Ethical Issues In Blade Runner

The last issue regarding the question of humanism in the film relates to Harrison Ford’s character as Deckard. In it he is the one who hunts the androids in order to destroy them, because they are not meant to be here on Earth. However there is an overwhelming, and intentional, amount of evidence to suggest that Deckard himself is an android. The first being a scene where Rachael asks whether he has taken the android test, to which he doesn’t reply. There is another instance where Deckard falls asleep and dreams of a unicorn, and at the end of the movie he sees a small origami unicorn on a police officer’s desk. This hints that the memory could have been implanted therefore making him a replicant. If the character is in fact a replicant it

calls into question human morals of being forced to exterminate your own kind. It draws parallels to wars and genocides, nothing new at the time of the movie but and ongoing problem in our world today.
The use of replicants vs. humans in the film is one of the main sources of the fiction vs. reality debate within the film itself, calling into question who is who, if they are all one, if a difference between them is significant, etc. The film itself is a fiction to our reality but, like 2001, shapes our own reality. David Novitz on page 301 states that “the best art is, in a manner of speaking, transparent, and leads the eager intellect it a direct apprehension of reality”. This is related to the film because the issues within it become directly related to our current lives. It touched on problems that were arising or researched enough to know that they would come into view in the future in the 80s. The film brings predicts valid concerns for our current lives and depicts very real dilemmas which we face. By doing so, our fiction reflected a reality before it existed, and a line has been blurred as to where the film can fall on the spectrum.
Both films are within the genre of hard science fiction and can in a way consider itself to be a ‘new art’ by Herbert Marcuse’s definition. On page 131 he states that a purpose of ‘new art’ is “to make art ‘real,’ ‘living’”. He goes on to state “Art cannot become reality, cannot realize itself without cancelling itself as Art in all its Forms”. I believe the tactics in the genre of hard science fiction contribute to this definition of new art and therefore bring the films into an area between fiction and reality. The hard science behind them fills them with accuracies within the technology and scientific front but also creates the current dilemmas and crisis that we face in our world today. For this reason not only does the boundary between fiction and reality blur but the line between art and non-art blur as well. Once comprehended, the films move beyond art to reflect our actual existence and to become ‘art as a form of reality,” meaning the “construction of an entirely different and opposed reality”.
Because of the predictive nature of hard science fiction, if the art becomes a reality than our society is going downhill.

Ethical dilemmas riddle both 2001 and Blade Runner, which the accuracy in both is shown due to the age of the film. If we look at hard science fiction films of today, we see that we are still faced with many of the same ethical problems, especially in Blade Runner. The two most prominent hard sci-fi films in recent memory are Her (2013) directed by Spike Jonze and Ex Machina (2015) directed by Alex Garland. Both films deal with human interaction with artificial intelligence, and question what it means to be human. In Her, the main character falls in love with an operating system, similar to Siri, and creates a full blown relationship. As the film progresses we see that he is not the only one to do so and neither is she. This causes a major rift in the relationship as she develops a love for love and falls in love with nearly any human she comes in contact with. Similar to Blade Runner, the movie deals the evolvement of artificial intelligence to gain human emotions and feelings and whether it is ethically right to treat the machines the same if they share the same feelings we have. Ex Machina follows a similar suit in which a man falls in love with a robot, this time a physical being, who becomes more self-aware than the creator or the man ever imagine. The film in particular draws a lot of resemblance to Blade Runner, where the main character is ordered to test the AI in order to determine if it is human or not. Ava, the robot, devises a ploy to fall in love with the main character Caleb, in order for her to escape. In this particular instance the human quality within an android is shown not by its use of feelings, which here are part of a manipulation scheme, but her understanding that her captivity is wrong, just as a human would. The clear ethical problems caused by humans with their creation of androids and robots are all too prevalent to

ignore. In a genre that’s basis is in fact and accuracy, it is not a bold statement to suggest that our future will consist of dilemmas involving robots. In fact, in July of 2015 a robot at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute passed a self-awareness test, which could point to the fulfillment of a prophecy stated in all four films.
The fiction in the hard science fiction films mentioned in this paper creates an art that is a form of reality. The two older films have proven to have a predictive nature to them, while the films from recent years are not old enough to tell. Among the technological predictions in the film are fulfilled predictions of moral dilemmas that our society has faced. All four films also deal with issues involving artificial intelligence and what it means to be a human if the intelligence becomes so self-aware that it has emotions. I believe with the proven data thus far that this is a very real possibility for our future.