From: mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies,rec.arts.sf.movies,alt.cult-movies
Subject: Re: Deckard as 6th Replicant doesn't hold water
Date: 4 Oct 92 11:23:13 GMT
Organization: DB and ES Subdivision, TU Vienna

From article <1992Oct1.062108.17510@cssc-syd.tansu.com.au>, by pete@cssc-syd.tansu.com.au (Peter Alexander Merel):
> I'm no computer, Markus. I'll accept 'plot contradictions', as long as they're 
> unambiguous. Show me one.

If you only discuss films on an "unambiguous" level, then you are
behaving like a computer.  A plot contradiction is always by necessity
based on the idea that people behave to get closer to their goals.  If
they don't, for some irrational reason (sic), then the film should
show the background for that irrationality.  If you have a film that
shows people behaving irrationally just for fun, so be it, but then
there's nothing to defend there, and nothing to prove by it.

>>And where do you get they idea they are able to erase memories?  
> I don't know they can. I don't know they can't. The point is, on the
> evidence, neither you nor I know they can't.

The fact that they are still experimenting with implants, together
with what I know (little enough) about the way the human brain works,
is quite sufficient for me to conclude that they can't.

> I don't think we'll get any further here; I'm tempted to start quoting
> Phil Dick at you, but I don't think that would be on point. 

Do it (just not Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep).  While I think
looking for Dickian traits in the film is great fun, using Dick as
basis to prove things about the film is not valid.

>>Explicitly erasing memories while keeping a replicant functional is
>>more difficult than putting memories into a growing replicant's head.
 
> How much more difficult? So difficult that we can rule it out as a possible
> interpretation? Why?

Because a film that uses technology for its plot that the reader is
not told about is, simply, a bad film.  When I look at the original
edition, I see a great film that has been fitted with stupid
voiceovers and a unpleasantly happy ending.  When I look at the
director's cut I see a film that has been reduced in meaning and power
for the sake of form, i.e., plot twists, and at the cost of
consistency (Deckard, the weakling, as replicant, to point out the
worst of those).  Assuming that a host of technology exists that we
are not told about just so that Deckard can be the 6th replicant puts
the film one notch deeper.  I am not arguing that there can be no
interpretation in which that is true, but those are too far removed
from what you see on the screen to really take them into
consideration.  

> Pots and Kettles and sticks and stones. I have not decided which parts of
> the film serve as 'proof', and I'll accept any part of the film you care to
> present as 'proof'. I won't accept speculation though.

I have not been presenting parts of the film as proofs, but the way
those parts fit together.  Perhaps that is your problem.
-- 
Markus Stumptner                                mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
University of Technology Vienna                 vexpert!mst@relay.eu.net
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst