nar-

rative, during the exchange between Deckard and Bryant which follows

the death of Zhora. Four more to go, says the Inspector, to which

Deckard replies: Three. Theres three to go. Bryant explains that he has

arrived at his figure by including Rachael, who has recently absconded,

but this merely raises another uncertainty: was she included in the figure

of six mentioned by Bryant during the first meeting? If she was, why is she

happily employed to work so closely with Tyrell? Why, moreover, is she

dierent from the other four replicants, who are all Nexus-6 models? And

why was Deckard not shown her police file by Bryant?

These questions raise the possibility that there is a replicant for whom

the text does not account. Blade Runner never explicitly states that this

mysterious figure is Deckard, of course, but I think that it is unable to

dismiss the possibility, particularly when the other troubling factors that

this essay is mapping are taken into account. The humanist attempt to

catalogue the replicants, to police the boundaries of subjectivity with astrict system of classification, cannot be realized: the vital list, together

with Deckards task, remains open to an unknown factor. There is a space

that cannot be filled, a figure that cannot be made present, a perhapsthat

cannot be driven out.

The shock of this perhaps is compounded by a series of remarks

directed by various characters towards Deckard. Each of the four appar-

ently inconsequential comments to which I wish to turn contributes, I

want to propose, to the wider waning of Deckards humanism. First,

when Deckard confronts Zhora at the nightclub, he asks about her condi-tions of employment. Somewhat bemused, Zhora asks: Are you for real?

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Come on, Deckard show me what youre made of. Finally, as Deck-

ard sits on the rooftop, reflecting upon Roys demise, Ga arrives in his

spinner and says: Youve done a mans job, sir. There is, of course, a

sense in which these sentences have absolutely straightforward meanings.I think, however, that there is another way to read them. Particularly

when they are considered alongside the ways in which the inconsistencies

in Blade Runners dialogue trouble the texts humanism, these four

phrases connote a questioning of Deckards subjectivity. Quite simply,

the audience cannot be sure if he is real, the good man, what he is

made of, or if he is actually a replicant doing a mans job.

These doubts reach a peak of intensity when a heated exchange

between Deckard and Rachael quite simply stalls after she asks him if he

has ever taken the Voigt-Kamp test. In the novel upon which the film isloosely based, Deckard is asked the same question:

This test you want to give me. Her voice, now, had begun to return. Have you

taken it?

Yes. He nodded. A long, long time ago; when I first started with the

department.

Maybe thats a false memory. Dont androids sometimes go around with false

memories?

Rick said, My superiors know about the test. Its mandatory.Maybe there was once a human who looked like you, and somewhere along the

line you killed him and took his place. And your superiors dont know. She

smiled. As if inviting him to agree. (Dick 1972: 79)

In the film, however, Deckard provides no answer: Rachael approaches,

waiting for the vital reply, but discovers that he has fallen asleep or

passed out. Another perhaps has arisen. Deckards silence is the knell of

humanism.

3.3. Memory, photography, authenticity

When Deckard fails to respond to Rachaels question, she crosses the

room to his piano, where the camera settles upon an array of photo-

graphs. I want to suggest that this movement, this stepping from doubt

to photography, is neither innocent nor isolated; on the contrary, itmakes literal in the form of a smooth tracking shot that connects the

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In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes declares a photograph to be a

certificate of presence (Barthes 1984: 87). Because it is literally an ema-

nation of the referent (1984: 80), a photographic image never lies: or

rather, it can lie as to the meaning of the thing, being by nature tenden-tious, never as to its existence (1984: 87). Its function is not to call up

the past . . . but to attest that what I see has indeed existed (1984: 82).

Photography, in other words, embodies and authenticates history, and

this is precisely how it is intended to operate for several of the characters

in Blade Runner.

When Deckard informs Rachael that she is a replicant, her response is

to produce a photograph: Look, she says, its me with my mother. This

is a decidedly Barthesian move, for one ofCamera Lucidas obsessions is

a (withheld) photograph of the authors mother as a young girl. Althoughdeath has made her absent, Barthes mother is deemed once to have lived,

once to have been present, because she is the subject of a photograph.

The picture has what Barthes calls a power of authentification (1984:

89); it confirms that memories are real and not mere fantasies. Rachael

places a similar trust in photography, for, if the image depicts her as a

child with her mother, she argues, she cannot possibly be a replicant.

