The artist is WRONG about his own work.

Cafe Society
181

Well, what about Rachael? She never did more than pull a trigger. And Deckard somehow knew how to manipulate her “programming” (in the movie) to get her to comply with his desire.

My point is that Roy, Zhora, Leon and Pris were tuned for the offworld colonies, their particular abilities made them quasi-super-human, and their presence (illegals) made them desperate, like cornered animals. If Deckard was a skin-job, he was tuned for “retiring illegals”, and, to avoid taking out a human, he had to take a lot of punishment (let them reveal themselves by attacking him first).

In the book, I cannot recall anything to suggest that he might have been a replicant, but I also cannot recall that it explicitly said that he was a human. At the end,

he picks up a frog, thinking/hoping at first it might be real, and is mildly disappointed to find out it is mechanical, which strongly implies human emotion, but then again, engineered and all, replicants are still human.

182

Lois Lowry is wrong about The Giver.

Spoiler-boxed, since the movie is coming out:

Jonas dies at the end

Despite Lois saying

He doesn’t.

183

Good point, although Deckard never gets into a fight with her. I think it’s notable that Pris, whom Bryant describes as a “standard pleasure model,” is mopping the floor with Deckard until he manages to grab his gun.

I understand your point, and if Scott makes a sequel, I fully expect that he will apply some reconning and make Deckard a different model replicant with specialized capabilities (either designed to flush out replicants as you describe, or intended to infiltrate the police department for nefarious purposes). But for now I’ll stick to my point that, if Deckard is a replicant, he’s a lousy one. He nearly gets killed four times.

Upthread, Princhester complains about people explaining away the unicorn dream. My point is that saying “Deckard’s a replicant” results in lots of loose ends that must likewise be explained away. What’s a replicant doing on the police force? Why does Deckard drink? Why does he feel protective of Rachael when replicants aren’t supposed to have empathy? Why is he so weary and exhausted all the time? The film doesn’t even begin to address those questions. The unicorn stuff, however, can easily be interpreted as symbolism.

I think the novel contains good (though not definite) indications that Deckard is human.

In Chapter 12 of the novel, Deckard self-administers the Voight-Kampff test with the help of another character, and the results are within human parameters. However, some readers have noted that it was only two questions, and the questions dealt with empathy toward androids, so perhaps it isn’t conclusive.

In Chapter 9, Deckard mentions that he was tested when he joined the police department. However, another character points out that this could be an implanted memory.

Deckard loves animals and desperately wants to own one; one of the reasons he is eager to retire the escaped Nexus-6 androids is to earn enough money to buy a live animal. Also, he’s married and his wife is a character in the novel (in contrast to the film, in which Deckard has an ex-wife who only mentioned once in the original voiceover narration).

184

The ending of the book can go either way, there’s no strong evidence one way or the other. Depending on how my mood was as a teen when I read it, I could sometimes read it the happy way and sometimes the sad way.

But it definitely has the “happy” ending, considering there are several “sequels” to that book now.

185

Also, in the book, Deckard is able to commune with Mercer (the Christ figure in the religion of “Mercerism”, which is something that no android is shown as being capable of doing (the media personalities that are clearly androids in disguise, devote particular attention to mocking Mercerism). Deckard also lacks the cruelty and deceit that all androids in the book (and some of the humans) exhibit.

186

Not only did Jonas die,, but also the Giver intentionally sent him to his death.

187

He may have, but Jonas left without telling the Giver, and before they could even have gathered as many supplies as expected. He took Gabriel with him, and left even more unprepared than what the Giver himself wanted. The Giver may had known it was a suicide mission, but he was willing to give Jonas more help than what he ended up getting!

But the ending of the book is ambiguous.

The description of the sled and the travel of it resembles, but is not the same, as Jonas’s two previous sled encounters. One had a happy ending, the other one ended with a fractured arm. The final description mixes elements from both.

Also, why do the spoiler tags? You could argue one way or another, but the author has firmly stated with the sequels that Jonas lives. There, said it.

188

Excellent point, AndyL. I remember that one of my first reactions to Blade Runner upon its release in 1982 was disappointment that the Mercer plotline had been excluded, because it really humanized Deckard.

I recall trying to explain Mercerism to my friends in the parking lot of the movie theater as we were leaving. I don’t think I did a good job explaining it, because they just laughed.

189

I know it’s ambiguous. I am just pointing out that (as I read it anyway) the sadder ending is even sadder than most people realize.

I have no idea why you would think this is relevant to the question of whether there should be spoiler tags or not.

190

But the unicorn?

EDIT: I didn’t realize unicorn had already been mention on this page 23 times.

191

The whole Mercerism subplot is one of my favorite bits from the book, though I can see why it was left out of the movie.

192

In the sense that Lewis and Tolkien meant, an allegory is something like “Animal Farm” or “Pilgrim’s Program” or “The Enchanted Duplicator” in which characters and locations have a direct one-to-one relationship with entities or concepts in the real world. Thus, in “Animal Farm” all the animals represent particular people or classes of people during the Russian Revolution, while in “Pilgrim’s Progress”/“The Enchanted Duplicator” people and locations stand for the obstacles that keep a person from salvation/trufandom. This kind of allegory doesn’t happen by accident, and is generally made deliberately obvious so that the reader doesn’t miss the point.

