~post by Marie
I am often championing science fiction and fantasy for its amazing imaginative scope and its ability to point to touchy political, social, religious, and ethical themes in a way that would otherwise be impossible under normal fiction and literature criteria. Phillip K. Dick’s cult classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep explores one of the most fundamental themes of life as we know it: what makes us human, and how do we differentiate ourselves from what we have deemed to be non-human? In his dystopian futuristic/apocalyptic society, Dick is able to explore this by introducing a variety of extremely human-seeming androids, and using them as a sounding board for how the humans of his created world differentiate themselves from their fabricated counterparts. What is the fool-proof test? Empathy. Specifically, empathy towards animals, who have been all but wiped out after some nuclear fall-out obliterates the landscape, and many humans have fled to off-world colonies.
The danger with all these great, imaginative stories that we find in this rich genre is that people are always trying to turn them into movies, and really, a lot of them would and do make really good movies (or mini-series a la Game of Thrones). It’s a tricky transition, though, and often times a lot is lost from the book to the movie. One thing that we must always bear in mind when discussing this somewhat difficult transition of media is that these are two distinct manifestations of a story, and while it is tempting to hold them up and draw direct comparisons, I would argue that this is often not the best approach for appreciating a film adaptation.
Do Androids Dream… is a really good example of this. Originally published in 1968, the book was not adapted to film until 1982, when it was christened with the new name Blade Runner. Unlike several of the other book to film adaptations I have reviewed, Dick played no part in actually writing the screen play for the movie, although he did approve of the last of the rewrites before he passed away before the film’s release. As a result, while there are many similarities between book and film, there are also distinct differences.
Both plots center around Rick Deckard (played in the movie by Harrison Ford), an enforcement agent head hunter (book) or ”Blade Runner” (movie) whose primary objective is to hunt down androids (book) or “replicants” (movie) and “retire” them, or kill them. We soon find out in both book and movie that the androids are almost impossible to differentiate from humans with the exception of one fool proof test – the Voit-Kampff test, which is a polygraph test of sorts that measures the empathetic response of the subject. Androids presumably do not have the same empathetic response times that humans do, and this subtle and often difficult to detect difference is all the humans have to go on to ferret out the rogue androids.
The main points of the novel come across in the film: what is it really that makes us human? Throughout both novel and movie we see instances of humans acting barbarically and inhumanely towards each other, the androids, and their environment, against a dark background of a planet reeling from human-inflicted desolation. In contrast, we see the persecuted androids acting towards each other with compassion and concern, and attempting to escape from the indentured servitude forced on them by their human counterparts.
Ultimately it is left unclear, in both the book and the movie, whether Deckard himself is human or android which, although tantalizing and frustrating for those of us who want conclusive answers about such questions, is perhaps the best conclusion to the story. Perhaps it is not so much if we are born or created, but it is how we comport ourselves, and the way in which we treat and respect others that defines our humanity.
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Yes, good review, I think that passing time has a lot to do with the success of both presentations: how little we knew about “androids” back in the 1960s (they were in themselves something remote and fictional. later when we had dined on a regular diet of them – in various guises – Blade Runner was, for me, ost relevant and equally magical.
The question for me: in both has always been:
Is Deckard himself an android?
Part android?
Still seeking clues.
The updated version(s) of the film point to Deckard being an android. But of course doesn’t say it explicitly, hints at it when James Olmos character leaves a unicorn paper animal, after Deckard dreamed about unicorns.