Let me acknowledge that all of this going to be a thing everyone else knew and I somehow missed, but bear with me anyway.
First, some on the movie.
The beginning is like a really bad detective story in which the narrator tells you things that are already going on. A lot of exlpication. "I was a bladerunner. blah blah" with this sultry music. "I'm not on the force anymore. You know I quit." etc. And sometimes the take-away messages are a little over-the-top, too, like "Too bad she won't live. But then, who does?" (repeated by Edward James Olmos in an echoing voice-over at the end. Or "I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in his last moments, he loved life more than ever, not just his own, but every life." After the android dies.
(Dead replicant, "retired" after she blasts through a whole bunch of plate glass windows, wearing nothing but a bra ensemble and a clear plastic coat, so you can see her wounds even through the coat) Also, what lovely colors, eh?
Something I'm not sure how to make sense of is the love scene between Deckard and Rachel, because he kisses her, she tries to leave, he grabs her violently, shakes her and says, "tell me to kiss you" and, as she is crying, she is obedient. So this idea of her being a slave is really overbearing and I wonder if she is supposed to seem like she has free will at all. She certainly has a vacant expression and much less tenacity than the other androids, especially, in the end, the German-looking one who shows real deep emotion or empathy or something. Rachel cries, but she is still pretty vacant. Anyway, when he returns to her sleeping on his bed/foldout couch whatever, he says "you love me." She dutifully replies "I love you." "You trust me." "I trust you." There is definitely the feeling that she is just saying that. How happy can she be? Apparently, this is a major difference with the book (Deckard is married in the book and does sleep with Rachel, but I don't think they end up together in any way.) In this movie, he takes her with him in a car and they drive to some magical sunshine hilly place, probably in california since I think they might be in San Fran or something for the tokyo/gotham-city-like rest of the movie. Anyway, is he just telling her what to think? Is that any different than the way they are programmed otherwise? Does "love" mean anything to an android? And yes, I'm sure someone has written a dissertation on this already but I haven't thought about it before. :)
(Sad replicant, returning to the side of his newly shot girlfriend)
The android howls, btw, when he is overcome with emotion at the loss of Priss (Daryl Hannah), and continues to howl throughout the rest of the film until he dies and, somewhat ridiculously, releases a white dove (or pigeon?) he's grabbed at some point on the roof. Anyway, he is also inexplicably wearing nothing but tight boxer-briefs or mini shorts for the remainder of the film, and he says a lovely thing about how all the things that happened to him in his life will disappear like tears in the rain. (It is perpetually raining). So are we to gather that being emotional is to be like an animal? It's also interesting the parallels made between Deckard and the android in the ending scenes, because the android breaks 2 of Deckard's fingers as payback for the death of the two female androids, and then lets him go, and shortly, the android jams a huge nail into his seizing hand, presumably to stop the death (?) that is beginning to set in? (he says "not yet!" and inflicts pain on himself perhaps to stay alive). Or perhaps just to feel? At any rate, both of them clutch and sieze their hands, and the hands seem to be awfully important, since the android earlier killed Tyrell, the inventor, by crushing his head with his bare hands, and then tightly grabs Deckard's hand in order to pull him up from the edge of the roof and save him. Anyway, they are both alternatively moaning or howling as well, Deckard when he tries to re-set his fingers, and the android, in his crazed running around the building, wolflike.
Also, the music (which was generally disturbing since it felt like a seedy saxophone solo in a bad dective movie most of the time, probably intentional, or just a product of the decade) was by Vangelis . . . and Vangelis, of course, did the music of Cosmos . . . and so Vangelis is now the soundtrack to science fiction or something. :)
Ok, so here's the big reveal to me. I had no idea that this movie was based (somewhat loosely) on the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (1968 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick) (AHHH! That's why this movie is so maniacally important to philosphers, etc.) And after reading more in detail about the synopsis of the book, I see why this has been so significant in terms of the identity and characteristics of humanity, as well as the identity and characteristics of animals, and why animal scholars throw this one out a lot. I also wager it has something to do with that wonderful title.
Here are a few important snippets from the wikipedia page:
"The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic near future, where the Earth and its populations have been damaged greatly by Nuclear War during World War Terminus. Most types of animals are endangered or extinct due to extreme radiation poisoning from the war. To own an animal is a sign of status, but what is emphasized more is the empathic emotions humans experience towards an animal." and "The U.N. encourages emigration to off-world colonies, in hope of preserving the human race from the terminal effects of the fallout. One emigration incentive is giving each emigrant an "andy" — a servant android.
The remaining populace live in cluttered, decaying cities wherein radiation poisoning sickens them and damages their genes. Animals are rare and people are expected to keep them and help preserve them. But many people turn towards the much cheaper synthetic, or electric, animals to keep up the pretense. Rick Deckard owned a sheep, but it died of tetanus, and he replaced it with a synthetic sheep." . . . "As android technology improved, bounty hunters had to apply an empathy test — the Voigt-Kampff — to distinguish humans from androids, by measuring empathetic responses, or lack thereof, from questions designed to evoke an emotional response, often including animal subjects and themes." "Deckard's story is paralleled by that of J.R. Isidore, a driver for an animal repair shop who cannot qualify to leave Earth and so lives alone, with little outside contact other than his Empathy Box. Pris Stratton moves into the building and the lonely Isidore attempts to befriend her. Pris proves to be a runaway android, identical in appearance to Rachael Rosen.
Deckard eventually retires all of the illegal androids, earning him a citation for the record number of kills in one day. He returns home to discover that Rachael Rosen killed his (real) pet goat by pushing it off the roof. He understands that Rachael was taking revenge, and is thankful that the loss is financial; the android could instead have killed his wife."
Finally, here is a totally lovely spinoff-- "Electric Sheep is a distributed computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver. . . . The name "Electric Sheep" is taken from the title of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The title mirrors the nature of the project: computers (androids) who have started running the screensaver begin rendering (dreaming) the fractal movies (sheep)." (From wikipedia)
I love all of this. There are myriad cultural uses of the phrase "electric sheep" but kind of obscure and hidden in band lyrics. I feel like it calls out for more.
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