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In 1985 Ihab Hassan noted that the term [postmodernism] is an oxymoron'(1)and like the term itself, any attempt to pin down its meaning is problematic. However although Cristina Degli-Esposti points out that the debate over the conception of that which may be considered postmodern [] is far from being exhausted', she goes on to argue that: Our culture is indeed postmodern in this oxymoron-like manner as it transcends the notion of present. It reaches back to the past and forward to the future trying to synthesize these two imaginary places'' in narrative fashion'(2). So if trying to synthesize' the past and future is one factor for deciding what is postmodern, then this may be one reason why Ridley Scotts' Blade Runne'r (USA, 1982) can be considered postmodern, as this feature is central to the film. Blade Runne'r is set in L.A in 2019, yet there are constant visual features in the film that reminds us not only of the 1980's, the period in which it was made, but also the film-noir genre popular in the 1940's.

Cristina Degli-Esposti also identifies several other features unique to postmodernism which include intertextuality, parody and pastiche, questions about what is perceived as real, the search for identity, and the idea of the fragmented self or a fragmented society (3). Robert Stam lists some further aspects considered to be key in understanding postmodernism, these include skepticism about the [West's] faith in progress, science, or class struggle'(4)along with the shift from the production of objects to the production of signs and information'(5).Lastly, in his essay Screen Replicants and Social Realities',David Lyon complicates this further by adding that the notion of simulacra and a sense of apocalypse are also important postmodernist features(6). He also identifies the corrosive effects of capitalism' and consumerism and consumption' as central postmodern motifs'(7). There are many other features considered by critics to be postmodernist, however, I feel that those features mentioned here are the most central to the most common idea of what postmodernism is, and all of these features are clearly evident in Blade Runner'.

Blade Runner' is set in a dystopian future, and perhaps no picture since Fritz Lang's Metropolis' (1927) has presented such a compelling, forbidding vision of the future'(8). The film consequently has a post apocalyptic sense in its setting, the sun doesn't shine on the overcrowded, rubble strewn, neon-lit streets of cold Los Angeles'(9)

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