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Why are we whispering? Thoughts on "Blade Runner 2049."

I finally saw Blade Runner 2049 on cable the other night. Beautiful to look at, sometimes moving, but what really struck me was the degree of low-talking going on.

At times I thought of those comic bits in films where two characters find themselves needlessly speaking in hushed tones. One of them inevitably notices and blurts out, “why are we whispering?”

There are lots of answers you could give to such a question. Perhaps the characters in this dystopia feared surveillance (but would a whisper really mask your speech to the future’s presumably hyper-sensitive bugs?).

Or maybe, since the main characters are androids, they speak in even, quiet tones like AI traditionally does (think of Hal in 2001) in science fiction films. I guess this is to connote emotional control — an inhuman equanimity. But then again, the replicants in this case seem desperate, rather than icy cool.

Or perhaps the voices of these beings are simply muffled by the ambient noise of their chaotic urban landscape, which sometimes seems scored to a track reminiscent of the Beatles’ classic “Revolution number 9.”

None of these answers satisfied me, though. There was something holy about their quiet. Combined with the dark lighting (as I remember it, the movie takes place mostly at night), the whispering made me think I was in a church. I could almost smell the incense.

The religious vibe of the film is inescapable; it’s literally dripping with the biblical. The narrative is centered around a miraculous birth, as a subculture of replicants is excited to discover one of their own was “of woman born.” The mother is Rachel, Sean Young’s character from the first film. At one point, a replicant describing this birth alludes piously to a verse from Genesis: “And God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and allowed her to conceive.”

Religious themes are common to science fiction. Reverential awe often underscores that moment when the wonder of a new technology is revealed: some new device or process cool or horrible enough to promise utopia or threaten apocalypse. The genre never tires of extrapolating on Arthur C. Clarke’s famous maxim: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

But Blade Runner 2049 is not that kind of film. The technology isn’t really new.  These androids have been around since at least 1982, when the original film was released. Add to this the fact that the movie centers on a specific form of technology.  Blade Runner 2049 doesn’t feature alien craft, doomsday weapons or time travel devices. It’s object of meditation is the digital.

This focus is unmistakable, as revealed in a particularly poignant scene. Ryan Gosling’s “Officer K”, a replicant cop, views a comparison of android “genetics” to human: the former binary, the latter triplicate (the nucleotide groups of three that make up the human gene). K says something like, “That’s the difference between us and them…” in a despairing tone.

Alexander Galloway’s Laruelle: Against the Digital

A book I’ve been reading recently, by cultural theorist Alexander Galloway, addresses what might be called the “digital despair” alluded to in the film. In Laruelle: Against the Digital, Galloway argues that the way digital technology shapes our worldview produces a sort of alienation — one of the symptoms of which are weird fantasies of transcendence.

Galloway’s argument is complex, and I can’t do it justice here. But to simplify it greatly, he makes the case that digital technology, based in a binary code, is the latest in a tradition of Western thought, from Plato to Heidegger to Derrida, that attempts to describe the real by dividing it into two. Typically, a thinker decides upon two elements as key (whether these be mind/body, being/nothing, self/other, etc.). We are then shown how the two interact, synthesize or build into bigger structures, and voila, how reality “works” is defined.

The problem is, of course, that the “real” is an unwieldy beast, that refuses to be corralled into such schema. In the case of digital media, Galloway traces two results from such framing. First, it produces a feeling of unreality, for “digital relations are always already fake or simulated, for they arise from radical standardization at the atomic level.” And this leads to a second result: a drive to transcend.

A good example of the way this theory plays out, as Galloway alludes to, might be the widely accepted theory that the brain functions like a digital device — i.e. a computer.  This leads to thoughts of transcendence, i.e., the search for a “ghost in the machine.” Or better yet, the fantasy that immortality will one day be attainable, once we upload our “minds” into heavenly digital clouds.

This dynamic is at the heart of Blade Runner 2049. The replicants, aware they are digital products, feel “less than.” They have been programmed to serve rather than to decide. They are alienated beings seeking, in contemporary pop lingo, to become “authentic.” In other words, like us chromosome-based machines, they struggle to be free. 

And I guess there’s nothing holier than that.

