Gender Issues In Blade Runner

Blade Runner, the classic sci-fi noir movie by Hampton Fincher and David Peoples, is a futuristic perspective on slavery, humanity, and the rights of thinking beings. In the movie, Deckard, a blade runner and the main character of the story, hunts down Nexus 6 replicants: androids imposed with superhuman strength and nearly human intelligence who have gone rogue (2, 10). These androids are given a four-year lifespan to prevent them from developing human emotions which way throughout the movie to further complicate the balance between androids and humans (6). Throughout the movie, the line between humanity and inhumanity becomes thinner and better, causing problems for Deckard and Tyrell Corporation. In its entirety, Blade Runner is attempting to get the audience to decide whether replicants deserve the same freedom and rights as humans. To help the audience in their decision, the movie proved information about the supposedly "inhumane" replicants and their human creators.

Blade Runner is a fast thriller movie a race to find the robots who are running out of time to find the Dr. who created them. The Blade Runner film was in 1982 where is based upon the

“Doing Gender” is a phrase popularized by West and Zimmerman. It illustrates the theory that men and women perform actions that are in accordance with the gender norm. In some cases, people do act against the gender norm but it does not diminish the theory of “doing gender.” Our society has formed a rigid understanding of characteristics that are ascribed to the gender binary, which are masculinity and femininity. This social construct of gender dictates the behavior of the individual.

Blade Runner became recognized as a film noir due to Ridley Scott portrait of Los Angeles as it might be in 2019: smog covered sky, towering factories emitting giant flames, and massive financial conglomerates that leave shadows and darkness for the world below. The whole ornate architecture of the past has been replaced by the industrial world as it is left to be eroded away by the continuously falling acid rain. Humanity is left without an identity since there are only a few physical remnants of the past. People can no longer remember how things were before.

Blade Runner is a sophisticated film, but the most obvious and recognised out of the five genres is cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is known as a sub-genre to sci-fi films, whose movies generally will feature electronics like computers or cybernetics in a cyberspace setting. Cybernetic organisms, which are known as replicants during Blade Runner are the reason for the cyberpunk theme and who are responsible for the forbidding vision of the future earth abandoned by the capitalism behaviour which becomes uncontrollable. In the year 2019, large companies in the film have exchanged with the government. Since then the earth turns into a degraded mess environmentally a place where people, look forward to abandoning in favour of the recognised off-world colonies. A primary example during the film is J.F Sebastian who is the last resident of his entire apartment building. Unfortunately in the film the only people left on planet earth are hopeless people who financially can’t meet the expense to leave and those who profit by manipulating and taking advantage of them. (Wikia,

Who doesn’t love a movie where the protagonist is off on a quest for revenge in numerous action sequences for his taste of sweet, sweet revenge? When breaking films into this type of category, one film that stands out among the rest has to be Gladiator. Gladiator can be argued as one of the greatest action movies of all time, and for good reasons. The soundtrack, dialogue, and characters have no equal in the revenge action category of film, and can be considered tops of pure action films. Gladiator is a perfectly well rounded movie that adds the best of all worlds to create the masterpiece seen today.

There is no denying that “Blade Runner 2049” is among the best releases of the year, and better yet, one of the most visually stunning and conceptually sound films you will ever see. Villeneuve’s latest masterpiece exudes intelligence, maturity and artistic integrity without giving in to it blockbuster hype. It remains faithful to the universe three decades in the making but does so without losing touch with

Blade Runner examines the meaning of human existence and whether or not being human affects the meaning of one’s individual existence. The definition of human is so flexible and indistinct in the context of the film. Replicants, a kind of android, are physically indistinguishable from humans, which is why a Voight-Kompff test is needed to detect replicants by their responses to emotional situations; however, the existence of Rachael, a replicant who has been given artificial memories in order to help her understand and experience emotion and make her more human-like, changes that distinction. The ambiguity of human identity and experience is highlighted when Rachael questions the humanity of the presumably human blade runner, Rick Deckard,

Certain aspects of society often inspire films. Filmmakers usually hyperbolize issues in order to position the audience to perceive the world in a certain way. At the start of a new millennium, where computers and the Internet were getting popular, the Wachowski brothers decided to make a movie to inform the world of the dangers of letting technology control our lives. The movie, The Matrix, is a film about how humans have become brainwashed and confined in a highly technological time. The main character Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is a professional coder by morning and an illegal hacker by night. The plot begins to roll when he is dragged into a world of agents and gravity defying action. This film shows the typical view of a working culture in our society and also shows how we sometimes forget that we are in control of our lives and all our decisions have consequences.

