dicks androids and scotts replicants essay

You might be wondering why I said bounty hunter instead of blade runner?. Well, the term blade runner is never used in the novel.. Scott was told of a William Burroughs book named Blade

Dicks' Androids and Scotts' Replicants

Michael Tschappat

Patricia Stull

English 102

11/25/96

Philip K Dick has written over fifty novels, and is

considered among some

of the greatest experimental writers of the 1950s and '60s, such as; William

Burroughs, J.G Ballard, and Thomas Pynchon.(Star 34) He has written

science-fiction and regular science-fiction His science-fiction usually spoke of people trying to

figure out who they are, or what they are supposed to be He is best known,

however, for his work in science-fiction, and this represents the majority of

his work He has, also, won awards for two of his

science-fiction novels He

won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the

John W Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in

1974 for Flow My

Tears, The Policeman Said (Brians 1) An opera has been based

on one of P.K.D

later novels, Valis (Brians 1) One of his short stories, We Can Build It For

You, was made into a movie recently The movie was Screamers, starring Peter

Weller He has also had two of his novels, We Can Remember It for You

Wholesale (Total Recall), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner),

made into movies Of the two, Blade Runner (B.R.) has had the greatest impact

B.R., however, differs greatly from Dicks' original novel, Do Androids Dream of

Electric Sheep? (D.A.D.O.E.S.)

Blade Runner was released in 1982 under the direction of Ridley Scott,

who also made another sci-fi classic, Alien

The film begins in the city of Los Angeles The year is

2019 The city of

Los Angeles is overpopulated, teeming with all sorts of humans Japanese ADs

are all over the place The Japanese input was strictly the director, Ridley

Scot's Scott saw the future world being controlled by the

Japanese Philip K

Dick did not mention this The planet is recovering from World War III,

although I'm not sure they actually say this In the book, the war is clearly

stated and was called World War Terminus The effects of the radiation has

mutated some people Only the ones who had not been disfigured

or altered

genetically by radiation from the nuclear bombs could emigrate, (leave the

planet earth) Some, who were perfectly healthy chose to stay,

however They

stayed because they were stubborn and wanted to die on the planet they were born

on The chickenheads had to stay, it was law Chickenheads is Dicks term for

the disfigured or the genetically altered They are also

referred to as

specials There are no chickenheads in the movie None of this

is made clear

in the movie, but this is what is explained in the novel

The ones who do emigrate to other planets receive one free worker to help

them with their settling of a new home The worker is not human

It is an

android In the movie they are called replicants or skin-jobs These are the

newest versions of androids, which were created by the Rosen Association They

are Nexus-6 Nexus-6 mimic humans in every way, except in one thing, they have

no empathy

Empathy is the ability to feel for another For example, if you cared for

a puppy that was beaten, skinned, and then left to die, that care would be

empathy Androids don't have this trait They would watch the puppies' skin be

removed without a blink in their eyes They can pretend to feel, but they'd

have to know first there was something disturbing about the

skinning of a puppy

The nonexistent empathy of replicants is never discussed in the movie, but it

is pretty obvious in the way they kill or try to kill This lack

of empathy

scared many humans on earth, so a law was passed that didn't allow androids on

the planet

In the novel, this is where the bounty hunters come in Their job is to

retire (kill) the androids, who have somehow escaped to earth or just were never

weeded out from the other humans

You might be wondering why I said bounty hunter instead

of blade runner?

Well, the term blade runner is never used in the novel

Apparently, Ridley

Scott wanted a specific name for the people who hunted down the androids He

didn't want to just call them bounty hunters Scott was told

of a William

Burroughs book named Blade Runner: The Movie The book was never

a movie

Burroughs just had that in the title Scott liked the way blade runner sounded,

so he bought the rights of the Burroughs novel (Blackwood) That

is how he came

up with the title and a name for the hunters of the replicants The way a blade runner can know if an android is a human or not is through

the Voight-Kampff test This is shown in the movie, although not used as much

as in the novel The test consists of the tester setting up several scenarios

and seeing the testes's responses The responses are measured through dilation

in the eyes and the blushing of cheeks The blushing is recorded

by a device

that is placed on your face and the dilation of the eye; by a laser that shines

in your eye An example of something that Deckard or whoever was administering

the test would say was: "You are watching an old movie on TV, a movie from

before the war It shows a banquet in progress; the guests are enjoying raw

oysters."

"Ugh," Rachel said; the needles swung swiftly

"The entree," he continued, "consists of boiled dog, stuffed with rice."