The LotR and Narnia aren’t allegories in that sense. Frodo’s post-traumatic stress was surely informed by Tolkien’s experience in WWI, but Frodo does not “stand for” the shell-shocked WWI soldier (and as Tolkien pointed out, if the LotR was an allegory of WWII, Aragorn would have used the Ring).

193

Thank you, Andy L.

194

I’ve heard that Rutger Hauer said that if Deckard is human, then the film’s final fight is an epic man-versus-machine battle; if he’s a replicant, then it’s just two machines fighting. (I haven’t found a definite cite for this; it’s apparently something he said when speaking at a SF convention.) I tend to agree with that sentiment; if Deckard is a replicant then the stakes are no higher than an episode of “Battlebots.”

To be fair, PKD did write a couple of stories about people who are dismayed to learn that they are androids.

195

Maxwell Smart, always the best.

196

LOTR maybe, but Narnia? Come on! Aslan dying and being reborn? Very obviously direct one-to-one relationship with Christ.

197

Is the author ever “wrong” about his own work? Not when it comes to events and plot points.

Rex Stout, creator of Nero Wolfe, was brilliant at creating a world and an atmosphere, but his plots were frequently weak. It often appeared to me that he decided at the last minute who the killer was, without having given the reader any clues. Nonetheless, it’s HIS story. If he “proves” that bartender Larry Schwartz was the killer, then Larry Schwartz is the killer. Stout can’t be 'wrong" about that. We readers may argue "That was a pretty weak solution to the mystery, and we may be correct about that. But the story is the story, and whatever solution Stout wrote down is the “right” ending.

It just so happens that the “right” ending may not be satisfying.

A sloppy writer may contradict himself here and there, but he/she gets to detrmine the details of his/her story. IF Arthur Conan Doyle mentions that Inspector Lestrade is bald (I’m making that up), then Lestrade IS bald. IF John Updike mentions that Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is left-handed (again, I’m making that up), then Rabbit IS left-handed. IF P.G. Wodehouse says that Bertie Wooster’s belly button is an “outie,” then it is. We don’t get to tell the author he/she is wrong about the facts in a story. And since*** Blade Runner ***is Ridley Scott’s movie, he gets to decide if Deckard is a replicant.

We CAN tell an author, “That fact you told us doesn’t seem to fit with other things you’ve told us,” or “That action you showed the protagonist doing seems totally contrary to everything you’d previously told us about him” or “You didn’t give us nearly enough evidence of that.” But that’s beside the point. We can tell an artist, “That’s a bad ending” but we can’t tell him, “That’s not how the story really ended.”

Beyond that, suppose you read a poem or story, and it gives you an amazing insight you’d never had before. Or, perhaps you glean a message in the story that deeply touches or inspires you. Suppose you then meet the author and say, “You know, your work really helped me to realize SUCH-AND-SUCH.”

If the author replies, “Well, I wasn’t thinking that at all, and I never intentionally put such a message in my work,” is the author WRONG?

No… but unless you’ve come up with a totally insane, warped interpretation, I think the author should be pleasaed. The athor probably should listen to your insight and say, “Hmmm… that’s interesting. That isn’t what I was attempting to say, but I’m pleased my work stimulated your thinking and helped inspire you. That means the work was a success.”

To use one example, I’m almost certain Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” had nothing to do with suicide. But some depressed people have undoubtedly read that poem and found the strength to go on living. I don’t believe Frost would snarl, “You idiiots, that’s not what the poem was about at all!” He’s have been pleased that the poem was alive and multi-dimensional enough to touch many people on different levels.

198

Well, that itself is a debatable point. Where does the writer come into it? The actors? Each of whom have stated to opposite.

A movie is not a novel. There are many cooks in the kitchen of movies, and all have a say in the broth. I’m sure many directors wish otherwise.

Which is how we get Colonel Kurtz as a bloated unintelligible Marlon Brando “performance”, and how we get Capt. Jack Sparrow as a poncey pirate. Neither performance was scripted that way, nor desired by the director.

199

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I have to object to your seamless transition from authors to directors, as if the two roles are equivalent. They aren’t.

If you’re talking about someone creates, owns, and controls a vast fictional multimedia universe, like George Lucas or J.K. Rowling, then I’d agree that they get to decide what’s “true” in that world; they can decide what’s canonical and what isn’t. Ridley Scott is not the “creator” of Blade Runner by any measure. He was hired to direct it. He didn’t initiate the project, didn’t write the script, didn’t create the characters, and didn’t write the novel it’s based on. The film certainly reflects his aesthetic vision, but treating him as the final word on all things Blade Runner overstates his role.

Scott does not “own” Blade Runner on any legal or commercial basis, either. K.W. Jeter wrote a series of authorized novels continuing the Blade Runner story. He was allowed to do pretty much whatever he wanted, including combining elements from the novel and the movie. Some of the stuff in his novels actually contradicts the movie. Nobody told him “Ridley’s in charge, so gets to decide whether a character is a human or a replicant or a dog,” because Ridley’s not in charge. He doesn’t own the characters or the rights. Arguably there’s no “authorized canon” in the BR universe at all.

I’m sure that if Scott directs a sequel, it will start from the premise that Deckard is a replicant. But I’m not one of those people who thinks that sequels have a magical power to alter existing films retroactively, so that doesn’t bother me.

200

That seems more like an isomorphism than allegory, at least nowadays