Nexus 9 Research Paper

What makes something or someone human can often be unclear. Humans have many preconceived notions about who and what they are and what their rightful place in society is. These notions, however, are frequently at odds with reality. The uncertainty of what makes someone human is explored in Ridley Scott's classic science fiction film Blade Runner. Dr. Eldon Tyrell's Tyrell Corporation created the replicants to be sub-human servants that were clearly distinct from and inferior to human beings; the replicants were intentionally designed to be unable to express emotions, particularly empathy, which is believed to be a trait that only human beings can possess. Human beings believe that the quintessential thing that makes them human and distinguishes

In the movie Blade Runner, humans create “androids” that resemble humans physically and have human emotion, implanted memories and the purpose to work as slaves. Throughout the course of the movie these androids, which are later referred as “replicants,” start to realize their desire to live longer as humans do and to try to prevent their death. Humans are threatened by this desire the replicants build and start killing them off to prevent any destruction replicants might cause. A belief that these replicants should not be granted human rights comes into play and sets the audience to question whether replicants can be perceived as human or not. Replicants are seen as non-human throughout the movie Blade Runner, yet still live lives filled with emotion as humans do. Therefore, rather than calling replicants “non-human,” they should be called “persons” and should be granted human rights because they reflect real human emotion and had no part in their own creation. This constitutes their innocence making them undeserving of punishment.

Within Ridley Scott’s 1982 ‘Blade Runner’ memories serve as the “cushion” (‘Blade Runner’ 1982) for replicant emotion; subsequently making them easier to control. By this, memory lays a foundation, with past experiences creating a bridge to feel and identify as more human. Through past and present circumstances, mood, and relationships, memory serves as a lever to react with a “readiness to respond” (HM Works) within both the present and the future. Scott explores the function of memory in order to illustrate the human psychology in a complex light, using scientific references as to highlight key debates in what makes humans more empathetic and how they use memory in order to be a more emotive species; thus, evaluating the superiority of mankind. Memory in ‘Blade Runner’ is used in order to create a platform to mould replicants into society as more functioning humans as to be a more exact replica, rather than to serve as the initial function of a “slave” (‘Blade Runner’ 1982).

Blade runner promotes that empathy is the defining characteristics for humanity. The replicants, designed not to show any emotion, develop spiritually and emotionally throughout the film.

In Blade Runner, the Tyrell Corporation created advanced robot which were virtually identical to a human, they were known as a replicant. They were superior in strength and agility and at least equal in intelligence to the engineers that created them. The replicants were used for off-world as slave labour in hazardous explorations and colonisation of other planets. After a bloody mutiny replicants were declared illegal on earth. Special police units called Blade Runners were ordered to kill on sight “This was not called execution, it was called retirement” this quote manipulates our morality into a perception that is approvable by the tyrell corporation. Scott juxtaposes “executions” to “retirement” to convince society that corporation are in its core evil, as they manipulate people’s perspective of them by stating the righteousness of its actions, despite being blatant injustices behind the scenes. This particular scene is a message between the composer and the responder it helps mould our views on the rest of the movie to try to get us to be on the Tyrell Corporations side.There is dark irony through “execution” and “retirement”, Scott is trying to expose the corporations lack of morality for humanity appealing to audiences through the sheer power

Tyrell’s appearance and syntax delivers a cold artificial image. Batty is purposely humanized through emotions, “I want more life, father” while Tyrell’s cold response “it is not something I can promise” highlights the lack of humanity in the predicted context of 2019, depicting the replicants “more human than human”. The neglect of his creation parallels F, urging the audience to reflect on their ideals and notions of humanity in comparison to the characters present in both texts. Thus through texts, it is our ideals and morals shape our image of humanity.

One of these plot points is the character Roy Batty, aka the sadistic fuckhead that gets pleasure from mankind’s heartbreaking distraught caused by Buster Friendly (who ain’t that friendly, friend). In the movie, Roy Batty and the other andies are violent criminals.  They murder quite a few people who get in their way, but they never kill out of some sort of psychopathic detachment. They murder because they are afraid of dying, because they are plagued by the fear of the unknown.  And when Deckard dangles from the roof of Sebastian’s apartment, Roy reaches out and hauls his enemy onto the roof. In short, the Batty of Blade Runner is a flawed hero who empathized with Deckard in his last

Film Noir uses similar aspects to Romantic Gothic novels and uses darkness and shadows to set mood and to portray ideas. This can be seen in a number of scenes where Deckard is in his apartment. The light, or rather, the lack of, is used to highlight the depressive mood and to emphasise Deckard as a flawed and mysterious character. Additionally, the hardboiled genre features a fallible protagonist, in this case Deckard. The audience is continually questioning the morality and the agenda of the ‘Blade Runner’ through the entirety of the film, which can be paralleled with Frankenstein, and his lack of morality as his “eagerness perpetually increased” as he creates his

Blade Runner written by Ridley Scott is a movie based in the future. It is Scott's depiction of what is to become of Earth. But technological advances shown in Blade Runner have come to a point where humanity can be questioned. Reality is blurred and the nature of what is human is changing. Replicants appear identical to humans and even have emotions, while the real humans appear cold and unemotional. So who is really human and what does it mean to be humane?

