response #4: Human Practices.

While watching BladeRunner, I had a small difficulty in distinguishing who is human and who is a replicant. If we can define "human" as someone who has the physical characteristics of a man/human, then replicants and humans are indistinguishable. If being "human" is to feel emotions and to have memories, then separating "humans" from replicants is pretty impossible. In fact, one difference between replicants and humans is the ability to reproduce and to recreate life from within one's body, without the aid of scientists conjuring up chemical life catalysts.... What I found interesting from this movie is the forefront of PRACTICES as a way to place markers (as well as complicate the concept) of humanity, as well as to distinguish matters of differences between humans and replicants. One, the figure of Rachel as a "passer" is based upon her ability to conjure up emotions, because possesses memories (although they are not hers, but the fact that she does should make her human). Apart from her beautiful human-like face, she should be considered human because she possesses these qualities that normally distinguish humans from machines--because machines are supposedly incapable of feeling emotions and memories that evoke feelings. She, as an entity, is capable of PRACTICING human-like interactions. Another practice is intimacy: 1) Rachel and Deckard; 2) Zora and Leon? While intimacy between two replicants might be possible because they are the same "kind," how is the intimacy possible between a man and a replicant? I think that by posing the concept of PRACTICES we are forced to think how different would our interpretation of the movie be, had we not known who is human and who is a replicant. At the beginning of the movie, we are introduced to the concept of humans & replicants in the introduction to set up the question of what it is to be human. By posing that introduction, the movie/director/creator is setting up these parameters in order for viewers to (try to) distinguish between humans and replicants, the way Deckard and the other humans in the movie are about to do. In this controlled setting, viewers are dared to figure it out. With this in mind, the creator tries to set up an experiment with his characters in order to question what "human" to "un-human" is. If we did not know who is human and who is a replicant, our guesses would reflect our own personal sets of parameters that come out through the practice of making distinctions.




Questions:

1. What are some distinctive markers of "humanity?" What makes someone human in BladeRunner?
2. If we are left to figure out who is human and who is a replicant, how would we do that? How does this relate to the concept of race as a set of parameters dictated by someone else?