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where it is always raining, the suggestion being that the rain is most probably acidic. The planet has been selfishly consumed, exploited and left in ruins, so those that can afford to have left Earth for a new life in the off world colonies'. The Tyrell Corporation have produced replicants through genetic engineering, the replicants are not robots, but skin jobs, simulacra',(10) they look human but are in fact androids. L.A's police captain Bryant often refers to the replicants negatively as skin jobs'. They serve as workers in the off world colonies' but are illegal on Earth. The film follows Rick Deckard, a human detective known as a blade runner who hunts down fugitive replicants. Deckard is searching for a small gang of replicants who have escaped from the colonies and our on a mission to have their four year life span increased, but Deckard's mission is to retire' these replicants, retire' being a euphemism for execution in the film.

If we consider the scene where Deckard chases a replicant known as Zhora, many postmodernist features in the film can be acknowledged. Zhora has been working as a snake dancer known as Miss Salome, when Deckard speaks to her in her dressing room he asks her if her snake is real, but Zhora replies that if she could afford a real snake she wouldn't have to work as dancer. This reinforces the idea of the consumed planet where real animals are rare and therefore reduced to being a product that can only be had by the rich. Her snake, like Zhora herself, is a man made imitation, and therefore an example of man playing god, having both the power to destroy the planet and create life'.

Zhora runs away from Deckard who pursues her, she exits through a door which takes her onto the crowded, polluted street. Above the exit, the neon sign is broken so the impression is that the building, like most of the city at ground level, is in ruin. Deckard exits through the same door and this time the camera glimpses an advertisement for Budweiser' beside it. This reminds us of consumerism, and is also a sign that is recognizable to the audience, so it is an example of intertextuality in this scene.

The ruined buildings at ground level contrast greatly with the grand architecture of the huge skyscrapers seen at other points in the film, the rich live far above the streets in some of these structures. Referring to Blade Runner's' design, conceptual artist Syd Mead who worked on the film has stated that buildings were over three thousand feet high'

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