The social expectations and stereotypes associated to certain genders plays a major role in how people are discriminated against. Gender is only one aspect of a person’s identity, yet society, especially in the past, places a large amount of value on a person’s gender. In my own experiences, people would consider me incapable of performing certain tasks for the sole purpose that I am a girl. They disregard, mock and belittle me for being a young woman, rather than see me as something more than my gender. Worse yet, I sometimes think myself inadequate, just because I am a girl, due to the sexist messages that bombard me on a daily basis by the media and people in my life.

Blade Runner became a cult classic. “The film may have survived long enough to benefit from a renewed taste for darker, more violent sci-fi. It’s appeal has less to do with a fascination for outer space (which does not feature beyond reference in a few lines of dialogue) than with a vision of earth and humankind in the near future” (Roberts and Wallis Pg 157-8). Both films have a timeless quality to it, as they are representative of the future of our planet earth. I find it so interesting that even though these films were made in different times their ideas about the futuristic city and society are almost identical.

Traditional gender roles were constructed based on devotion to cultural value as well as social construct based geographical placement. Males were usually associated and expected to express masculinity while females on the other hand had to express femininity (Ickes). The gender roles have been preserved for too long and it has become almost like a permanent component of a society—like a body part itself, rather than a constructed norms. Thus, the traditional gender roles are not easily eradicated, nor revamped. Rather, deviating from gender roles is considered a taboo. As a result of unwritten law of gender roles, gender stereotype rises.

For centuries, women and men have been labeled because of their sex. Regardless of how strong a woman is, or how sensitive a man is, society will hold them to a certain standard because of their gender. Especially if that individual grew up learning certain traditions within their culture. Gender roles is defined as ‘normal’ standards created by society in many countries all over the world. The gender roles are that, “… masculine roles are usually associated with strength, aggression, and dominance while feminine roles are associated with passivity, nurturing, and subordination.” according to thebundless.com. Cultural traditions

In society, whether you are a male or female there are certain expectations attached due to your gender and the sex you were born with. Society deems what is acceptable and what is the norm throughout the years and it changes as time goes on therefore those norms change as well. Throughout living, individuals are shaped by how society depicts them to be whether it is voluntary or not and are found to be deviant when they prefer to not follow those standards. Despite having adjustments during the course of time, there will still be some kind of model for the standard female and male as norms change with the general public. Some of the things that society glues onto gender are the standards and expectations that are forced upon the sex you were assigned to and or the gender you identify as. These could also be stereotypes that develop after a series of constant indicators that lead to the same outcome, such as ‘females needing to be nurturing’ and ‘males needing to be strong’, after hearing this repetitively, it begins to stick and those who are opposite of that will receive the brunt of the judging. Therefore, stereotypes and acts of deviance will shape how contemporary society assesses gender and sex as well as the different experiences individuals will undergo.

Gender has been thought of to be a part of the human condition, that it is a part of nature and as creatures of nature, it is inherently fixed within us. This idea has led many to believe that there only one way to experience gender that follows the law of nature. The natural way is to be a masculine male, or a feminine female, to form romantic and sexual relationships with the opposite sex, and to perform the way that is expected of their sex. The belief in this innate male-female dichotomy is a fundamental piece of society’s structure. Infants are gendered the second they are born, and throughout their lives they are guided and beat into the path chosen for them. Every detail of their everyday life is scripted for them and whenever they fail to deliver a line or make the specific move in that script, they are reprimanded and made to repeat it and repeat it until it is learned. The script is repeated so often that the role becomes alive within them until they have immersed themselves so deeply into the role that they completely embody it. Obviously the fact that gender normativity has to be ingrained into individuals since infancy negates the idea of it being innate. However, society still insists on continuing and implementing this idea onto everyone even though it is built on a flawed and weak foundation. The false belief that gender is inherent within us is not even the only flaw; there are so many people that do not fall within the natural way of experiencing gender