I don't really like Blade Runner, but I do have to appreciate it.

Okay, so I just got back from Blade Runner: The Final Cut in Oakland. There’s something that bugs me about the movie, but I think I understand the conceptual filmmaking enough to adequately do commentary on it.

Harrison Ford’s character is unlike anything he’s otherwise known for. Han Solo and Indiana Jones, or the President in Air Force One are essentially superheroes. They’re not as much characters as they are character types. Deckard is something entirely different. He’s weak. Extremely weak, it seems. Both emotionally and physically, he is inferior to the replicants. He asserts himself as almost a rapist. Deckard kills two “people” in over the course of the film, both women (in form). He shoots one in the back as she’s running away and sucker-punches the other. The others were blind luck. He never triumphs over Rutger Hauer, and ultimately this makes his victory seem kind of empty. In fact, I’d hardly call his end a victory. Our expectation would be that Deckard ultimately grows a pair and overcomes his superior opponents or conversely rejects his assignment and exposes the great injustices of the human society, but he never does either. He just gets beat up and frightened while Hauer questions existence, and to that end, the movie can’t be completely satisfying, even if Deckard is a villain.

I feel that the point of the movie is that the movie is unsatisfying.

There’s a certain amount of discomfort in the design element present throughout the movie. If this is intentional, then it does exactly what it’s supposed to. It’s indescribable; almost a grotesque. I’d say that I hate the design, but it works well to reinforce the film’s thematic complexity, so I must admire it.

The interesting thing about Blade Runner is it doesn’t fall into the traditional caveats of sci-fi action as a genre. As much as the Matrix or Robocop talk about the nature of ambiguity and philosophize about truth, they still boil down to three words-- might makes right. Might doesn’t make right in Blade Runner. The nature of heroism is extremely gray, and even more ambiguous by the end of the movie. It kind of slaps you around with questions and never really answers them. If it does speak to anything it is that the replicants are humans and humans are scum. All the replicants want is to live normally among the humans, and to not be slaves. They act logically given their situation, and with emotion.

Many people call the movie a masterpiece. I say it comes close to greatness, but misses it slightly. As I reflect on it, it’s better to talk about than it is to watch. It’s definitely a good movie and it’s definitely a commentary on genre, film, humanity and our insignificance.

Ramblings on nature, tools, 2001, savants, the origin of species and the great beyond.

There is a big question going around about HAL and its (from now on I’ll use ‘his’) sentience. HAL was built to mimic humans, but unlike humans, has no physical form. HAL represents the potential of the mind solely in the presence of thought, just as the apes represent the potential of the body with only a glimmer of thought.

The question of HAL as a sentient being is interesting. Poole believes that as a machine, HAL’s best function is as a fully realized tool, and should only have the rights of a tool. To him, there is no cruelty in dismantling HAL. Dave on the other hand, is much more philosophical in his stance. He wonders what HAL will experience after ‘death’.

This is answered as the Star Trek episode is answered, which is in turn referential to Oedipus and a million other pieces of fiction and philosophy are answered. HAL’s perceived emotion, his mimicry of humans is self-actualizing. Let me leave that point as an aside for a moment while I bring up another - Kim Peek, the super-savant and inspiration for Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man. He acts in many ways like a computer. He reads and retains knowledge on a scale far more vast than a normal human, but is incapable of applying gained knowledge to compensate for unknown situations. He is incapable of true visual thinking or the ability to match real concepts to objects, but unlike a computer he cannot solve or anticipate computational problems. So while he can tell you what day of the week your first birthday fell on as well as when it will fall now, it’s not because he’s good at math, but rather because he’s read a bunch of calendars. HAL is as much of a human as Kim is, except instead of existing on a level that allows him certain mobility, he exists on a level that is beyond that: digitized data. But how are we or our brains so different? Are we not just electrical impulses firing between two neurons or several in sequence? HAL’s demonstration of self-preservation and emotion is on a level so indistinguishable from humans that it would be wrong to say that he does not actually feel. In essence, just like Corby could not disprove that he was a machine, we cannot disprove that HAL, the Terminator, Andrea, Rock, or even Colossus is not sentient. And as soon as we see instances of flaw or failure in these characters (which we inevitably do), they should not be considered “not alive” lest we modify our definition of living.

That being said 2001 is not about HAL as living, but rather humans as artificial. I suppose I should give my understanding of the film at this point. The Dawn of Man saw the first instance of the Black Monolith, a metaphor for extra-terrestrial creation. By coming into contact with the Monolith, the apes take the first leap into the semblance of human form (I don’t really want to say evolution since it’s a loaded term). The proto-men start to use tools and in this way separate themselves from the apes. When the second Black Monolith is found on the moon, humans show that they were, as the apes were, at the limit of their potential thus far. The same aliens who showed the first Monolith to the apes buried the second Monolith underground on the moon as a test. As soon as humans developed the technology to find it, they did, despite the obvious challenges associated with lunar excavation. The second test is then to get to the third Monolith beyond Jupiter. But the interesting part is that humans still demonstrate behavior seen in their ancestors. So imagine one of those apes with tools flying out beyond his means into the vast unknown and you basically get the point of the movie. Even in the face of great adversity, the lowly ape in his struggle against others and staggering odds is still able to triumph and return to his home in the stars. That’s what the Odyssey aspect is to me, at least. In conquering his tools (without which, he could not survive, let alone exist as he does), man establishes himself as a transcendent being, despite the fact that he was artificially spawned.