Blade Runner makes this faith memorably visible with what Elissa

Marder has neatly called the moving still (Marder 1991). Distressed by

Deckards refusal to believe in the image, Rachael discards the photo-

graph and rushes from the apartment. As Deckard examines the object,

the characters depicted suddenly move, and the sound of children playing

is heard. Deckards insistence that the photograph is meaningless finds it-

self undermined at this moment, for, while Rachaels Barthesian beliefs

are dismissed by Deckard, the photograph, in keeping with the proposi-

tions ofCamera Lucida, is seen to have the power to move. It is striking,

moreover, that the image comes to life when the photograph is seen from

Deckards perspective. What is the ontological status of this particularshot? Why does it move (for) him? What possible attachment could he

have to the image? Could it perhaps trigger a memory, a memory that

he ought not to possess if he is human? If one of his own recollections

somehow resembles that of a replicants implant, then how can the blade

runners subjectivity escape suspicion?

The film acknowledges these questions, in fact, for the moving still

drives Deckard to think further about the status of photography. Leons

pictures had to be as phoney as Rachaels, he muses. I didnt know why

a replicant would collect photos. Maybe they were like Rachael theyneeded memories. Several minutes later, Deckard is shown at the piano,

d d b h t h th t b l t ith R h l L F



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We must assume that Deckard has retrieved his personal collection of family

photographs. Whatever Deckard saw when he looked at the image of Rachels

[sic] mother provokes him to look for his photographic memories. But from the

fragmented unrelated images that lie on the piano in front of him, we understandthat Deckards family photographs no more belong to him than Rachels photo

belonged to her. Many of the photos that Deckard retrieves appear to date from

the nineteenth century a time that he could never remember personally a

time that was never his photos of people he never knew. (Marder 1991: 101)

Deckards realization that Rachael experiences authenticity in what he

knows to be fake has provoked, in other words, a turn towards his own

certificate[s] of presence, to return to Barthes phrase. If Rachaels

photographs are able to depict that which can never have been, then

Deckards own snapshots and memories (and the relationship between

the two) are shot through with doubt. His pictures may actually be certif-

icates of absence. However much a photograph moves, it need not have a

referent, a real presence that it represents and reassures. The camera can

lie.

Elissa Marder also draws attention to Deckards initial response to Ra-

chaels photograph, noting that he follows his refusal to accept or look at

the picture by launch[ing] into an interrogation . . . that closely parallels

the structure of the [Voigt-Kamp ] empathy test (1991: 99). The tale ofchildhood sexuality subsequently narrated by Deckard is not, Marder

proposes, extracted from the collective memory banks out of which

Rachels implants were taken, for such an event would not have been

narrated . . . [and hence] appropriated by the Tyrell Corporation (1991:

99). This private memory, she concludes, can only belong to Deckard,

and is invoked as a means to construct a dierence between himself (as

human) and Rachel (as android) (1991: 99). This, of course, does not

account for Rachaels intervention into the second story recounted by

Deckard the narrative of the spider and Marder adds:

If this memory once belonged to Deckard, once Rachel tells it, Deckards private

memory no longer belongs to him. It is no longer his in the sense that this mem-

ory no longer uniquely remembers him his memories no longer unite discrete

bits of a private, personal past into a unified entity, an I named Deckard. As Ra-

chel remembers this past for him she dismembers him and dispossess [sic] him

of his I. (Marder 1991: 101)

This still does not address howRachael is able to intervene, to contributeto the narration of the memory; Marder acknowledges that the story of

th id i h d (1991 100) b t f il t th i li

484 N. Badmington


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ing of the scene in question, and I am particularly interested in one word

spoken by Deckard in the following exchange:

RACHAEL: You think Im a replicant, dont you. [Oering a photograph] Look its me with my mother.

DECKARD: Yeah? [Roughly, angrily removing his overcoat and jacket ] Remem-

ber when you were six? You and your brother snuck into an empty building

through a basement window you were going to play Doctor. He showed you

his, and when it got to be your turn, you chickened and ran. Remember that? You

ever tell anybody that? Your mother? Tyrell? Anybody? You remember the spider

that lived in a bush outside your window? Orange body, green legs. Watched her

build a web all summer, then one day there was a big egg in it. The egg hatched

. . .

RACHAEL: . . . the egg hatched . . .

DECKARD: Yeah.

RACHAEL: . . . and a hundred baby spiders came out, and they ate her.

DECKARD: Implants. Those arent your memories, theyre somebody elses,

theyre Tyrells nieces.

I am haunted by Deckards second use of the signifier Yeah in this con-

versation, and I want to suggest that it is possible to interpret the inter-

ruption as an interruption of his apparently human subjectivity. What if

he knows the memory in question because it is also one of his private

recollections? What if the Yeah is Deckards acknowledgment of his

possession of memory implants?

