Ideology as Dystopia: An Interpretation of Blade Runner

Abstract

Film and other forms of popular culture place enormously powerful tools at the disposal of students of politics and society. This paper analyses an aesthetically complex, philosophically disturbing and ideologic ally ambivalent cinematic dystopia of a few years ago, Blade Runner. Unlike the vast majority of films in the science fiction genre, Blade Runner refuses to neutralize the most abhorrent tendencies of our age and casts serious doubt on a host of the clichés about where we should locate their causes. Among the most significant questions it challenges us to confront are: In what does the "truly human" consist? Does the concept of imitating "truly human" beings retain any coherence once the feasibility of designing "more human than human" robots becomes an increasingly imaginable technological possibility? What might relations between the sexes and family life become if the twin eventuality of an uninhabitable earth and the perfection of robotic technologies should come about? While political theorists are asking themselves, "What and where should political theory be now?", this paper contends that at least part of their time should be spent at the cinema, deep in thought and imagination.