Afterword (2016): AfterHuman
Afterword (2016): AfterHuman
This afterword discusses the continuing appeal of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982). First, the film recognised that contemporary existence would be increasingly augmented. The fear today that augmentation will lead to us loving our screens more than we do each other is already found in the screenscapes of Blade Runner. Second, Blade Runner recognised that the human condition was about to enter a fully post-human state. This is the conceit of digital-age, science fiction film in general: not only does it replicate the core values, hopes, and concerns of the post-human condition — prophesises on its future possibilities — but helps herald in the actual experience of humans living cybernetic lives. In part, Blade Runner also builds its narrative out of the commercialisation of knowledge in the (coming) age of a computerised society where the grand narratives of pre-modernity no longer hold true; surveillance culture is writ large across the film. Last, at the aesthetic level, Blade Runner prophesises on the way space and place was (is) being deterritorialised and reterritorialised, never simply grounded or rooted to a fixed location, but constantly remediated and reconstituted.
Keywords: Ridley Scott, Blade Runner, augmentation, post-human state, science fiction film, cybernetic lives, computerised society, surveillance culture, space
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