‘Blade Runner’, the film adaption, directed by Ridley Scott in 1982, of the 1968 novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ by Philip K. Dick. This essay will explore the meaning of the Tyrell slogan “More human than human” by following Deckard on Earth in Los Angeles 2019 as a futuristic, dark and depressing industrial metropolis by looking into and discussing what is real and what is not, the good and the bad and why replicants are more appealing than humans. This essay will analyse and pull apart the “Blade Runner’ world, the condition of humanity and what it really means to be human.

It opposes the values of love, empathy and community with the innovative forms of technology and social life under advanced capitalism. The binary opposition between man and technology is represented by three characters in the plot: Deckard, apparently a human. Roy, an android who fears death and longs to be human and Rachel, who thinks she is human and who enters a relationship with a human. These replicants represent capitalism’s oppressive characteristics and also to a certain extent the rebellion against exploitation. Deckard's realization of how the Tyrell Corporation exploits him, and the rebellion of the replicants against their oppressors, is the ultimate critique of capitalism. Since both sides — killer and killed — reject their status as servants of the corporation and refuse further exploitation. (Kellner, et all) The corporation in the Blade Runner that is used to illustrate capitalism’s destructive characteristics is The Tyrell Coporation. The Tyrell Corporation invents replicants to have a controllable labor force that will perform difficult and dangerous tasks. Similarly applicable to today, where capitalism turns individuals into machines that have only the function of productivity. Ironically, the replicants form a human rebellion; while the actual human characters in the film seem to submit to corporate domination and live a life like the corporations sees them to. It seems as if the humans have become so dehumanized that the replicants form a rebellion against their oppressor instead of human beings. Capitalism has dehumanized the population to such an extent, that technology is actually more

This can be observed through Blade Runner’s hero Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) who struggles throughout the film to remember his past. A retired detective, Deckard was specialized in tracking down and destroying human replicants who attempt to live on earth. In 2019 the power of human replication has reached a new peak with the NEXUS 6; replicants that are far more advanced than their predecessors. They are stronger and more specialized than real humans because they are sent to off-world colonies as slave laborers. Deckard the best blade runner in Los Angeles is asked to return to duty a final time to find four NEXUS 6 replicants; Leon, Roy, Zhora and Pris, that returned to earth on a high jacked space shuttle. The replicants leader Roy wants to meet the designer of the replicants Elden

"Blade Runner" develops the notion of an android or replicant quite well, and it is the depiction of the android that calls into question the meaning of humanity. The viewer is constantly challenged to evaluate how human the androids are and how mechanical the humans are. This distinction is not easily made, as the androids are not simply robots. They are, in fact, artificial people created from organic materials. The robot now "...haunts the human consciousness and stares out through a mask of flesh". They have free will and some of the same emotions as humans, such as fear and love, but lack empathy, the ability to identify with the sufferings and joys of other beings, namely animals. However, in both the novel and the film the empathic ability of certain human beings such as Deckard is called into question. Aside from this, physically and behaviorally androids and humans are indistinguishable. Androids may even believe that they are human because of implanted artificial memory tapes, as is the case with Rachael.

One thing that separates the film from the novel is that at this time around there is significant emphasis on Roy Batty and his own particular empathic development. The androids were designed with four-year life, the rebel androids in the film attempt to think of an approach to prolong their lifespan, which proposes the androids have effectively, build up a feeling shared by all organic natural beings: which is fear of death. Since their flesh discovery, six-androids from Nexus-6 decided to seize an off-world transport and arrived on Earth, where they try to attack the Tyrell Corporation, the organization where the androids were produced. Two androids were destroyed and Deckard is assigned with chasing down the remaining four, along these

The book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep explores the theme of reality or, more specifically, the question, what is reality? To do this, the book provides the reader with many contradicting and unexpected outcomes to events. An example of this would be Rachel’s betrayal and killing of the sheep, the exposition of Mercerism, and Deckard’s ability to see and speak to Mercer at the book’s last stages. These events, through a surface reading, seem to only serve as plot outcomes that convolute the plot, but on further inspection and thought, the events cultivate the question of what is real and what is not in the book’s storyline. Rick Deckard’s origin, as either a human or android, is a question that is never explicitly answered in the book.