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Blade runner 2049 joi11/8/2022 He’s a terrible piece of work, and we come to view Luv as being just as repugnant as she essentially becomes the film’s proactive antagonist - doing his bidding for him. One of the film’s other major female characters is Luv, the assistant of Joi creator Niander Wallace. However, while perception in Blade Runner 2049 can imbue humanity, it can also remove it. The same could be said for K, Joi and Mariette. Deckard gives his dog a sense of reality by perceiving it to be real. Whether either of them is biologically ‘real’ or not doesn’t matter. And, as it obediently wanders around after him, we assume the dog cares about him. And why should it matter? Deckard sees the dog. When K asks him whether the canine is human or replicant, Deckard replies that he doesn’t care it doesn’t matter to him so it’s not a significant question. Deckard’s now haggard and alone, save for a dog. The closest the film gets to providing an answer to these issues is when it introduces Deckard, who’s hiding in a devastated Las Vegas (another area dominated by objectifying images of women). Just a sense of ambiguity and unease driven by the perceptions of the characters and the audience. In a world of despair and degradation like the one Blade Runner 2049 depicts, who wouldn’t want to feel loved (emotionally or physically), even if that love is coming from circuits and code? Again, questions. They’re lost, like so many of us are, and they feel like they’ve found a connection in each other. Even though I was creeped out, I couldn’t condemn the scene, or the characters. Villeneuve draws out the scene’s unease, but he also underlines its tenderness, intimacy and humanity. I’ve used a heck of a lot of question marks in that last paragraph because I simply don’t know the answers, and I don’t think I’m meant to. But just because these feelings are programmed are they any less real? K tells Joi that he doesn’t need to touch her to know his love for her is real, and isn’t that enough to show that he does love her, and in turn that her love for him is valid and real itself? After all, aren’t we as humans biologically programmed to some degree to love and desire love from others? What makes our desire to be loved different to K and Joi’s? And if we validate our sense of love, dictated it is by chemical impulses, why do we find it difficult to validate K and Joi’s, just because it’s dictated by code and circuits? He’s also programmed to do a job and accept the orders he’s given without question. They’re programmed to do what they’re doing: Mariette to elicit sex, Joi to show love towards K. Here, and throughout the film, the two women seem to lack agency. K is using these women to satisfy a need, and director Denis Villeneuve does everything he can to remind us of how unnatural the moment is by showing Joi and Mariette moving out of sync with each other as they caress K’s face and hands. The scene never gets explicit and cuts before it moves into the bedroom, but it made me deeply uncomfortable throughout because it feels exploitative and voyeuristic. It’s about the male gaze, the human gaze and the tragic effects they can have.Īrguably the film’s most controversial scene, and certainly the one that’s struck with me the most, is a sort-of threesome between our lead (replicant Blade Runner Agent K), his holographic girlfriend Joi and a replicant prostitute called Mariette, whom Joi projects herself into her in order to physically touch K for the first time. But while the original film pushed any critical thought about this to the sidelines, 2049 makes it its central thesis. The future of 2049is, like that of the original film, one in which women are prostitutes or sexualised advertising hovering over cities for men to leer at. My personal view is that I lament the fact the film reduces women to stock, often sexualised roles, but would argue that it does so to make a point about misogyny and the treatment of women in society. So instead, I’m going to focus on what the film has to say about perception and, in particular, the perception of women.īlade Runner 2049 has already received some fascinating write-ups about its treatment of women. I don’t have the time, and having seen it just once, I’m going to struggle to comprehensively discuss the fragment of the film I want to here, never mind everything else I could mention. I’m not going to attempt to cover all that here though. At nearly three hours, it’s a dense, jam -packed film that says a lot about technology, masculinity and cinema itself (I’d love to read an essay about how it deconstructs film noir and even the first Blade Runner). There’s a lot to unpack in Blade Runner 2049. Do not read it until you’ve seen Blade Runner 2049.
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