Replicants In Blade Runner

The 1982 Harrison Ford film Blade Runner was an advanced science fiction film in its time. Blade Runner features artificially generated humans and animals. These artificial beings which are referred to as replicants in the film, and because of a fear in their ability to overthrow the human populations they are pre-programed to only function for four years. The replicants are programed with memories, backstories, and personalities making them seemingly human. These replicants a kept in check by Blade Runners like Rick Deckard, who are essential the mafia mixed with the German Gestapo. They search out replicants who are disturbing the piece or nearing the end of their time and kill them. This film has challenged viewers for years and there are

several major burning questions surrounding this film but two of the biggest ones are, are the replicants living? and are they human? The answers are no and yes. The replicates do not meet all of the requirements for life, and one could arguably say that is an automatic disqualifier for being human but these are two very different things. The replicants are not living but they are humans.
The replicants cannot considered living because in the scientific community of biology, the study of all living things, there are seven criteria that must be met in order for an organism to be considered a living thing. According to the textbook Biology: the unity and diversity of life “There are seven characteristics of life…. They are as follows; cellular organization, ability to expend energy and metabolize, respond to external stimuli, ability to maintain homeostasis, growth, the ability to reproduce, and to be able to adapt and evolve over time.”(chapter 1) The replicants while they do possess several of these qualities they do not meet all seven. Their first short coming is that the replicants do not grow. They are biomedical engineered as an adult being and in their lifetime they remain an adult being. The inability to grow means they are also incapable of evolving over time. There is also no indication in the film that the replicants have the ability to reproduce. Reproduction is essential for something to be considered a living thing because genetic success in the ultimate goal of all species, and without reproduction 3 generation success is impossible. These short comings are why the replicants cannot be considered a living organism even though they are capable of responding to stimuli and do have some form of cellular organization. Their cellular organization can be seen in the film when a replicant animal’s cells are being examined for the maker’s name which is printed on to a muscle fiber like a type of artistic signature, something that reassuringly does not occur in nature.
The replicants can however be considered human. Emotion is a large part of being human. Human emotions both consciously and unconsciously act as the motive and driving force behind everything humans do. Every decision a person makes is directly affected by emotions be they simple or complex ones that took years to form. There are those very basic human emotions that even as a young child people are able to define. Fear, anger, disgust, joy, and sadness are the five basic emotions that are highlighted in one of the newest Disney films, Inside Out. Love is another emotion that Disney failed to include in its list of characters. Disney’s short coming can be overlooked because while at a young age people may not understand the complexities of love everyone no matter age has a general unconscious understanding of the desires and drives of love. The replicants in this film react to each of these emotions differently just as humans do, this can be seen at different points in Blade Runner.
Viewers can see fear, anger, and sadness from Batty when he says to Deckard while they are fighting on the rooftops just before Batty dies, “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it?

That's what it is to be a slave.” (Blade Runner) In this scene Batty is explaining to Deckard why he has chosen to attack and attempt to kill him. He uses this sick and twisted method to force Deckard to experience and understand that he has lived his life in fear of running out of time at the end of his four years. Beyond fear and anger there is also a sense of desperation and sadness in this quote. Batty considers himself as a slave to time and that is something that would resonate with viewers who are near the end of their lives, and really with anyone. Humans never know exactly when they will die, it’s terrifying to consider that at any point a human’s life could any due to any number of circumstances. It would however be even more terrifying to know the exact time that your life would end and exactly why. It’s sad to think that there is a person who is the product of circumstance stuck existing in fear and desperation. This natural fear of the end totally humanizes Batty in the film; it also allows viewers to relate to him in a way that they were once unable

to.
Love is another basic human emotion that is evident in Blade Runner. Love is one of the most powerful emotions humans experience weather it results attraction or a lack of love causes repulsion and other more vial emotions to fester, love is a major driving force behind humans. The love most evidently expressed in the film is a love based in a desire for companionship and understanding. Rachel is a female replicant who when abandoned by her creator, the only other companionship she experienced, she chooses to seek refuge and understanding as well as to fill the void of companionship with Rick Deckard. Upon seeking out shelter with Deckard, he begins to fall for Rachel thus generating a “human-replicant emotive bond that manifests a form of hybridized love.” (Lussire, Gowan) This love grows over the course of the film leading viewers to believe that the ultimate message of the film lies somewhere in understanding that love.
Another major factor to humanity is possessing a discernable personality. A set of quirks, drive, motivation, ambition, goals, flaws, these are all major aspects of a person’s personality and each of the replicates have displayed at least one if not all of these traits. Like previously mentioned Rachel had very specific goals and motivations for seeking out Deckard when she was abandoned. There was void of companionship and she sought to fill that. Batty also displays some very specific motivations in searching out his maker and requesting for more time. At the denial of his request Batty murders his creator. When explaining his motives behind the killing Batty tells Deckard of his experiences and the lessons he’s learned from the things he’s first hand encountered and that “…all those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain...Time to die” In that instance Batty list his reasons for anger and states his goal, to kill Rick Deckard. That is a pretty specific goal and motivation.
Another one of the major qualifications that separate humans from other living things is the ability to logic and reason. According to text Critical Reasoning: A practical Introduction, reasoning is defined as “the action of thinking and analyzing things in a logical order.” The replicants are certainly capable of reasoning, for instance in the scene where Rick Deckard is fighting in the streets with Leon, a replicant who has gone rouge driven by anger, Deckard loses his gun, Rachel sees him in danger, rapidly makes the decision to pick up the loaded gun and take a well-aimed shot at the other replicants head in an effort to save Deckard. Without the ability to reason Rachel would have not of had the understand and capacity to make the decisions that she did, nor would she have had the ability to react in a logical sequence resulting in her desired outcome. If unable to reason the replicantes would not be able to make choices and come to conclusions that they were not already pre-programed into their mental capacities. Without the ability to logic and reason the replicates would essentially be like walking talking calculators, serving their desire function with automated purpose unable to draw independent conclusions based on experience and understanding.
The replicants can easily be considered human but there is a mass fear of them in the society within Blade Runner.
A major factor for the fear that surrounds the replicant is because they are so human like, their ability to reason, experience human emotion, and that they possess a human like ability to respond to external stimuli allows the replicants to in theory seamlessly blend into society. Humans do not fully comprehend such advanced psychological aspects in themselves and therefore fear the replicants because they are a “disturbing hybrid whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration” (Cohen) In Mostor Culture: Seven Thesis, Jeffery Cohen address the very point of the cultural fear surroundting the replicants. They are human however they are not alive. This is a complex concept that the society in Blade Runner dose not fully comprehend. This is why the replicant only have a four-year existence, because they like monsters leave or in the replicants case are forced to leave by their genetic makeup and blade runner’s because while the “material damage remains… only for the monster to turn its self-immaterial” (Cohen) it always “escapes because it refuses easy categorization.” To answer the burning questions yes, the Blade Runner replicantes are human even though they are not living. Although like our story book monsters because of the difficultness to understand they are not accepted and are forcefully treated like monsters by those who created them. What an inhumane thing for living humans to do.