Frankenstein/Bladerunner

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) humanity’s manipulation of nature paradoxically erodes the human spirit and compromises integrity. Although contextually disparate, both texts explore a creator’s need to take responsibility for his creation, cautioning responders of the dangers of unrestrained scientific progress and conveying humanity’s severed relationship with nature. Where Shelley communicates with a certain ambiguity characteristic of the contradictory Age of Reason and sets her tale against a backdrop of a sublime natural world, Scott portrays a society fuelled by ecological destruction and 1980s corporate abuse. This reflects each composer’s anchoring of their visions in the socio-cultural realities of their time; a fundamental transgression of human values over time.
Both texts explore the dangers of uninhibited scientific progress. In Frankenstein, Shelley fashions a gothic world where nature is tampered with and a ‘hurricane of enthusiasm’ drives the protagonist towards abandoning his conscience, prompting Shelley’s valuing of moderation. Underpinned by the Industrial Revolution and an era of scientific change, Victor embodies the obsessive passions and Romantic ego-identities of 19th century scientists. The epistolatory narrative framework adds a disquieting sense of truth to Victor’s retrospective dialogue, “how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge,” reflecting his Promethean disobedience and rebellion against authority. The pathetic fallacy “the candle nearly burnt out” and Walton’s foreboding serpent imagery “You seek knowledge [which] may be a serpent to sting you,” foreshadow the dangers of an irrational mind, one fuelled by unbridled passion and Victor’s selfish desire in surpassing moral boundaries to gain power by senselessly disregarding all ethical implications and responsibilities.

Blade Runner explores similar anxieties over the moral ambiguity and isolation perpetuated by rapid scientific expansion against a backdrop of 1980s environmental chaos and globalisation. LA 2019 is a metonym for a milieu that has been corrupted to humanity’s detriment due to man’s unbridled attainment of control through science, creating an impression of misery and squalor. Scott uses the science-fiction genre and film-noir elements to capture a hellish megalopolis through panoramic shots of turmoil – this evokes a sense of paranoia and imposes on responders a disintegrating world of spiritual and moral desolation where ironically, overpopulation is contextually imperative. Conversely, Shelley Romantically celebrates nature through vivid descriptions of the surrounding splendor, an environment mingled with Gothic terror as the monster threatens Victor amidst these “sublime scenes”. Victor’s personification of nature (“I pursued nature to her hiding place”) reflects Shelley’s fear of nature’s future destruction, a reality realised in Blade Runner where the Tyrell Corporation Building’s gleaming, technologically superior exterior yields to a smoky interior. This stark contrast between the industrialisation Scott conveys through the panning shots of billboards and synthetic, non-diegetic music, and the sublimity Shelley depicts highlights the influence of context on a composer’s portrayal of enduring ideas.

A creator’s need to nurture their creation is another similarity, reflecting the value of responsibility. The notion of the creator falling prey to the creation is conveyed through the low angle shots of Roy as he hunts Deckard, subverting the prior dominance of humans over the Replicants and rendering the creation more powerful, while in Frankenstein, Victor’s transgression causes a similar role-reversal as the monster asserts, “I am your master–obey!” For responders, this affirms the need to value moral and parental obligations to our creations. Victor’s audacity and unprincipled judgment in contravening nature triggers responder condemnation and disdain, mirroring the Romantic lack of reverence which men display for the powerful forces with which they are tempted to tamper in their pursuit of personal deification. His perversion of the role of creator profoundly disrupts natural rhythms, blurring boundaries between sanity and insanity and the human and the monstrous as Shelley uses the creature as a physical allegory and an externalisation of a repressed portion of Victor’s psyche. Victor’s response to his creature’s birth, “Beauty, Great God” juxtaposed with the exclamatory “Oh the horror…” reflects the breakdown of Shelley’s contextual religious ideals and Rousseau’s philosophical assertion that “a man abandoned from birth would be the most disfigured.” In the first person detailing of its path from abandonment to the final encounter with Victor, the nameless monster cries for recognition in the imperative “you must create a female for me,” evoking sympathy and allowing responders to discern that its goodness and identity have been eroded by societal pressures: “I was benevolent once…why should I pity man…” His most terrifying threats are expressed in calm, biblically solemn language, establishing a dichotomy between the verbal and the visual and suggesting a higher moral superiority than Victor who in contrast, melodramatically splutters insults, his speech filled with theatrical exclamations such as “Begone, vile insect!” which are metaphors for the encroachment of commerce and reflect society’s superficial view of external ugliness as reflective of the inner being. Ultimately, Victor’s obsessive quest to usurp the divine privilege of creation destabilises normal lines of authority in an ethically degraded world, his naïve thirst for glory and knowledge causing his isolation as he severs all familial ties and relationships. However, while Scott advocates that the pursuit of progress should not jeopardise humanity’s preservation of core values, depicting a successful relationship between Deckard and Rachel, Shelley is more pessimistic. Victor foregoes the value of love in his quest for advancement, and Walton seems equally destined to ruin himself despite Victor’s cautionary messages.

Comparably in Blade Runner, the creation of artificial life detached from natural processes reflects humanity’s challenge to normalcy in interfering with God’s role as creator. The juxtaposition of Tyrell’s ziggurat-style building with the seedy streets below emphasises his hubristic nature and his rendering of nature as non-existent, mirroring 1980s corporate arrogance. Though the “more human than human” replicants are artificial, they are paradoxical symbols of true humanity in an urbanized and ravaged world, contrasted with Tyrell’s immorality through the eye motif. This signifies the shortsightedness of a society governed by consumerist ideals and by Tyrell’s inability to comprehend the moral ramifications of transgression. However, where Roy confronts Tyrell, Scott challenges the morality of this transgression with the candles chiaroscuro ambience highlighting the duality of scientific progress – that its rewards are far outweighed by the subsequent destruction of humanity’s core values of compassion and empathy and the perversion towards greed and excess sparked by the economic rationalism of Scott’s era. Scott condemns the Tyrell Corporation’s motto “Commerce is our Goal” and the credo “greed is good” which destabilises traditional values of community and family and renders the hope of reversing the spiritual and moral bankruptcy void, as connoted by the unicorn’s mythological origins in the dream sequence. In the final scene, Roy’s Christ-like representation is furthered through the non-diegetic chiming bells as he drives a nail through his hands. Saving Deckard’s life in an ultimate display of compassion, the reconciliatory music and transcendence of the dove into the air manifests the most human anyone has been in such a morally desolate world. [note: there is still hope for humanity to survive by embracing our basic values of compassion/empathy – symbolic elevating of Deckard to his stratum]

Shelley and Scott are influenced by their respective contextual concerns, but Blade Runner builds implicitly on the Frankenstein tradition, conveying similar fears of the dangers of ruthless economic pursuance which creates moral anomalies and an accompanying disregard for nature, whilst trivialising core values of integrity, moderation and responsibility. Responders realise that humanity’s challenge is to harness desires for knowledge and power to prevent the egotism that resides within us from being unleashed and destroying notions of rationalism and compassion that stabilise the human condition.