The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film

Steven M. Sanders, Steven M. Sanders

• Éditeur: The University Press of Kentucky
• Année: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780813137186
• Sujet: Media & Performing Arts
• Sous-sujet: Film & Video

Thought-provoking essays on movies from Metropolis to The Matrix. The science fiction genre, through films such as Blade Runner, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Terminator, not only entertains us but makes us think—about the implications of new technologies, the parameters and possibilities of space and time, and, in the age of artificial intelligence and robotics, the meaning of humanity itself. The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film explores the storylines, conflicts, and themes of fifteen science fiction film classics. Editor Steven M.Sanders and a group of outstanding scholars in philosophy, film studies, and other fields raise science fiction film criticism to a new level by penetrating the surfaces of the films to expose the underlying philosophical arguments, ethical perspectives, and metaphysical views.

Part 1

ENIGMAS OF IDENTITY AND AGENCY

WHAT IS IT TO BE HUMAN?

Blade Runner and Dark City

Deborah Knight and George McKnight

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1998) take place in dystopic cities set in the future of what appears to be our world.¹ Both literally and metaphorically, these are dark cities. Blade Runner is set in Los Angeles in 2019. The city is a gloomy, rainy, commercially driven, multiethnic megalopolis composed of street-level stall vendors, abandoned downtown buildings, and huge modernist and Mayanesque complexes housing the most powerful members of society. Our protagonist, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former member of a special police squad, is coerced into taking on one more job, to kill four humanlike androids, known as replicants, who have escaped from their off-world colony and returned to Los Angeles literally to meet their maker, the inventor Tyrell (Joe Turkel). The Tyrell Corporation, which seems to control much of what goes on in the city, is engaged in the genetic engineering of replicants to work as slaves in the off-world colonies as well as in the manufacture of other artificial creatures. From Tyrell's apartment high above the city, the light from the sun is barely visible, while at street level, the sun's rays do not penetrate. Los Angeles appears to have suffered some terrific calamity that has destroyed much of the environment. Nature seems no longer to exist. There are no trees, flowers, or living animals in the city. The only animals we see in Blade Runner are sophisticated replications, for example Tyrell's owl. In the city, huge electronic advertisements promoting various corporate products illuminate the sky, while the congestion of the city is represented by traffic both on the ground and in the air. The off-world colonies are promoted as new lands of opportunity and adventure, suggesting that those who can afford to leave Los Angeles either have done so or are doing so.

Dark City confronts us with a sprawling metropolis perpetually trapped in the gloom of night, a nearly paranoid protagonist whose memory appears to have been erased, and an alarming, misanthropic group of extraterrestrials, known as the Strangers, who exert a mysterious control over the city and its inhabitants. It is a film that, like Blade Runner, combines science fiction with film noir but adds the innocent-on-the-run thriller to the mix. We follow our protagonist, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), as he tries to remember who he is and discover whether he is what the police suspect him of being, a vicious serial killer of prostitutes. It quickly becomes apparent that not only the police are interested in Murdoch. The extraterrestrials, as well as a dubious psychoanalyst, Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), are interested in him as well, although their purposes are far from clear. There are several decidedly odd features of the city. One is that nightly it undergoes radical transformations: buildings spring up here and disappear there, something the city's inhabitants are unaware of because at midnight they fall into a virtually comatose sleep, while in the meantime their identities and memories might be transformed. Another is that nearly everyone John Murdoch asks about his hometown just outside the city, the seaside community called Shell Beach, claims to remember the place but has no recollection of how to get there. This leads Murdoch to realize that there doesn't seem to be any way to get out of the city, and surely it is a very odd city indeed, one with a highly developed transportation system, including a subway system suggestive of New York City's, that has no outside.² Murdoch also discovers odd things about himself; for instance, when time stops at midnight and the other inhabitants fall asleep, he remains awake and can observe the transformations that take place.

Blade Runner and Dark City are examples of a subgenre of science fiction known as cyberpunk.³ Cyberpunk is associated with a dark vision of the near future on Earth, where humans are under the influence of electronic, informational, genetic, and other technologies, making it virtually impossible to distinguish between the real and the artificially replicated. This uncertainty applies to a variety of cases, from whether particular creatures are real—in Blade Runner, the question arises initially, for instance, with respect to Tyrell's owl as well as his assistant, Rachael (Sean Young)—to whether an individual's memories are veridical or implanted, as we see in connection with Blade Runner’s replicants as well as with John Murdoch and others in Dark City. In this essay, we will explore key science fiction themes and conventions as well as major philosophical issues that Blade Runner and Dark City raise, which revolve around the central question, What is it to be human?⁴