Existential Pop: Dr Pepper Meets the Incredible Shrinking Man

Lately, I 've found myself amused at a Dr Pepper commercial (originally created, I think, in 2009) set in a self-help group.  It seems the animated characters in the spot meet for support in dealing with a particular social handicap: the world refuses to acknowledge their existence:

 

What caught my eye about this commercial was its comic light touch -- even when alluding to something everyone from therapists, to philosophers, to the great modern writers seem to agree is a serious one: the establishment of a personal sense of "being" -- or, as it's more commonly referred to today, an "identity."

This concern even got translated into a specific form of cultural politics (usually called "identity politics" or "the politics of recognition").  In the 80s and 90s, "identity" movements arose on the liberal side of the spectrum (concerning rights around the issues of gender, ethnicity and sexuality).  Later, this style of politics was mimicked on the Right, often around religious beliefs and traditionalist lifestyles.

Cultural Studies scholar Nancy Fraser analyzes the philosophical roots of this tendency:

"The usual approach to the politics of recognition -- what I call the 'identity model' -- starts from the Hegelian idea that identity is constructed dialogically, through a process of mutual recognition. According to Hegel, recognition designates an ideal reciprocal relation between subjects, in which each sees the other both as its equal and also as separate from it.  This relation is constitutive for subjectivity: one becomes an individual subject only by virtue of recognizing, and being recognized by, another subject.  Recognition from others is thus essential to the development of a sense of self."

As Fraser indicates, a sense of identity is created socially as much as it is internally.  One essential for its establishment is that others take you seriously.

What's comic about the spot is that you see this logic  applied to establishing a brand identity.  The problem the Dr Pepper guy has is signaled by Santa Claus: people think what he stands for (a diet soda with great flavor) is a laughable myth.

Intentionally or not, what this setting also brings to mind is the brand identity issue a soda with a hard-to-categorize taste like Dr Pepper already carries with it.  As the Wiki about Dr Pepper puts it:

"W.W. Clements, a former CEO and president of the Dr Pepper/7-Up Company, described the taste of Dr Pepper as one-of-a-kind, saying "I've always maintained  you cannot tell anyone what Dr Pepper tastes like because it's so different. It's not an apple, it's not an orange, it's not a strawberry, it's not a root beer, it's not even a cola."

For that matter, even where the name "Dr Pepper" comes from is somewhat of a mystery.

In any case, such a lighthearted take on angst about the "question of existence" brought to my mind, by way of contrast, another version of pop-culture existentialism -- this one from a much earlier era...

"The Incredible Shrinking Man" Ponders His Existence

If you're obsessed with classic Science Fiction films like I am, you may be familiar with the story of "The Incredible Shrinking Man."  In the 1957 movie, the hero of this flick runs into a radioactive cloud, while he's out boating.  Soon after, as a side effect, he begins to shrink.

As he gets smaller and smaller, common household creatures -- cats and spiders -- turn into horrific monsters.  But as the movie progresses, he becomes too small for even them to see (or torment). Then his problems grow more philosophical.  As he faces the prospect of becoming as tiny as a molecule, or even an atom, he wonders whether, since living things can no longer recognize him, he even still exists.

Here's the way he resolves his quandary in the closing monologue (which ends "I still exist!"):

 

Whatever Happened to the Age of Anxiety?

In this clip, it's the gaze of God that assures the hero of his continuing identity/existence.  But today, it seems to me, many people look elsewhere for the recognition they need to build their sense of self.

Is not one of the appeals of social media, with all the "friending" it encourages, that it offers a quick, technologic way to make a person feel like somebody?  And, establishing an identity this way is certainly achieved with a lighter touch than in previous eras: a modicum of recognition is just a few clicks away.  No wonder even "identity politics" seems to be fading from the scene.

But I wonder, does this mean the "search for authenticity" will soon be passe?  Any thoughts on this -- or these clips?

 

Is Nature Superstitious? Science, Religion and Science Fiction

Recently I bought an anthology of science fiction stories titled The New Space Opera 2.  The beginning of one tale in particular, "The Island" by Peter Watts, compelled me to read on:

"You sent us here.  We do this for you: spin your webs and build your magic gateways, thread the needle's eye at sixty thousand kilometers a second.  We never stop, never even dare to slow down, lest the light of your coming turn us to plasma.  All so you can step from star to star without dirtying your feet in these endless, empty wastes between. 