The needles moved less this time, less than they had for the raw oysters "Are

raw oysters more acceptable to you than a dish of boiled dog? Evidently

not."(Dick 45) A human would react more to the dog than raw oysters This

showed that this particular subject, Rachael Rosen, was an

android It wouldn't

just be one question though, it would be many All would be something along

these lines, though After, he found out for sure; the android, ( or in the

movie: replicant), would be retired The Voight-kampff test is only shown at

the beginning of the movie when Dave Holden is administering the test to Polokov,

a replicant

The main character of the novel and movie is Rick Deckard Deckard is

played by Harrison Ford He is a blade runner (bounty hunter) that has come out

of retirement Rick is hired to track down four androids: Roy Baty, Pris,

Luba, and Polokov The original number of replicants had been five, but one of

his colleagues, Dave Holden, had already retired one The name

of the retired

replicant is never mentioned The original five had killed their human masters

on another planet, stolen a ship, and illegally come to earth

In D.A.D.O.E.S.,

the original number of androids is eight and Holden retires two, leaving six for

Deckard Holden was only able to kill one; because he is

paralyzed by

Polokov, while administering the Voigt-Kampff test This, also,

is what happens

in the novel: Polokov shoots a laser through Holdens' back So, Deckards'

search begins, and the hunt for the replicants' (androids) is on The remaining part of the film, is Deckard tracking down and killing the

renegade replicants

When first released, B.R was not a commercial success.(Star 39) Some

audiences members loved it, but others didn't think it was so great The box

office showed the latter: not very good The film made little

money But, one

thing that almost all people did enjoy from the film was the scenery and the

visionary background The set designs were wonderful Roger Ebert, a critic of

the Chicago Sun-Times said, " It looks fabulous, it uses special effects to

create a new world of it's own, but it is thin in its human

story" (Ebert 1)

Ebert gave it an overall rating of three stars His opinion, though, summed up

the majority opinion of the few people who went and saw it at the theater The

special effects and background were great, but the plot was weak

It was just

another action film, with a lot of violence; nothing unique about

it Even

though the movie did not make money at first; over the years, it would become a

cult classic

The late interest was most likely sparked by a new version that would be

released years after the original release of the movie The version, Blade

Runner: The Director's Cut, was what the director, Ridley Scott, originally

wanted (Scott) Apparently, the original movie that came out

at theaters in

1982 had been tainted by Hollywood producers, with editing (Berry 16) They

said the film was too confusing and didn't have a happy ending

"Preview

audiences found this ending too ambiguous and bleak" (Smith 2) You have to have

a cheesy happy ending in Hollywood

The 1982 release has Deckard and Rachael, (a replicant that

is an exact

copy of the daughter of the President of The Rosen Association;

he falls in love

with her), at the end, riding off into the country

Supposedly, these scenes

were out takes from The Shining (Smith 2) The producers didn't like Scotts

ending In Scott's ending, Deckard and Rachael enter an

elevator, and then the

movie abruptly ends Too unhappy

The producers also thought the movie was too confusing and not clear, so

they added a voice-over; someone narrating the story (Berry 16) The narrator

was Deckard (Harrison Ford)

Blade Runner: The Director's Cut, returns the original

scenes The happy

ending is gone, and there is no more voice-over This changed the effect of the

movie In the 1982 release it gave you the feel of an old Bogart movie In the

new version, a new mood is brought out, and a better effect is created The

narration was totally unnecessary The movie becomes more

enjoyable

The followers of B.R grows; as the sparks of interest touch them with

this improved movie This is how the director had originally

created it B.R.

should have been released this way, originally Proof of this is shown just in

this newfound interest Remember, the movie originally bombed at the box office,

but now people loved it

The second director's cut, however, would fan those sparks

of interest up

into flames

There had been rumors, that in the original screenplay, it was quite

obvious that Deckard was a replicant Deckard, the replicant hunter, was a

replicant himself! Blade Runner: The Directors Cut II

confirmed this rumor

Evidence is plentiful that Deckard was actually a replicant himself First,

is the glowing eyes (Bitnet 22) When he(Deckard) goes to meet The President of

The Rosen Association to discuss the knowledge of any replicants

on earth, there

is a replicant owl and if you watch when the owls' head turns, you can see an

orange glow in its; eyes The glow is also in Rachael eyes, and can be seen in

Roys' when he is first introduced in the movie Later, if you watch closely,

you can see that same glow in Deckards eye in a scene where he is talking to

Rachel of someday someone will hunt her down When he turns his head, you can

see the glow You have to be watching extremely close to notice

it, and it he