Science Fiction Meets Film Noir

Both films employ thematic conventions closely associated with film noir, for instance, a dystopic city, a mystery, a detective figure, a variety of characters with sinister motives, the uncertainty of romantic love, and a bleak, indeed fatalistic, tone. From the very beginning of Dark City and emerging partway through Blade Runner, uncertainty is a central thematic element. John Murdoch has reason to doubt himself and his memory from the moment he awakens at the beginning of the film in a hotel bathtub with a lightbulb swinging from the ceiling above him. Also in the hotel room are a bizarre medical instrument and the body of a dead woman. In the pockets of his overcoat are newspaper clippings detailing the serial killings of a number of prostitutes. Putting everything together, Murdoch imagines he must be the murderer. Given that he cannot remember anything, most particularly how he came to be in the hotel room in the first place, uncertainty characterizes Murdoch's thoughts and experiences from the first moments of the film. By contrast, Deckard initially appears to be a completely self-reliant figure, something of an outsider even though he is again working for the police to resolve problems threatening the Tyrell Corporation, and believes he is able to take care of himself while hunting down the escaped replicants. Thus, at the outset, it seems that Deckard does not suffer any sort of uncertainty about himself, his abilities, or the nature of his job. Nevertheless, toward the end of Blade Runner, Deckard has as much reason to doubt himself and his memory as does John Murdoch.

Early in Dark City and late in Blade Runner, our protagonists wind up on the run. John Murdoch is an innocent on the run, since he has been framed for the various murders he is suspected of having committed.⁵ Innocents on the run typically become caught up in a set of circumstances they do not understand. They are not guilty of the crimes they are accused of but find themselves pursued by both the police and those who are in fact guilty of the crimes in question. Thus it is legitimate for John Murdoch to run since he cannot be sure that he is not the serial killer the police believe him to be, and moreover he needs to run in order to prove his innocence. Late in Blade Runner, Deckard and Rachael are also on the run, due in large measure to Deckard's change of heart about Rachael's moral status as a replicant and his own suspicion that perhaps he is a replicant as well. They are escaping an unjust regime whose notion of what counts as a genuine crime—for instance, that a replicant might wish to live as a human on Earth—is put into question by the film. In attempting to escape, both Deckard and Murdoch must guard themselves against capture while also trying to uncover the solution to the mysteries they have found themselves at the center of. What is striking about these two films as examples of noir-influenced science fiction drawing on the innocent-on-the-run thriller is that in both, the mystery in question is not primarily focused on discovering the truth behind a particular event or on answering the questions of who did what when, where, and why. Rather, for both Deckard and Murdoch, the mystery they are at the center of turns out to be a mystery concerning identity—namely, their own identities.

Blade Runner and Dark City exploit the idea, so prevalent in noirinfluenced science fiction, that human or humanlike life can be either created at will by rogue scientists or manipulated by extraterrestrials with superior scientific powers. In both films we find the noir thematic of a figure (Tyrell in Blade Runner) or group (the Strangers in Dark City) who tries to control some of the film's central characters or even the protagonist himself. While each of the replicants is given a distinct human form, Tyrell's objective as their designer is to make their identity subservient to their primary functions. The escaped Nexus 6 models include those designed for combat, such as Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and Leon Kowalski (Brion James); Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), who was designed as a member of an off-world kick-murder squad; and Pris (Daryl Hannah), who was designed as a basic pleasure model. A further measure intended to control the replicants is the fact that Tyrell, in conjunction with the police, has made it illegal for replicants to return to Earth from their enslavement in the off-world colonies. Moreover, it is because of Tyrell's enormous power and close connection to the police that Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh), Deckard's police boss, can force Deckard into taking on the job of terminating the replicants. As Deckard realizes, he has no choice.

The Strangers are a collection of ashen-faced, black-robed male creatures of different ages who enjoy certain superhuman abilities, for example the ability to stop time and to rearrange physical space. They are an ominous lot, as we discover most chillingly through the figure of the youngest Stranger, a malevolent male child who repeatedly threatens John Murdoch.⁶ Their primary henchman is an equally disturbing human psychoanalyst, Dr. Schreber, who we eventually discover is central to the complex experiments with implanted memories that the Strangers have been conducting on most of the inhabitants of the city. The character of Schreber is a wonderful collection of tics and oddities. As played by Sutherland, Schreber seems to always have to gasp for breath, and he is periodically found by Murdoch in public bathing houses because, it appears, the Strangers cannot abide water, so it is the one place where he is safe from them. During the course of the film, John Murdoch must learn to trust Schreber if the Strangers’ plans are to be defeated.

