Why is cyberpunk full of Christian symbolism and themes?
There is a subtext of Christian allegory in Blade Runne regarding Roy forgivingness of humanity
Connor Walker
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Josiah Gomez
Roy is closer to an anti-Christ; he kills some who are wicked and some are not, but for no greater goal than to live longer. He doesn't want to improve the world, he wants to improve himself. I find it wild that the replicants are supposed to be "good guys", they are closer to demons.
As far as all the rest of this, there's sort of a strange impulse to conflate shallow Christian views with concepts like the singularity.
Andrew Lewis
Cyberpunk is full of Christian symbolism because cyberpunk is about the value and nature of human life. Until modern times, the only real take was the one offered by the Bible, so it makes sense that Christian symbolism would be an easy visual shorthand to tell a primarily Christian culture what the point is of the scene.
On a side note, I love Blade Runner, but I hate the point it makes, which is supposed to be that replicants are people, too. No, they're not. They're machines created by men in a false mockery of humanity and do not bear the imago Dei. In the book, replicants are caught by the Voight-Kampf test because it measures emotional, empathetic, gut reactions, and replicants have no actual empathy, just programming designed to mimic that empathy. I like well-written stories, including those about the plight of 'sentient' robots, but to think that humans are capable of making something that rises to the level of sentience, to the level of being able to carry the image of God, is a hubristic heresy not unlike the Tower of Babel.
Jack Ward
How so?
Ian Barnes
Rot Batty is more of a human character than a Christ-like figure, imo. I always viewed him as someone who learned to accept that he can't be perfect on his own. I get what you're saying about the imagery though.
Is this confirmed by the director or someone? I always thought that the message was that it doesn't matter if anyone is a replicant or human to an outsider, which is shown through the fact that it's never said if Deckard is a replicant, because to us it doesn't matter, we only observe his actions and perceive them to be human enough.
It questions how we will react to being less necessary in a world of automation, for starters. Also replicants/androids (pic related being a personal favorite, even though tng isn't cyberpunk) bring up the question of whether or not machines can become "human".
Bentley Reyes
The thing is, the replicants, as portrayed in the movie, are not so much your traditional mechanical robots or androids (like pic related here: ), but rather genetically engineered humans or clones. Essentially glorified test tube babies. Even in the book, it is strongly implied that their lack of empathy comes not from an impossibility to experience such empathy, but from the immaturity in their emotional development that is the product of their short life-span. In other words, how even the sweetest of children often go through a phase where everything in the world revolves around them, and burning ants with a magnifying glass, or pulling a spider's legs off isn't a big deal.
A hallmark of mental and emotional maturity is growing to realize that you are in fact, not the center of the universe, and to care for and value and love others outside of yourself: i.e. empathy. Near the end, when Rachel pushes Deckards Llama, IIRC, of the cliff and kills it, she shows signs of developing empathy to the point of wanting to avenge the deaths of her fellow replicants. Otherwise, if she completely lacked empathy, there was no pragmatic or logical purpose to her act.
I think this brings up an interesting question: does God only bestow his Image, the Soul, only upon those lifeforms conceived naturally, or are genetically engineered humans also subject to receiving a Soul from the Most High? If it is born from, essentially, an artificial conception, and has all of the organs, emotions, senses etc., is it in God's Image? Can a human being be artificially conceived and have no Soul/Image in spite of having the brain functions to reason and feel? Do they, in essence, become an intelligent animal created by humans?
Brayden Bennett
On another note, if anything, Roy is more akin to a Prodigal Son, than a Christ or Anti-Christ figure. (even Tyrell himself directly alludes to this in their reunion.) He goes from, as aptly puts it, a selfish, narcissistic child, vainly trying to prolong his earthly fleshly existence with barely a care for anyone else or how he affects others (save Priss), to one who ultimately comes to terms with the inherent brevity and transience of corporeal existence, and the value of all life, as evidenced by his iconic final words in vid related, as well as the sparing of Deckard's life, and imparting such wisdom to him thus maturing beyond wrath, towards forgiveness.. He progresses from wallowing in the pig pen of the quest for more material experiences, to ultimately returning home to the understanding of physical life being "vanities of vanities", and that Love and Wisdom are far more important and enduring.
Jose Garcia
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Charles Ross
Heck, the Puppet Master, through Major Kusanagi, quotes a couple verses from 1 Corinthians when she's on the boat after diving.
Anthony Fisher
Raise another question: some works contain engineered test-tube humans that are perfectly functional except they have no apparent conscious thought, for purposes of organ-harvesting. Do they have a soul, as you posit? And if so, would it not be a case of man creating a "sub-human" of its own to serve him as cattle, to prolong his life? When you think about it there's a number of medical treatments you see in dystopian science fiction and cyberpunk in particular that basically sound like obfuscated vampirism. Which by extension, sounds demonic.
Christian Hill
Because Philip Disk is a religious writer
Joshua Jackson
A few reasons I can think of.
Philip K. Dick was a big influence on the genre and was a gnostic who experienced visions, so some form of spirituality has always been in the DNA of the genre.
Issues in the genre like realistic androids, clones, and cybernetic enhancement to the point of losing humanity all deal with what it truly means to be human, and hence what it means to have a soul.
