Blade Runner: Rick Deckard
Posted on May 20th, 2008
by 
Marmalade
Marmalade
"I need you Deck. I need the old Blade Runner. I need your magic."
Rachael: May I ask you a personal question?
Deckard: Sure.
Rachael: Have you ever retired a human by mistake?
Deckard: No.
Rachael: But in your position that is a risk.
Rick Deckard is based on the stereotype of the film noir detective. He is a loner with old ties with the police, and is hired again by the police to be a replicant bounty hunter(blade runner). Initially, he sees the world in simple terms, a man of action and not of thought. When he had been a blade runner earlier in his life, replicants were less developed. Now, they're even starting to implant memories in replicants. Such a replicant(Rachel) ends up playing the damsel-in-distress role to his hero.
The question of Deckard being a replicant has been asked many times. Harrison Ford said that he and the director Ridley Scott had agreed before making the movie that Deckard wasn't a replicant. But Ridley Scott has said that Deckard is a replicant, and he says that Harrison Ford now accepts this about the character. Nonetheless, when Harrison Ford was playing the role, he apparently was acting it as if he were human.
Ridley Scott confirms that Deckard is a Replicant
Maybe this confusion is fitting because Deckard himself can be read as being confused by his situation. The evidence for his realizing he is a replicant has to do with his unicorn dream.
Blade Runner - The Dream
He has this dream shortly after his speaking with Rachel about her implanted memories. Near the end of the movie, the detective Gaff leaves an origami unicorn at Deckard's apartment. This implies that Gaff knows Deckards innermost dreams and this could only be so if they were implanted.
Deckard's apartment was created in the studio, using the block motif from the Ennis-Brown house. Quoting from Future Noir:
Continuing with Lawrence Paull's notion that "every Blade Runner set was designed to generate an emotional aura," the interior of Deckard's apartment (whose number is 9732, and was erected on Stage 24A of The Burbank Studios) was built to reflect both the idea of Deckard's bachelorhood and the enclosed, oppressive atmosphere of his manner of employment. Deckard's apartment was designed by Syd Mead. The set representing that apartment was composed of an entry hall, bathroom, bedroom, living, and dining room. To help select the apartment's fixtures and furnishings, Lawrence Paull used an early 1980s book of futuristic illustrations, High Tech, as "an inspirational guide." |
From Wikipedia:
It has been suggested that Rick Deckard's name may be a punnish reference to René Descartes, whose philosophical writings include several on the topic of what is and is not human, as well as the concept of the human body as a machine. This interpretation is reinforced by the reference to his famous statement "I think, therefore I am", by the character Pris (to the robotics engineer/scientist J. F. Sebastian)[4]:
Access: PublicTagged with: Blade Runner, film, movie, Rick Deckard, Deckard, Rachel, Harrison Ford, Ridley Scott, unicorn, origami, dream, replicant, apartment, Descartes
apartment
August 2008
My God! I never even realised that origami was a unicorn, and definitely not what it meant. I did suspect he was a replicant and that he doubted, while wanting to believe he was human. But I wonder how Harrison understood the unicorn origami, if he was being told that Deckard was human?
And I didn't see the connection with Descartes but now it's obvious. Cogito ergo sum. Wow.
So he was a replicant who was made to destroy replicants, while believing himself to be human. How sick is that? And at the same time, how absolutely true to life is it?
We believe we are different from others and so we despise and hurt. But we are all the same and need to nurture, protect and love each other.
Wow, Ben. This really hits me hard. I'm tearing up here.
There is much that can be gone into about this character.
The Descartes connection is the aspect that I would never have thought of on my own. Eric G. Wilson mentions it in his books. He writes about how Descartes believed humans were machines and souls at the same time, and that totally relates to Deckard's job as a blade runner. His job is to discern whether a humanoid has a soul or is simply a machine.
It does add a lot of depth to the movie when you accentuate the conflict Deckard has in his wondering if he is human. Its downplayed in the movie. Someone watching it as an action flick would never even notice it. His being a replicant hunting replicants is sad, but the whole implanted memory thing is heart-wrenching. The most emotional scene in the whole movie is when Rachel realizes that her childhood memories aren't her own, that her whole life has been a lie.
The implanted memory idea is similar to the movie Dark City. In that movie, aliens acting like gnostic archons are manipulating human memory in their attempt to discover the essence of humanity. Of course, the Matrix movies also play around with that idea.
Anyways, the whole questioning of identity and reality goes back to Philip K. Dick. Its interesting to consider Blade Runner in light of A Scanner Darkly where the main character is even more confused and questioning. In both movies, there is also a theme of betrayal and manipulation as we spoke of earlier. Deckard is being used by the authorities in the same way that Bob Arctor was. Deckard thinks he is in control of his life, but he is just another pawn like Roy.
One very important detail is that Roy saves Deckard because he doesn't beg for his life. Its only after Deckard spits at him that Roy saves Deckard. Roy was a soldier and respected someone who fought back. That whole scene is so pivotal and so hard to understand. Deckard's character changes as he sees how Roy changes as Roy approaches his own death. In some ways, Deckard takes the place of Roy. His decision to try to save Rachel makes him a criminal who will be hunted down just as he once was the hunter.