Both Deckard and Murdoch must determine just which broader schemes they are pawns in. It is one thing for Murdoch to be pursued by the police, who suspect he is a murderer. But who are the others who are after him, and why? Deckard must reexamine his own identity when it occurs to him that if he is a replicant, he may, like Roy and the other Nexus 6 models, have a very limited lifespan. These narrative twists display the fatalistic element of film noir, where Deckard and Murdoch must struggle to regain control over their circumstances. Until they sort out the schemes they are each inadvertently part of, neither Deckard nor Murdoch fully understands what he is caught up in or the potential consequences that lie in wait. Only when they understand these things can they take action to extricate themselves. At the same time, both Deckard and Murdoch must discover who they are. For example, in the director's cut of Blade Runner, it is strongly hinted that Deckard is not human after all but a replicant created to kill other replicants. If Deckard believes that he is human, he is likely to make choices and take actions that he would not take if he came to believe that he was a replicant. The issue becomes focused through Deckard's increasing involvement, including his romantic involvement, with Rachael. Deckard not only knows that Rachael is a replicant, he knows what memories Tyrell typically implants in his replicants, which means that Deckard can tell Rachael about memories she has never disclosed to anyone, let alone to him. As he becomes more strongly attracted to Rachael, he realizes that he cannot complete the job Bryant assigned to him—to kill her.

Two events have particular importance as Deckard tries to discover his own identity as either human or replicant. The first event occurs as Deckard examines the various sets of photographs that the replicants use as memory devices. The replicants have implanted memories, as well as family photos provided to them to support their memories. Deckard realizes that one of his own family photos is identical to a photo possessed by the Nexus 6 replicant Leon, leading him to think that perhaps he too is nonhuman. The second event occurs as Deckard and Rachael escape from his apartment at the end of the film, when Deckard notices a tiny origami figure in the shape of a unicorn. Previously in the film, Bryant's assistant, Gaff (Edward James Olmos), has left suggestive origami figures for Deckard to notice. The origami unicorn is particularly important to Deckard because, earlier in the film, he had a dream that featured a white unicorn. So while the unicorn is emblematically the figure protecting the virgin, and as such suggests Gaff's support of Deckard's actions to save Rachael, Gaff's origami unicorn may also strongly suggest to Deckard that Gaff knows Deckard's memories are implanted just as Deckard knows Rachael's are implanted.⁷ If Deckard, too, has implanted memories, then it is a simple step to conclude that he is a replicant. The film is not decisive on this issue but strongly implies that Deckard is not human.

Eventually in Dark City we learn the significance of the macabre medical instrument found in the hotel room John Murdoch wakes up in. This instrument is used by Schreber to implant memories in the various people the Strangers are interested in experimenting on. Although initially it might appear that this is the weapon used to kill the dead woman Murdoch finds in his hotel room, later we learn that it was in fact intended to be used to inject Murdoch's brain with memories that would coincide with being a serial killer found in a hotel room with a murdered prostitute. What the Strangers have achieved as a result of their various scientific experiments is a close analysis of how humans act given their beliefs about their own pasts. Hence the Strangers enter the city each night at midnight, stopping the clock as they work, to restructure the memories of certain inhabitants as well as the cityscape in which the inhabitants live. The Strangers believe that memory is what is characteristically human, and thinking that, they transform human memory at will to see what the results might be. Later, Murdoch suggests that memory might not have been their best choice to discover what is quintessentially human. And he is in a good position to offer this thought, since his memory has repeatedly been completely reprogrammed by the Strangers.

Philosophical Themes

Science fiction is a genre that exploits, probably more than any other, a range of central philosophical themes and topics. Of course, various genres raise philosophical questions. The western and the crime film ask, in different ways, What is justice? The family melodrama and the romantic comedy ask, in different ways, What is love? But it is a feature of science fiction to ask such questions as, What is it to be human? What are the conditions of personal identity? What are the roles played by reason/desire/memory in human existence? Both Blade Runner and Dark City examine these key themes. Arguably, these are the sorts of questions that naturally arise from noir science fiction narratives that feature high degrees of uncertainty: uncertainty about one's identity and actions, uncertainty about who and what can be...

Table des matières

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science Fiction Film
• Part 1: Enigmas of Identity and Agency
• Part 2: Extraterrestrial Visitation, Time Travel, and Artificial Intelligence
• Part 3: Brave Newer World: Science Fiction Futurism
• List of Contributors
• Index