Turning Point

Rating: Null/10 (30 October 2001)

Leighton Grist, in his article "Moving Targets and Black Widows," faults Blade Runner for supplanting substance with style. `Hence we are presented with a recognisably noir environment -- dark, rain-soaked, steam-filled, claustrophobic city streets, heavily-shadowed interiors -- which, while visually stunning, does not so much express classic noir's existential angst and oppression as the fact that the film-makers were well versed in genre stylization.' This argument has a fundamental problem. It presumes that whatever noir is, it results when a certain number of elements are present, when a critical mass is reached. Because Blade Runner lacks `existential angst' (if, indeed, it does), it is incomplete. If we play this argument out, however, we can charge that Mildred Pierce is not film noir because it generally lacks dark interiors, rainy streets, high-contrast lighting, and other traditional noir traits. Mildred Pierce, though, is noir. Why? Because it suggests despair, shows the influence of psychoanalysis, and draws its momentum from tragic irony. Moreover, Mildred Pierce is noir because it was shot at the end of the Second War, by a European expatriate, when existentialism (of the Sartre variety) enjoyed a vogue. It reflects the historical and ideological temperament of the time when it was made. Blade Runner, on the other hand, appeared toward the end of the Cold War -- in a world tremendously different from 1945: a time when questions about living prosperously seemed more important that questions about life's meaning and absurdity. The crisis facing mankind, directors, and movie audiences 35 years after Hiroshima just wasn't the same -- we were not gripped in horrendous doubt and fear. If anything, we were gripped by technology; and if a popular negative philosophy existed, it was oriented around things like computers and artificial hearts, and how their inclusion in our world could eventually undermine our importance as going concerns. This philosophy certainly preoccupies Blade Runner, with its Lang-ian paranoia about machine intruders. So: the film is not existential for the same reason that Mildred Pierce is not tech. Both films reflect the fears and troubles afflicting the times in which they were made. I do not argue, however, that Scott's film is noir. Rather, I attack the claim that because it is not as noir as other films it is trash. It is of its time. Real Noir is of its time. Thus Blade Runner is an adventure movie with noir traits.
It also has science fiction traits, as it creates a world that might be ours in the future. Its credulity -- like Things to Come, The Blob, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- forces us to look at ourselves. Strong sci-fi, after all, depicts an imagined future that is usually a projection, a magnification, of what we already know. This vision of the future is anything but optimistic, and because of this, it possesses a quasi-moralistic tone, a warning. In the future, the movie suggests, mankind will have destroyed its environment. Have the seeds of this destruction been planted? Yes. (No Nukes, Three Mile Island, Save The Whales....Environmental activism thrived during the late 70s/early 80s because fears of environmental degradation thrived.) By extension, all the other worst case scenarios shown in the film -- homelessness, corporate might, xenophobia, racism, misogyny -- are condemnations of contemporaneous social problems And this reasoning gets me thinking. In a world as fouled as the one depicted in the movie, lousy treatment of women seems like a behavior which would be normal. I'm not convinced, as some critics are, that the depiction of misogyny is a celebration of it. After all, aren't there numerous instances in Scott's films (Thelma And Louis, Alien, and GI Jane), when women are depicted as heroes and saviors? Finally, I have the feeling that Blade Runner is an important movie in the history of cinema. It is a Hollywood blockbuster -- an over-the-top extravaganza -- of the sort Star Wars and Jaws precipitated. Those films, however, were genre films on steroids (like Scott's Gladiator, in fact). Blade Runner isn't a genre film, however. It is hydra-headed: film noir, samurai, science fiction, dystopia, comic book, and horror. Because of this -- this attempt to be everything past in the brand new Hollywood of 1982 -- it may be categorized as homage, a farewell to Flash Gordon, Sam Spade, Soylent Green, and Frankenstein - to mass produced genre films. And because of this, it is a film about film -- about the separation of the new Hollywood from the old one, a hash of dead dreams and copies.

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