The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film
Edited by Steven M. Sanders
“What Is It To Be Human? Blade Runner and Dark City”
By Deborah Knight and George McKnight
p.25: “Both Deckard and Murdoch must determine just which broacer schemes they are pawns in.” “Deckard must reexamine his own identity when it ocurs to him that if he is a replicant, he may, like Roy and the other Nexus 6 moodels, have a very limited lifespan. These narrative twists display the fatalistic element of film noir, where Deckard and Mrudoch must struggle to regain control over their circumstances. Until they sort out the schemes they are each inadvertantly part of, neither Deckard nor Murdoch fully understands what he is caught up in or the potential consequences that lie in wait. Only when they understand these things can they take actioln to extricate themselves. At the same time, both Deckard and Murdoch must discover who they are.”
The authors write about the events that relate to Deckard's questioning his identity. They mention the origami unicorn scene at the end, and they mention another scene which has to do with photographs.
The replicants have implanted memories, but they also have photographs that they're given to work as memory devices, to make the memories seem more real. Leon had returned to get his photographs but was unable because the police had already arrived there. Leon knew his memories were false and yet he was still attached to the photos. The authors mention how Deckard had examined Leon's photos and he realizes one of his own family photos is identical.
the more i think about all this, the more complex and troubling it becomes. wow, the parallels to Scanner are really strong…
i'm going to have to ponder the implications of him being a replicant some more
In A Scanner Darkly, Bob Arctor is a drug addict narcing on drug addicts.
In Blade Runner, Rick Deckard is a replicant hunting replicants.
In both movies, Arctor and Deckard work for the police and it is the police that are manipulating them and withholding information. Also, there are mega-corporations that are more powerful than the police, and these mega-corporations falsely present themselves as working for the good of society.
Both worlds are dystopias where normal human relationships have broken down. For instance, neither movie presents an example of the modern ideal of the nuclear family. All of the characters are presented as individuals with fleeting relationships with eachother.
Both characters have become isolated within themselves and yet want to connect with others. But both need to first determine who they are as individuals. Both question even if their memories are real. Arctor remembers having had two little girls which he is told he didn't, and Deckard wonders if any of his past is real.
Both Arctor and Deckard are prototypical PKD protagonists. And both Donna and Rachel are prototypical PKD love interests. Donna is deceiving Arctor about his identity and Rachel is antagonizing Deckard's self-questioning. In both relationships, the protagonist seems uncertain about the woman he is in relationship with. Are Donna's feelings for Arctor real? Are Rachel's gestures of intimacy genuine?
i questioned Rachel's love too… not sure whether it was the weak acting (am I too harsh? I was distinctly unimpressed by that actor) or the direction but she did not seem to be clearly in love with him.
And as you know I have doubts about Donna's feeling for Arctor. I think she was too conflicted to love him, and as a woman I didn't really see the telltales I would have expected. She was using him.
I was trying to discuss this with dailyplanit yesterday but he has not seen Blade Runner so he couldn't compare… but he found your blog interesting, I think.
I don't know if it was weak acting, but the portrayal of the relationship between her character and Deckard was dissatisfying. I wanted more focus on it in the story. Instead, the focus was more on Deckard's interactions with Roy… because, I suppose, the conflict was more straightforward and made for good action. It is interesting that in both movies the love relationship is mostly on the side, important but not exactly central to the plot.
Another thing I just now was thinking about is that…
Roy is sorta the equivalent to Jim Barris(Robert Downey Jr.) and
J. F. Sebastian is kinda like Ernie Luckman(Woody Harrelson)
yes, very true about the focus… is that a more male approach? forgive me if i'm being judgmental but the feminine is usually to prioritise love and give it the central place, but the masculine is often, or so it seems to me, to refer to it as if it's almost peripheral…
in a sense the love relationship is important, yes perhaps, but in both movies it's so compromised as to call into question not only that love relationship but love itself - do we really love each other? the movies seem to me to ask. can we really love each other?
I couldn't tell ya if that is a more male approach, but it could be. It could just be PKD showing through. He had a very up and down relationship with the women folk.
When he was attracted to a woman, there was an absolute intensity that probably scared off many women. This side of PKD isn't being shown in these 2 movies. Beyond the enfatuation stage, PKD did prioritize his work over women. I'm sure that he at times felt a conflict between the two. Also, he seems to have had a bit of a problem with first idealizing women and then demonizing them. Women get a bit of the short shrift in much of his fiction… in particular the earlier books.
I'm going to have to consider this angle some more. I think David Deida agrees that men prioritize work over women… and he says that is the way it is meant to be, how men are psychologically designed. Deida goes so far as to say that most women prefer men who don't make them their first priority. What do you think?
And how would a woman tell a story about humans, androids, and love?
i do think men prioritise work over women - i observe that most women even very driven professional women like myself tend to prioritise love in terms of whether or not they feel successful, while men will look to their work to gauge success even if they are happy or unhappy in love. so it's not just PKD and because Sci Fi as a genre is heavily male dominated in terms of authors and read mostly read by men and boys, it tends to be much more focussed on ideas, tech, action etc rather than the love relationships that appear more incidentally.
a woman would tell a story about humans androids and love with all the intricate relationships at the forefront. there would have been a lot more development of the two main love affairs, and probably more drawing out of the other more subtle relationships, more of a feeling of family between the replicants, etc