10th Week – Blade Runner

Lecture

The lecture for this week was watching the movie Blade Runner. The movie took up the whole of the lecture, with no time to discuss the movie.

Blade Runner –
Science Fiction Film
It is an examination of the impact of technology on human society, existence, and the very nature of humanity itself.
Blade Runners are specialized police who are trained to kill escaped replicates on earth.

Phillip K Dick - Common themes in Dick's work include artificial intelligence, cities out of control and post-industrial dystopia dissected with a film noir sensibility.

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READING; An exploration of what it is to be human.

Dick urges that to be human, one has to relate to all humans, not just one particular political segment.

These people in the future judge themselves on empathy, yet they cannot identify with the experiences of others, and so are less human themselves.

Some of the androids are examples of what it is to be human, or rather what Dicks impressions of what humans should be as opposed to what we are.

All of the androids have an innate desire to survive, even though they only have a limited lifespan.

In 'Bladerunner' Dick offers the view that our society as a whole assesses people by what is known about them, instead of finding out about them. The people who know you, your personality, your job, the stereotype of what you are makes you human to the rest of society.

'Bladerunner' is not just 'an exploration' of humanity, it examines our pathetic qualities at present, mistakes in the past and our tragedy in the future. The sum of these is what it is to be 'human'.

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Tute;
The Assessment Item 2: Essay Outline Presentations where due this week so there was no tutorial task.

In the tute our class spent time finalizing their Essay Outline, in preparation to discuss with class, followed by emailing it to our tutor.