And then there’s **Michael Moore ** who claims he produces documentaries… :rolleyes:
And this is exactly why I hold you in such high esteem. You’re a good man, a gracious person and a credit to SDMB.
The “Turning Japense” guy claims the songs is **not ** about self-pleasure.
:: gasping in horror ::
the words were inspired by a Easter Basket
Townes Van Zandt said he wrote one of his songs (I think it was “If I Needed You”) in his sleep. I don’t believe him.
I don’t believe artists when they start spouting dense academic horseshit. Leave that to the critics, fercryeye.
Dude, I have dreamed whole songs several times. And I ain’t no Townes Van Zandt.
I don’t believe Ridley Scott when he hints that Blade Runner’s Deckard (Harrison Ford) was a replicant. Interviews he gave shortly after the film’s original release have him referring to Deckard as a human. The claimed ambiguity (personally, I find the film only makes any sense if Deckard is a human - saying he’s a replicant is just dumb) was a marketing ploy created years later to drum up interest in a film that had cult but not mainstream success in hopes it would eventually break even.
I assume it has by now, but after feeling ripped off by paying to see the director’s cut in theatre when it first came out, I won’t be personally contributing any more money to BR, except possibly for a decent-quality version of the original cut, and I wouldn’t pay a lot for it, despite it being one of my favourite films.
by the end of the book
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”
Deckard questions the validity of his staus as a a real human.
So there’s room to question the whether Dekard is a replicant in the movie.
I wrote one of my better songs in my sleep, so I believe him.
I didn’t have every detail of it worked out. But the general chords, the words, the tune, and the “feel” of the fingerpicking were all there in the dream. The next morning I just had to mess around for a few minutes and I had it.
-FrL-
I do happen to believe artists, most of the time, about their work. Why shouldn’t I?
A piece of art is like a [del]Rorshark[/del] [del]Rohrschark[/del] [del]Rorscharch[/del] inkblot test. Just because the ink happens to look like a woman making love simultaneously to two turtles doesn’t mean that’s what the ink wanted to look like.
Not all art — very little, I would wager — is meticulously planned with an eye to theme and allegory and symbolism and metaphor. If a character sacrifices himself to save others, he is not automatically a Christ figure in the intention of the author. Lucas killed off Ben Kenobi because the character had outlived his usefulness; as a filmmaker, he decided he had nothing for Obi-Wan to do for 40 minutes, so he bumped him off.
As Tolkien himself observed in his Foreward, there is a difference between allegory and applicability. If you, the reader, wish to notice parallels, that is your business. Tolkien claimed that allegory was in the purported intent of the author, which he denies. That’s good enough for me.
But like a [del]Rorsharch[/del] inkblot test, we can listen to Professor Tolkien and say, “He is a product of his times and was doubtless influenced by two world wars when he wrote this book. This work says a great deal about Tolkien’s view of the world, and indeed about ourselves for noticing it.”
That is so hot…
That’d be fine if Phillip K. Dick was alive and making the implication, not Ridley Scott. As film adaptations go, Blade Runner is so far removed from its source material that invoking the source material is useless.
Besides, the question shouldn’t be “is Deckard human?” but “what does it mean to be human in an age where a ‘more human than human’ option exists?” I wouldn’t bother questioning Deckard’s humanity, but I’d start to suspect that the replicants, who have emotions and desperately want to survive, might be as (or more) deserving of the word “human” than a burnt-out, depressed, murderous, possibly alcoholic Deckard does, since he’s largely given up on himself. What does it mean to have a lifetime of memories when a good biomechanic can make a flawless simulation? What does it mean to be, say, the world chess Grandmaster when a computer can defeat you? Deep Blue’s victory didn’t suggest Kasparov was a computer - it showed that being human was not necessary to win at chess. Similarly, Blade Runner doesn’t demonstrate that Deckard is a replicant - it demonstrates that having been born a human is not necessary to flawlessly act like one, to the point where “retirement” is seen as actual murder.
Besides, Deckard being a replicant blatantly contradicts a major premise of the film; the replicants aren’t allowed on Earth and any that are discovered are “retired”. If Deckard is a replicant (presumably designed for the purpose of retiring other replicants), why was he allowed to quit his job without himself being retired? And why does he routinely get his ass kicked by other replicants, if retiring them was his purpose?
Heck, if Scott hinted that Gaff (Edward James Olmos) was a replicant, eagerly looking to replace Deckard as a Blade Runner, I’d buy that in a heartbeat.