Blade Runner and the Right to Life

Thanatopolitics and colonial logics in Blade Runner 2049

“…Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner (1982) is based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1 Although Blade Runner changed much in Dick’s novel, it appeared to capture ‘the oppressive core of capitalism’ that creates technology to exploit and commodify human beings (Best and Kellner, 2003: 196).…”

“…Roy Batty’s demand for ‘more life’ is, however, a demand for an alteration that allows him to continue living, for replicants are made with a predetermined four-year life span. From the lens of biopolitics, the film seems to point to the fact that when biopower ‘reaches its purest expression in the form of life as replicant, an ironic reversal occurs, after which life itself becomes a monstrosity, something uncontrollable – that which threatens power, and which subsequently must be eliminated’ (Sorensen, 2015: 118). In the film, the monstrous criminal arrives in the shape of the replicant, which at the same time epitomizes the culmination of the biopolitical life (Sorensen, 2015: 118).…”

“…From the lens of biopolitics, the film seems to point to the fact that when biopower ‘reaches its purest expression in the form of life as replicant, an ironic reversal occurs, after which life itself becomes a monstrosity, something uncontrollable – that which threatens power, and which subsequently must be eliminated’ (Sorensen, 2015: 118). In the film, the monstrous criminal arrives in the shape of the replicant, which at the same time epitomizes the culmination of the biopolitical life (Sorensen, 2015: 118). Thus, the film depicts Los Angeles as a thanatopolitical-scape where corporate power capitalizes on the reduction of human life to its bare forms by destroying unwanted bodies, or letting them waste away.…”