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Movie analysis: Postmodernism in Blade Runner

so the street level would be a service alley to these towering mega-structures' and have a subterranean sewer look'(11). The immediate area outside the dressing room, seen as both Zhora and Deckard leave, contains people living on the streets having fires in bins, and also a broken car which appears to be stripped of parts. This imagery suggests a dump, and is further reinforced by the detail that those people who walk on the foul streets are literally of the low-life'' variety' as Danny Peary points out (12).

The first people we see there are wearing hats or helmets, as our most of the crowd both Zhora and Deckard pass during this sequence. Perhaps the hats offer some protection from the rain, but both Zhora and Deckard stand out as their heads are not covered by hats, their eyes are not hidden under dark goggles, and they do not hold umbrellas like most of the crowd. Although the replicants are stronger than humans, this similarity between them puts Deckard on the same level as Zhora. Neither needs protection from the rain, he will not stop pursuing her and she will not stop running, so they are contrasted against the walking crowds who are very mechanical like robots in their endeavors. This link between them may also be a hint that Deckard is in fact a replicant himself, Terry Rawlings, the films editor has stated that: Ridley himself may have definitely felt that Deckard was a replicant, but still, by the end of the picture, he intended to leave it up to the viewer to decide' (13).

The question of identity is a clear postmodernist concern, and critic Scott Bukatman has added that he believes the issue of human definition is clearly central to the work, and thus the ambiguity is crucial'(14). This view is similar to the philosopher Slavoj Zizek. He argues that Blade Runner' stages a confrontation with our own replicant-status', so it is only when we as humans realize that our notion of self is very much constructed by the world around us, that we can become a truly human subject' (15). The idea that the audience is not sure about the protagonist is another feature of postmodernism; the audience has to work at decoding meaning. Despite Deckard's hard boiled narration which links him to the detectives of film-noir and the past, he is also the unreliable or uncertain narrator which is another common element in postmodernist narratives.

The crowds walk towards the camera and we see a multicultural society, lots of Asians, Orientals, Punks, and even dancing Hare


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Movie analysis: Postmodernism in Blade Runner

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    by Giovanni Ferri

    In 1985 Ihab Hassan noted that the term [postmodernism] is an oxymoron'(1)and like the term itself, any attempt to pin down

    read more

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