Blade Runner

It's interesting that part of this blog assignment was to talk about the eyes in the film because upon viewing, All I could pay attention to was the obsession with eyes. Whether it was the scene where the two replicants meet with the man who manufactures eyes, or the way the camera focuses on Rachael's eyes as the light hits them (looking the way that an animals eyes look when using a camera flash). Even the first scene of the film shows the closeup of an eye gazing upon the dark, dismal view of Los Angeles. An eye is usually a reference to what makes us human (i.e. "the eyes are the window to the soul") and since they appear to be the most important part of the human body, especially in this film, I would say that they give the viewer a sense of artificiality. Hence why the camera focuses a lot on the glow from Rachael's eye as well as the other replicants; because it gives the viewer an idea that these replicants can't and never will be human. Another thing that doesn't get a lot of focus in discussion would be the use of the artificial owl that is briefly discussed. This owl too, has the "glowing" eye that shows it's not real. Fear of not being human is another concept touched on in the film, which is evident by the character Rachael. She, unlike the other replicants, shows the most emotion and at one point in the film begins crying. Much of this emotion is due to her having artificial memories and I think most of all coming to the realization that she is just a machine. It also gives us a chance to see what makes ourselves human. Are we only human because of our capability to have emotion and go past our memories, and how does that separate the replicant from the human? The society in this movie is one that destroys any of the replicants who come back to Earth and it shows how not being human is something to be feared and eventually eradicated. Much like Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, the film goes at lengths to show the boundaries over what is human versus what isn't, what is alive versus what's not alive, and doubts over what is real or fabricated. That's why much of the landscape in the film has an absence of nature and a dark, looming presence about. Is the society in this film possible? Has the world become so "inhuman" that it has become nothing but desolation and ruin?