Blade Runner and Frankenstien

Thesis

* The replicants represent an attempt to recreate humanity. Roy: “we’re not computers Sebastian, we’re physical”

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* By giving the replicants unique and distinctive identities and showing them demonstrate human emotions such as desire, love and hatred, Scott encourages us to empathies with them as “human” victims

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* The opening sequences features ominous foreboding music and a dark mise-en-scene. There is a continued soundscape of emergency sirens throughout the film.

* The soundscape and mise-en-scene of the film highlight that the future is a depressing place where order has been lost and chaos reigns supreme.

* Bryant: “If you’re not cops you’re little people … no choice pal”.

* Recurring search lights and shadowed bars across the characters faces.

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* The repeated visual lighting technique is symbolic of a society under constant surveillance, the culmination of Freud’s super-panopticon. The lighting technique of shadowed bars across the characters faces suggests their free will has demised and they are imprisoned by the rules of their society.

* The visual representation of the city of LA highlights the natural environment and the receding role of “nature” in the future.

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* The opening panoramic montage highlights that manmade colossal structures overwhelm the landscape and there are no natural elements in the environment.

Conclusion

* Frankenstein represents humanity’s hubris and folly personified when he is horrified by his attempt to recreate human life and punished for it by a life of misery (the creature kills his loved ones: William, Clerval, Elizabeth) and his own death due to exhaustion. “His limbs were nearly frozen and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition”.