This is, I realize, a fairly provocative claim to make, but there is textual

evidence to support my assertion. When Deckard subjects Rachael to the

Voigt-Kamp test, he is forced to ask more than 100 questions before

reaching a verdict. The film only shows the first four and final enquiries,

however, and the passage of time is signified by a conventional visual and

aural dissolve. In the visual register, a close-up of Rachael exhaling ciga-rette smoke dissolves to a long shot of the room and subsequently to a

close-up of Deckard asking the final question. Aurally, matters are more

intriguing. As the first visual dissolve occurs, Rachaels response to the

question concerning the image of a naked woman is overlaid with an ex-

tremely faint fragment of dialogue, spoken by Deckard, for which there is

no accompanying image. What he actually says . . . bush outside your

window . . . orange body, green legs is, of course, an integral part of

the story of the spider which he later relates to Rachael in order to prove

that she is a replicant, and its ghostly presence at the earlier confrontationbetween the two characters is a little puzzling.

Bl d t th th f th ti th d i th



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me in the opening sequence and it is possible to conclude from this

that Deckard might not have been aware of the questions prior to the in-

terrogation itself. (He does, after all, read them, implying that they are

not committed to, or implanted in, memory.) I want to suggest that thisparticular Voigt-Kamp test presumably, due to his temporary retire-

ment from the profession, the first that Deckard has performed in some

time prompts the protagonist to question his own memories. What if,

that is to say, as he asks the question about the spider during the Voigt-

Kamp test, he realizes that it echoes one of his own private memories?

In the later scene, where he informs Rachael that her memories are im-

plants, he is clearly distressed about something, as both his tone of voice

and mannerisms reveal. Has he detected the possibility that he is not hu-

man? Have his questions questioned his subjectivity?I am not proposing that Blade Runner insists that Deckard is a repli-

cant with the same memories as Rachael, but I do think that yet another

perhaps is raised, and this represents a further blow to the humanist

framework within which Blade Runner formally seeks to remain. The

film cannot completely realize its humanism; Deckards secure position

at the centre of things is troubled by an irrepressible posthumanism. It is

not that the protagonist consciously misleads the viewer like the narrator

of Agatha Christies The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Christie 1957); it

may be, rather, that fundamental knowledge about Deckard is unknown

and inaccessible to Deckard himself. Although his name, as Kevin

McCarron has observed (McCarron 1995: 264), recalls that of Descartes,

Deckard cannot occupy the humanist subject position claimed by the

Cartesian cogito.

4. Its too late to stop now

What if there were no happy ending?

As is well known, the pastoral footage in Blade Runners closing scene

consists of out-takes from The Shining(dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980). Kaja

Silverman has cleverly subjected these images to the logic of Blade

Runneritself:

This conclusion thus works not only to problematize further the notion of the

natural, but to extend Blade Runners critique of referentiality to its own final

images, which constitute a literal implant. The 1982 ending consequently providesthe moment at which the film most emphatically asserts its own derivativeness

486 N. Badmington


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At the moment when Blade Runner seeks happily to seal itself into a co-

herent whole, in other words, it is driven to turn away from itself towards

another text. It steals as it seals, and, in doing so, it splits itself apart. The

Shiningglitters within Blade Runners conclusion as the mark of intertex-tuality, of the invasion of the outside into the inside.

As the first verdant image appears in the final sequence, moreover, clas-

sically romantic music in a major key is heard on the soundtrack. While

the viewer watches Deckard and Rachael smile at each other, and listens

to the formers optimistic words, the uplifting music continues, suggesting

a sense of contentment. However, when Deckard finishes his speech, the

pastoral beauty fades to black and, as the credits begin, the score abruptly

shifts in mood: the soft melody is replaced by a menacing theme in a mi-

nor key, as if the implant identified by Silverman suddenly fails, plung-ing the film back into the darkness and uncertainty which has dominated

the entire narrative. The note upon which Blade Runnerends is inconclu-

sive, ambiguous, threatening.

This, I think, is perfectly symptomatic, for Blade Runners happy

ending has no hope of keeping the text within the space of humanism.

I have already discussed how the words that Deckard speaks in the

voice-over that accompanies this scene work against anthropocentrism,

and it seems to me that the humanist understanding of subjectivity looks

even less convincing when the turn to The Shiningand the change from

major to minor keys are also taken into account. I cannot see, more-

over, how humanism could ever be rescued in Blade Runners final reel,

for too many cuts have already been made in the border that traditionally

holds human and inhuman in binary opposition. In the end, humanism

has no place in the sunset. In the end, Blade Runner outruns its blade

runners.

Notes

* For their comments on an earlier version of this essay, I am grateful to Catherine

Belsey, Diane Elam, Iain Morland, Rhys Tranter, and Thomas Vargish.

1. For reasons of convenience, all references in this essay simply toBlade Runner are to the

version of the film released in 1982. The 1992 and 2007 incarnations will always be

referred to as The Directors Cut and The Final Cut, respectively.

