Alaura Hernandez

Identity Struggles
Blade Runner, a 1981 film directed by Ridley Scott, is a futuristic neo-noir film
set in 2019 Los Angeles, which is essentially now a cross-hub of American and Asian
cultures. In the movie, Deckard is begged to come back to the police force and be a blade
runner, hunting down and killing replicants who left the planet they were supposed to be
laboring on. Though the police force views replicants as a threat to American society
because they are physically superior to humans, the replicants prove throughout the
movie that they only want to be a human as possible, which reflects the American
individuals loss of identity in the 1980s.
Perhaps the most obvious example of the replicants struggle for humanity is the
fact that they left the country they were supposed to be on-a deadly risk- to go to Earth,
meet their creator, and beg for more life. They continuously ask when their inception
date was, always aware of the limited time that they have alive. At one point, Roy
guiltily tells Tyrell of some of the bad things he has done, but Tyrell brushes it aside and
instead praises how superior replicants are. Instead of reassuring Roy, his superiority
doesnt seem to excite him at all, and he is overcome with devastation that he cannot get
more time alive. The constant struggle for life is an obvious human trait and reflects the
theme that generations since the technological boom started in the 1970s seem to be in a
constant battle against time, during which ones identity can be obscured.
Another example of replicants trying to identify as human is seen in their
obsessive need to hold on to memories that were implanted in them. Rachel, especially,
does not want to believe that the memories are not her own, and she even clings to false
pictures supposedly proving she had a past. For the replicants, small memories are
key components of ones past, which comprise their identity and thus humanize them.
Additionally, though the replicants arent supposed to be emotional, there are multiple
moments in the movie where they show emotion, such as when Roy is mourning Pris.
The emotional responses attached to memories and each other are very humanistic and
make it easier for the viewer to empathize with the replicants and further understand their
desire to be human and fight for identity.
We never learn much about any of the characters in the movie, especially the
humans, due to the movies constantly-moving narrative. In fact, the most identity we
see in the movie in the replicants, who are supposed to be wiped out due to their alien
nature. This contradiction speaks to the confusion that surrounded identity in the 1980s,
which was likely in part due to the rapid technological advances that happened in the
1970s. Television had become a fixture in almost every household, the computer was
being born, and advances were happening so quickly that American in 2019 was
imagined to be capable of genetically creating a whole species.
In this fast-paced environment, the focus tended to be on the next big thing, and
individual identity tended to get lost. Blade Runner certainly comments on this problem,
portraying the replicants as more emotionally human in the end than even the humans
themselves are, and thus giving them stronger identities. The purpose of this is to
remind viewers not to let technology rule their lives, and to revel in the human, emotional
responses that things like personal connections and memories can bring. Though this
theme may have been emerging in the 1980s, it is still applicable to todays society and
has been shown in countless films since Blade Runner.