Interrobang!?

Hey blog,

It’s been a while since my last post. Sorry baby, it's been real hard and I’ve been busy. You may be wondering why I haven’t kept in contact. I’m super-sorry. You also might be wondering why I chose now, ten o’clock on a Friday night on a three-day weekend to get in touch with you. Again, I feel awful and you must be terribly irate. You’re the only blog for me.

That’s not enough?

Well, in that case, let me tell you all about Alien. Alien is about an HR Geiger painting that comes to life and kills bunch of guys on a space barge. Why is it called ‘Alien?’ Good question blog. It’s called Alien because the alien is an alien—a Xenomorph to be precise. It’s special because on top of being able to jump out and scare you it also has a tiny mouth inside its regular mouth. The small mouth ends up doing most of the alien’s dirty work, but technically, Ripley has a higher kill count than the alien. Let’s see: the alien kills Parker, Lambert and Cane and Ripley kills Dallas, Brett, Ash, and the alien. Jonesy doesn’t kill anybody. The Alien has several stages of life and metapomorphosizes a couple times throughout the movie. It starts as an egg and develops into a facehugger. The facehugger hugs faces and jams an ovipositor into its host’s throat. A few days later, a young alien bursts through its host’s chest like a prairie dog through a cherry pie and scuttles across the room where it hides for a few hours. It sheds its skin and becomes a 7-foot tall walking phallus with acid blood. The alien is never given a gender, but I always thought of it as female. For one, all of the humans’ names are masculine or androgynous and two, because the alien is very feminine in design. Penis-head aside, it is smooth (like a lady) and it kind of looks like a car. And as we all know, all cars are ladies.
Here’s an interesting point: aliens are cool because they take characteristics from their hosts. Cane walked on two legs, so the alien had two legs. In the third movie, a face hugger hugs a dog, so the alien is a quadruped. Maybe if Cane wasn’t such a jerk, the creature would have been more docile, I don’t know. Point is, the alien represents humans as much as the humans do.

And hey, check it out: when an facehugger hugs a Predator, the resulting alien has cool Rasta dreads.

Shadow of the Colossus

Colossus: The Forbin Project struck me, not just as an all-too-possible doomsday scenario, but as a deeply religious movie and concept. Think of it like this: Man has demonstrated his incapability to govern himself, so he creates god. In the absence of god in this scientific era, he creates Colossus do deal with all the tough issues he can’t tackle himself. Colossus achieves the order that man desires, but man complains that the order and security that he desires comes at the price of liberty. Colossus solves our problems. Overpopulation, war, famine and disease are all but an unpleasant memory with Colossus. But was it wrong for Colossus to be built in the first place? Yes, of course. People should never give up freedom for protection—those who do deserve neither. But as Colossus achieves godhood, the world will become almost utopian, but we achieve it by kicking and screaming. Colossus needed a failsafe. Without it, Forbin sealed the fate of humanity. That being said, Colossus isn’t bad, merely an alternative version of what we have right now. Moving toward lawlessness is the only way to reassert our humanity, but that will only make “The Machine” push back even harder.

I’m not a religious man. Hell, I can’t spell “religion” half the time, but one thing that I have noticed as a theme throughout the genre is that the doomsday scenarios and horror comes from a direct breaking of either the 10 commandments or the 7 deadly sins, usually both. Forbin is a proud man and he creates a god and a false idol. Just an observation.

Book of Machines

I found “The Book of the Machines” to be very fascinating and also ahead of its time. I’m not sure exactly when it was written, but it contains many themes later explored by Asimov. Notably, the significance of machine consciousness seems to play a key role. Who am I to say that the machine that I am using right now isn’t capable of function beyond that which it is programmed to do. I for one am not sure that I am no more than a organic automaton, and that everything I do, say, feel, think, type, etc. is not dictated by either past experiences or inborn instincts. So what is consciousness anyway? Is it only the concept that I am self-aware? Is this computer self-aware? Certainly it seems so sometimes. It understands, as far as I believe it does, that it is a machine and can converse with other machines. It is capable of independent thought insofar as I believe that I am capable of thought not dictated by outside influence or instinct—which is to say none. But Butler makes a point, and I’m not sure it is one he was actually trying to make, which is that none of us can fully understand or comprehend what the true meaning of consciousness entails. Where it starts, where it ends and what contains it are all great questions, which may not have easy answers. I believe I have some degree of consciousness because I am more or less fully aware to comprehend my actions. But are animals, vegetables and machines capable of the same processes? When I look at my cat, I believe he knows what he is and is able to comprehend his actions. Ants seem to work toward a goal, even bacteria will seek out ways to nourish themselves and reproduce, and although their ways are different from mine, they are not entirely foreign. The venus flytrap will catch a fly for its nitrogen. Recently, there was a study that said that plants can feel some degree of pain. While this is somewhat refutable, there is no doubt that they react to stimuli. So how is a potato different from an oyster? How are either of these different from a calculator? If a jellyfish is alive, but Deep Blue, the computer that defeated chess champion Gary Kasparov isn’t, perhaps we need to rethink what life is.