Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) revisits the scenario of 2001, man’s struggle with technology, adding, however, a postmodern twist to this conflict. In its fusion of high and low art, the film appears to have merged the vision of Omega Man with 2001. Unlike the opening of 2001 where the musical score showed internal conflict and contradiction, Blade Runner’s opening scene seems to have smoothed over the discontinuities of the earlier film, giving its soundtrack more of an ambient resonance as seen in Omega Man. The sav- agery of technology is mostly depicted through the images of a post-apoca- lyptic Los Angeles and flames flaring up in the close-up shot of a human eye. The electronic music by Vangelis conversely accomplishes a more thorough integration of technological and synthesized orchestral sound, belying the conflict altogether. The opening theme still relies on slow and deliberate Wag- nerian cadences as with Richard Strauss’s music and is additionally enhanced by sound-bites of technological machinery such as the diegetic engine sounds of a spacecraft and non-diegetic artificial technological sound such as bleeps, high bells, xylophone sounds, percussion effects, etc. In addition, we also hear diegetic sounds of thunder, lightning, and bursts of flames from refineries, thus creating a thick soundscape of realistic and artificial sound. As the estab- lishing shot slowly tracks in a pyramid-shaped building, electronic sound bleeps and high bells are synchronized with small light flashes apparently ema- nating from the architectural structure. Hence the illusion is created that per- haps the architecture itself could be the source of the soundscape, as if technology were now able to create its own sound. This autonomous sound of technology, a blend of non-diegetic soundtrack and diegetic sound, also heard when the camera pans over the advertising billboard in the sky, func- tions curiously as the new mythology in this utopian setting. Myth, accord- ing to Roland Barthes, naturalizes arbitrary signification: “myth operates the inversion of anti-physis into pseudo-physis” (142). It appears as if technology, an artificial product of human origin, has now taken on quasi-natural status. This myth of the autonomy of technology and its “naturalness” underscores the film’s central theme in which man-made replicants appear more human than humans and rival the human race in humanity and ethics.
Deckard, the blade runner hired to retire potentially threatening repli- cants, is initially depicted as a degraded noir hero, lacking total insight into the ethical dimension of his assassinations or “retirement of skin jobs.” The question asked by Rachael, whether he has ever retired a human by mistake, points to Deckard’s inability to define himself as a human being as opposed to the non-sentient replicated human species of the Tyrell company. As with the music of Vangelis, artifice and the natural are blurred and raise doubts
whether Deckard may not himself be a replicant. Slavoj ≥i±ek, in fact, reads the entire film in reverse, arguing that the film depicts not so much “the sub- jectivization of the replicants” but rather asserts that “our ‘human’ memories [are] also implanted in the sense that we all borrow the elements of our indi- vidual myths from the treasury of the big Other” (212). Discourse, in this sense, precedes the voice of the human subject. “Are we not,” asks ≥i±ek, “prior to our speaking, spoken by the discourse of the Other?” (212). In short, the illusion of human subjectivity is only achieved, as we begin to integrate our memories into our symbolic universe, hence lending it the mythical support of truth and reality. Human subjects, in this more radical reading, are fictions and resemble replicants rather than differ from them.
It appears that the synthesized soundtrack by Vangelis, electronically mimicking the Romantic music of Wagner and Bruckner, likewise points to the constructed nature of all sound, and hence all reality. The presumed ante- riority of orchestral music as quasi-natural sound over electronic music as artificial sound is ultimately questioned, just as the difference between repli- cant and human being becomes increasingly indistinguishable in the film’s postmodern shakeup of the epistemological certainties. The melancholy main theme no longer expresses the initial serene confidence of Richard Strauss’s dawn of the Earth theme in 2001 but instead mourns the absence of a loss that can no longer be identified. Human memories become only reliable in so far that they may temporarily fool the interrogator in his effort to unmask replicants but ultimately appear fictive. When Deckard eventually tells Rachael that her memories are implants, she leaves his apartment visibly upset. Deckard then turns his attention to his family pictures scattered throughout the apart- ment to reassure himself of his own human status. Looking at various fam- ily pictures with little emotion, he also leafs through Polaroids of an android that are part of his investigative police work. These photos seen in the same pile of pictures become indistinguishable from the family pictures and stress that there is no difference between them. A jazz piano soundtrack of repeated quizzical chords further adds to the blurring perception of all these images. This scene precedes the scene when the replicant Pris meets the genetic designer Sebastian and his artificial puppets. Both interior scenes thus mir- ror one another in their emphasis on artifice.
A parallel cut eventually returns us from Sebastian’s home to Deckard’s apartment. We hear soft piano notes electronically enhanced with echoes. Deckard’s family pictures are displayed above an old piano to underscore that they are relics of a bygone era and thus have no merit or substance and are hollow like the enhanced echo sound. The director’s version (1992) stresses this point even more so when inserting a new intercut of a fable animal, a unicorn, while the camera is panning over Deckard’s family pictures and thick 6. Sci-Fi Film and Sounds of the Future (Konzett) 109
electronic sound sets in. Deckard picks up a single family picture and then turns to the image enhancement system processing the photos of a suspected android, thus highlighting the construction of all images. In a later scene, after Rachael saves Deckard’s life, we return one more time to Deckard’s apart- ment. The music played in this scene places Rachael on the piano, associat- ing her with “naturalness” and her desire for it. The soundtrack likewise points to the implanted nature of all visual memory, motivating the musical dreams of the drunk and sleeping Deckard. In this scene, the soundtrack moves from a sexy noirish saxophone tune, as Rachael is nostalgically leafing through his family pictures, to a snippet of a classical piano chords played by Rachael and quickly returns to the seductive jazz sounds followed by electric piano chords. It appears that the natural diegetic piano sound is framed by the non-diegetic noir jazz and electronic sound. The “natural” piano music is thus conveyed as a diminishing category giving way to a jazz-electronic fusion sound. Desire and artifice have become one in the soundtrack. This scene is followed by a quick intercut to the oversize advertising billboard in the sky and then cuts to a close-up of Pris doing her facial makeup, framing and mirroring the prior scene once again in its emphasis on artifice. Unlike the masculine world of 2001, Blade Runner’s softer electronic soundtrack and its prominent women characters (Zhora, Pris, Rachael) offers a challenge to the gender hierarchy upon which the inhumane male visions of technological utopias are built. Thus, while the film may question the distinction between the natural and artifice as its central theme, it also begins to undermine conventional gender binaries in its strong women characters that repeatedly challenge Deckard’s noir hero status.