From: jk87377@cc.tut.fi (Juhana Kouhia)
Subject: Re: Deckard as 6th Replicant doesn't hold water
Organization: Tampere University of Technology
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 92 11:30:12 GMT


In article <6010@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at>
mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner) writes:
>From article <1992Oct8.170134.14338@cc.tut.fi>, by jk87377@cc.tut.fi
>(Juhana Kouhia):
>> Do you watch end of the movies before you watch the movie?
>> To the few last minutes of the film I did compare the Deckard (human)
>								^^^^^^^
>Do you understand the concept of persistence?  If you find out that he
>is not human at the end of the film, then he clearly was not human
>throughout all of the film.

Ah, this I meaned by 'begin comes first, end comes last' and by
timeorder.

Of course, Deckard is not human throughout the film if we find out
that he is not human at the end.

But you should realize that I watch the movie from the begin to end;
and I do not store the entire movie to my memory first and then
I analyse (and watch) it all at the same time, no.

I analyse and observe the movie while I watch it.
I thought to the last minutes at the end that Deckard is human
as you did too.
Thus, the main theme (mentioned in previous posts) still is valid
while I watch the movie.

You get what I mean? (Please read the entire article before answering.)


>You compare a replicant that you *think* is human with
>replicants, and there is a huge difference between the two.
>If you do not think so, then we'd better let the discussion rest here.

Of course, I understand this clearly, but the question is
about the main theme (as seen by a viewer who see the movie first
time -- usually people watch a movie only one time, thus it is
pointless to argue that the main theme should be that one
which comes when you see the movie backwards from the video tape or
similar :-).


After movie we can analyse the movie again when we know all
facts from the movie.
I think that Director & screenplayer wanted us to first
think that we have human+replicants and then at the end
we (some of us) note that we have had replicant instead of human.


>> To me it looks like you don't realize that the movie
>> has a time order: begin comes first and end comes last.
>
>If Deckard is a replicant at the end, then he was a replicant at the
>beginning, no matter what you thought he was.

What I'm saying is that you don't know it until at the end.
Thus, you think there's human & replicants.

(Hmm... have I repeative style to write... :-)



>As an analogy: If you
>see a thriller where the villain (call him A) is revealed at the last
>moment, do you think the crime has not been committed by him until
>that moment?  No.  The revelation only shows what has been going on
>all the time.
>If, up to that last moment, some other person (B) was
>the main suspect of murdering the victim (C), do you still leave the
>cinema thinking "I wonder why B hated C enough to kill him"?  No,
>because you know B did *not* kill C - the premise is invalid.

Hmm... in case of BR we don't *know*.
Usually, movies as in your example, tells very clearly at the
beginning that we have an innocent B.
If it is not made clear, then I believe B is murderer until
I see the end of movie.

We can analyse the movie:
1. In timeorder; we don't know what happens at the end.
2. After we have seen the movie; we know that Deckard was really this
   and that (say, a replicant).

When we first time see a movie we analyse (while watching the
movie) with method 1. After that we can analyse with method 2.
I think almost 'interesting' discussions held on T2, Alien, etc. is
because we find out something at the end which then explanes why this
and that happened at the beginning.


Juhana Kouhia