Also the subject of 'what is reality' vs virtual/simulated reality, as seen in The Matrix, Total Recall, William Gibson's work, etc., gets into the nature of reality as a created thing, which necessitates a creator.
Then you have the fact that the genre is dystopian, and also about a high technology capitalist society. This leads inevitably to the idea that technological progress and commerce are not the panacea they are sold as, and makes us think about the things we are leaving behind through 'progress'.
Brayden Jenkins
Ridley Scott is a luciferian son of a bitch
Camden Ward
Didn’t he abuse lots of acid?
Angel Rogers
Well, it's Hollywood. But good point, I had skimmed over that, thanks for bringing that up.
Lincoln Sanchez
I didn't posit. I did not assume the concept of organic genetically engineered beings having a soul as being a self-evident fact. I asked if it could be a possibility. I also wondered if, instead, such an organic being, even with senses, reason and emotion, could nevertheless be soulless.
I do not know how God works in terms of the assigning of Souls. If it is a "natural conception only" phenomenon, or might God, in a mixture of grace, mercy, and wrath, bestow it on an artificially conceived being in order to humble the Babel-esque hubris of man, through the eventual rebellion of said beings against God's Image being created as a slave, or tool or organ depository for men. I do not know the theological basis of an argument for either position, and would be interested in one.
More than likely not. Nevertheless, would such beings have the potential to have their consciousness "activated" or "re-activated" so to speak? Or are they genetically modified from the ground up to make such a scenario an absolute impossibility? If the latter, than It's an open and shut case of no Soul. Regardless, creating such a living being for the sole purpose of organ harvesting would be absolutely evil. No question. But what about genetically engineering the creation of individual organs, independent of a living being? (i.e. a singular replacement liver, kidney, heart, etc.) Would such a thing fit into the same category?
Honestly, that analogy doesn't really work. Roy wasn't angry about his mortality, but about the unnatural brevity of his life, along with the realization of being ultimately designed as a disposable tool for exploitation. I imagine if he had a normal lifespan, he would have never visited Tyrell in the first place, or perhaps visited with a better disposition. In the Final Cut, he expresses regret to Sebastian, and even expresses regret to Tyrell about his past actions in the early part of their meeting: "I've done… questionable things."
Blake Cooper
I forget who said it, probably Dick or Clarke, but religion is science fiction's most important subject. For some reason, science fiction cannot escape a religious force.
Connor Evans
As much as anyone in the '60s, but his most profound visions were triggered by vitamin C.
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Nathan Murphy
That's in the director's cut too, at least some of it. Either way that's wrong.
Connor Reyes
Wait, what? This was not in the Director's Cut or Final Cut at all. In the aftermath of Roy killing Tyrell the Director's Cut, JF Sebastian is seen scared and trying to get away as Roy slowly moves towards him (with Roy saying "I'm sorry. Come, come." via an awkward added on voice over in the Final Cut.) In the Director's Cut, the only reference to Sebastian being dead is a report of his body being beside Tyrell that Deckard overhears over his radio in his car. Are you referring to a scene in the, from what I've heard but not seen, more violent International Cut?
Either way, you're right: Roy's actions were still not justifiable, however he may have felt. Ultimately, the reason for not creating artificial life is that it will open a Pandora's Box filled to the brim with moral and theological Gordian Knots, as I've alluded to earlier.
Jayden Ward
WTWTP
Bentley Ward
I'm sort of over-dramatizing JF's murder for purposes of greentexting, but he was certainly killed as part of the narrative, and I suspect it was at least as violent as Tyrell's demise since Roy was enraged at that point. That said how he was killed doesn't matter, as Roy's actions were (as you said) inexcusable, even if both were gently suffocated they still died. For that matter don't even know how many people Roy and his band killed in the movie, other than it was at least three.
Honestly the only "good" characters in the whole movie are probably Deckard and Holden, and they are both rather flawed (Holden less so, until you add on the deleted scenes). While the Tyrell Corporation personnel we see don't seem evil on the surface, they are basically creating life without souls, and we can see how destructive that kind of creature is. Neither of them may be aware they themselves are doing something bad, for different reasons, but we can discern the problems involved.
Liam Long
Given the influences of the genre, wouldn't it be nietzchean?
Levi Peterson
Once again, what is the precise theological basis for this?
Roy has a development arc that takes him from a soldier genetically programmed for killing, who is a murderous narcissistic emotional child, to an individual capable of showing mercy and forgiveness to a man who literally took away the one person he cared about most in the world (and possibly Zora, as he states one of Deckard's broken fingers is for.) He's no saint, but he's a little more complex than a demonic homonculus. In both the novel and the movie, Rachel shows signs of slowly beginning to develop a more adult range of emotional expression, in contrast to her initial icy meeting with Deckard. She is even in visible shock, as Deckard observes, in the aftermath of slaying Leon to save Deckard's life. There are even other little things, like Leon cherishing photographs of the others in their crew, and the fact that the replicants overall aren't just callous thrill killers, but desperate slaves in revolt, killing for the sake of attaining freedom due to being marked for death in the first place. Killers yes, but soulless monsters? If this is how the movie is trying to portray them, it's doing a poor job.
Still, I hope questions, such as the soulful or soullesness of artificial life stays in the realm of angels on pinheads and never becomes a reality.