2. Transcription of voice-over

a. Opposite the sushi bar

They dont advertise for killers in a newspaper. That was my profession: ex-cop,

ex-blade runner, ex-killer.



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c. En route to the police station

The charmers name was Ga Id seen him around. Bryant must have upped him to

the blade runner unit. That gibberish he talked was city-speak, gutter-talk: a mish-mash

of Japanese, Spanish, German, what have you. I didnt really need a translator I

knew the lingo, every good cop did, but I wasnt going to make it easier for him.d. Bryants oce

Skin jobs: thats what Bryant called replicants. In history books hes the kind of cop

used to call black men niggers.

e. En route to the Tyrell Corporation

Id quit because Id had a bellyful of killing. But then Id rather be a killer than a victim,

and thats exactly what Bryants threat about little people meant. So I hooked in once

more, thinking that if I couldnt take it Id split later. I didnt have to worry about Ga

he was brown-nosing for a promotion, so he didnt want me back anyway.

f. Leons apartment.

I didnt know whether Leon gave Holden a legit address, but it was the only lead I had,so I checked it out.

g. Leons apartment

Whatever was in the bathtub wasnt human: replicants dont have scales. [PAUSE]. And

family photos? Replicants didnt have families either.

h. Deckards apartment

Tyrell really did a job on Rachael, right down to a snapshot of a mother she never had,

a daughter she never was. Replicants werent supposed to have feelings. Neither were

blade runners what the hell was happening to me? [LONG PAUSE] Leons pictures

had to be as phoney as Rachaels. I didnt know why a replicant would collect photos.

Maybe they were like Rachael they needed memories.

i. Street, following the retirement of ZhoraThe report would be Routine retirement of a replicant, which didnt make me feel any

better about shooting a woman in the back. There it was again: feeling, in my self, for

her, for Rachael.

j. Rooftop, following Roys death

I dont know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more

than he ever had before not just his life, anybodys life, my life. All hed wanted

were the same answers the rest of us want: Where do I come from? Where am I going?

How long have I got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die.

k. Deckards vehicle

Ga had been there and let her live. Four years, he figured he was wrong. Tyrell hadtold me Rachael was special, no termination date. I didnt know how long we had

together who does?

References

Barthes, Roland (1984). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Richard Howard

(trans.). London: Flamingo.

Beard, Steve (1992). Eight things you probably already know about Blade Runner.The Face

(December), 114.

Boozer, Jack, Jr. (1991). Crashing the gates of insight: Blade Runner. In Retrofitting Blade

Runner: Issues in Ridley Scotts Blade Runner and Philip K. Dicks Do Androids Dream

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Byers, Thomas (1987). Commodity futures: Corporate state and personal style in three re-

cent science-fiction movies. Science-Fiction Studies 14 (3), 326339.

Christie, Agatha (1957). The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. London: Fontana.

Dick, Philip K. (1972). Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?London: Panther.

Fancher, Hampton and Peoples, David (1981). Blade Runner: A Screenplay. Unpublishedmanuscript.

Heldreth, Leonard G. (1991). The cutting edges ofBlade Runner. InRetrofittingBlade Run-

ner: Issues in Ridley Scotts Blade Runner and Philip K. Dicks Do Androids Dream of

Electric Sheep?, Judith B. Kerman (ed.), 4052. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green

State University Popular Press.

Marder, Elissa (1991). Blade Runners moving still. Camera Obscura27, 89107.

McCarron, Kevin (1995). Corpses, animals, machines, and mannequins: The body and cy-

berpunk. In Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment,

Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows (eds.), 261273. London: Sage.

McNamara, Kevin R. (1997). Blade Runners post-individual worldspace. ContemporaryLiterature38 (3), 422446.

Meyers, Richard (1990). The Great Science Fiction Films: From Rollerball to Return of the

Jedi. Secaucus: Citadel.

Sammon, Paul M. (1996). Future Noir: The Making ofBlade Runner. New York: Harper-

Prism.

Silverman, Kaja (1991). Back to the future. Camera Obscura27, 109132.

Wood, Robin (1986).Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. New York: Columbia University

Press.

Neil Badmington (b. 1971) is a Senior Lecturer at Cardi University3Badmington@Cardi.

ac.uk4. His research interests include cultural criticism, poststructuralism, postmodernity,and posthumanism. His recent publications includeAlien Chic: Posthumanism and the Other

Within(2004); I aint got no body: Lyotard and Le Genreof posthumanism (2007); . . . a

drowning of the human in the physical: Jonathan Franzen and the corrections of human-

ism (2007); and The Inkredible Roland Barthes (2008).



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