Is it really too much to ask that you might talk to us now and then?" And then, a little later on the page: "Why have you forsaken us?" (p. 31)

The addressee here is not God but, as far as I could tell on first reading, a post-human intelligence, perhaps some combination of man/machine.  And this prayer is uttered not in a Church, but in one of those Cathedrals of the far future: a rocket ship.

The character thinking these words is tens of thousands of years old.  But she's not supernatural either. She's simply one of a small crew of workers whose Sisyphean task is to travel thousands of light years across the cosmos, as she helps build things for a kind of intergalactic Robert Moses (the "person" addressed earlier).  To make this task possible, she and her crew only get to stay awake for a few weeks every thousand years or so (the rest of the time they're kept in an "undead" state by intelligent robots).

Talk about work alienation: "...there is no finish line," she mutters.  "We go on forever, crawling across the universe like ants, dragging your goddamed superhighway behind us." (p. 69)

Natural Supernaturalism

Why was I compelled to read on?  The pleasure of this text for me was in watching how it elegantly translated the motifs of older, biblical, devotional and mystical literature (and the feelings these stirred) into a secular tale.  In this, the SF genre shares something with Romanticism.  It too derives some of its appeal from what the great literary scholar M.H. Abrams termed (in a book of the same name) Natural Supernaturalism.

According to Abrams, the Romantics (and their progeny) -- reacting against the more mechanistic side of the Enlightenment -- found ways to reinvent older spiritual (and biblical) literatures by "reconstituting them in a way that would make them intellectually acceptable, as well as emotionally pertinent." (p. 66)

So, for example, the figure of "Prophet" becomes the "visionary poet" in Wordsworth.  "Providence" is transformed into the march of the Idea through history by Hegel.  The Millennial Kingdom is reborn as the post-historical age of Communism in Marx.

Pulp Vs. Hard SF

From what I know of the history of SF, the term "Space Opera" (derived from "horse opera") was originally derogatory.  It described a strain of the form full of fanciful science, with a premium placed on adventure. It was also known as "Space Romance."

"The New Space Opera" appears (at least on the basis of this tale) to be an attempt to renew the "wow" factor of its pulp ancestor (its sense of the cosmic infinite or sublime) by offering greater attention to hard science fact and theory, in order to enhance speculative plausibility.

 What's touching in this tale, though, is a sense of mourning for the lost innocence of older SF.  At one point, for example, there is a vision of nature reminiscent of a more Romantic heritage: a living star that signals "Stop, stop, stop" to the rocket as it nears.

The narrator tells us that no human crew has been able to communicate with an alien life form, and the very possibility sets off her utopian imagination.  She becomes convinced this being (called "The Island" or DHF 428) is evidence of a kinder, gentler, version of evolution: 

"The Island puts the lie to everything we were ever told about the machinery of life.  Sun-powered, perfectly adapted, immortal, it won no struggle for survival: where are the predators, the competitors, the parasites?  All life around 428 is one vast continuum, one grand act of symbiosis.  Nature here is not red in tooth and claw.  Nature, out here, is the helping hand." (p. 54)

But, as one might expect from a post-Romantic Space Romance, this proves untrue.  Through great effort, the ship, heeding the pleas of 428, adjusts its course, so as not to collide with it.  Later, though, we discover this being "conned" them" -- into killing another life form in its vicinity.  "I let myself believe in life without conflict," the narrator mourns, "in sentience without sin." (p. 69)

Science Vs. Ideology

Have we then, through this disillusion, escaped the Natural Supernaturalism of the Space Romance? Perhaps.  But doesn't it sound like the narrator, presenting a more "realistic" version of evolution is getting it mixed up with older doctrines like "Original Sin"?

Some cultural critics consider this "dog-eat-dog" version of "hard science" to be suspiciously close to competitive market rhetoric.  Evolution, so I've read, can be influenced by cooperative ventures like culture, as well as "selfish genes."

So you might read this tale as a cautionary one.  Perhaps it warns that sometimes you give up religion, only to replace it with ideology.