Bondage, Bestiality, and Bionics:
Sexual Fetishism in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner
BY KYLE J. NOVAK
The Ridley Scott film adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep? is nothing less than a subtextual goldmine for film and literary critics alike. A favorite of
the common movie buff and the crutch of every academic seeking to fully document its
meaning, Blade Runner has been dissected, gutted, and had its components scrutinized more
than any other science fiction film of its generation. Books are devoted to its deconstruction.
Papers have been proposing new ways to look at the piece for decades, and indeed, this essay is
no different. The sheer abundance of analytic material, though, poses a difficult question. Does
Blade Runner simply act as a mirror to the critic's expectations or is it truly a source of infinitely
complex themes and meanings? After all, to assume that every essayist's conclusions are true
and, therefore, present in the film on the basis of a calculated decision by the filmmakers is quite
spectacular. Ultimately, whatever the filmmakers didn't do deliberately, they did
subconsciously, and the subconscious additions are of more scholarly value than what was
sketched out on paper. Among these subconsciously included themes is the subject of the
following quote: “More than any other American film genre . . . science fiction denies human
eroticism and libido a traditional narrative representation and expression.”1
Sex in a science fiction film is not unique, but neither is it prominent. For the most part,
popular culture agrees with this notion, considering how fans of the genre are often lampooned
as socially-inept asexuals or sheltered life-long virgins. Producers and casting directors are
privy to the stereotype too. Some of the most acclaimed science fiction films seem to lack
significant female characters altogether—featuring much less alluring women. In this genre,
elements of sex are usually reduced to formula, only present as tongue-in-cheek dialogue or
unabashed eye candy; who can forget Princess Leia's gold bikini and its effect on pre-adolescent
1
Vivian Sobchack, “The Virginity of Astronauts: Sex and the Science Fiction Film,” in Alien Zone: Cultural
Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema, ed. Annette Kuhn (New York: Verso, 1990), 103.
Valley Humanities Review Spring 2010
1
boys across the globe? What makes Blade Runner different, however, is its ability to portray sex
in a way akin to Sobchack's claim (non-traditional expression), and yet have that eroticism be
complimentary to both the plot and themes of the film.
Blade Runner is a film seeping with representations of repressed sexuality. Every scene,
sequence, and image is imbued with, commenting on, or directly a result of sexual frustration
and need. Within the scope of the story, this need is embodied in the form of several paraphilic
fetishisms. Eroticism is not purely thrown in to advance a love story, but rather, it is ubiquitous,
constantly denying itself "traditional narrative representation" by only existing in the form of
“the fetish.” In turn, these fetishisms aid in the development of the film’s questions on mortality
and human desire for self-actualization—both in and outside the bedroom. The following close
analysis of the film will provide metaphorical and literal examples of repressed sexuality,
through manifestations of bestiality, voyeurism, incest, sadomasochistic
domination/submission, and role-play.
In the Los Angeles of 2019, owning a real animal grants the individual not only a social
status, but also a sort of self-perceived “psychological nirvana.” Throughout the film, these
feelings for animals walk the line between adoration and erotic fixation. From this, one can
derive the fetish of zoophilia, more colloquially known as bestiality, the paraphilic but not
necessarily copulatory interest in animals. Bestiality is present minutes into the film’s running
time. In the Tyrell corporation headquarters, Holden tests Leon to determine his “replicancy” or
“nonhumanness.” The vast majority of questions have animals as part of their subjects,
including: a tortoise, a wasp, a butterfly, an oyster, a bear, and a dog. Many revolve around
animal cruelty, like Leon’s question regarding a turtle flipped on its shell, unable to right itself,
or Rachel’s question about the propriety of eating a raw oyster over a boiled dog. Even when
Rachel is prodded with the “jealousy test question” about her hypothetical husband hanging a
photo of a nude woman in their hypothetical home, the minor detail of the woman being on a
bearskin rug is gingerly included. This would suggest that the mere addition of having this
woman lie prostrate on the hide of a slain and skinned bear could make the photograph more
2
alluring. Despite the Voight-Kampff test beckoning replicants to answer humanely, so much
focus on animal cruelty conjures up images of sadism.
Notably, the first words uttered by Rachel when Deckard visits Tyrell are: “You like our
owl?” Deckard asks if it’s artificial, and Rachel scoffs, “Of course it is.”2 It becomes clear: real
animals are rare, and hence held sacred, spoken about with a reverence usually left for deities.
Incidentally, in the first draft of the David Peoples and Hampton Fancher screenplay, as well as
in the novel itself, Deckard works as a blade runner solely for the finances to buy a real, live
animal; in this case, a sheep to replace his electric sheep. This gives a dual meaning to Dick’s
title. One interpretation of the title asks: what does it take to be considered human? Is dreaming,
aspiration, and hope “unreplicable” in robotic creation? Is it possible to manufacture something
so lifelike that it would need to rely on the emotional solace of “sheep jumping over a fence” in
order to fall asleep? The second interpretation asks if it is a distinctly and exclusively human
attribute to feel compassion and love for fellow creatures in a modern, mechanized, and cold
society. It would appear that the answer the film gives to this question is no, for even the
replicants themselves see animals as being representative of humanity, and prove it by their
efforts to slowly transform into them. In Sebastian’s apartment, Pris becomes a “spiderwoman.”3 She changes from a meek innocent girl into a pouncing tentacled sexual beast.
Similarly, Zhora runs her stripper-act as the snake-woman Salome, a mythic reference not
belied by her onstage performance. Even Batty, who after discovering the mauled body of Pris,
reacts with “lupine howls of anguish” and morphs into a half-naked lycanthrope, playing a catand-mouse game with Deckard.4 When these characters revert to their animal states, they
become sexual, erotic, ravenously heated, and only further substantiate a zoophilic passion.
2
Blade Runner, DVD, directed by Ridley Scott (1982; Hollywood, California: Warner Home Video, 1997)
Simon H. Scott, “Is Blade Runner a Misogynist Text?” Scribble.com,
http://www.scribble.com/uwi/br/brtv.html (accessed May 25, 2009).
4
Andrew Stiller, “The Music in Blade Runner,” in Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott’s Blade
Runner and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 2nd ed., ed. Judith B. Kerman (Bowling Green State
University: Popular Press 3, 1997), 199.
3
3
In one scene of The Director’s Cut, Deckard dreams of an ethereal garden, where a
dashing, muscular, and elegant unicorn, photographed in heavenly soft focus, gallops around
in sexy mane-waving slow motion. The bizarre sensuality of the dream makes it reminiscent of
Peter Scaffer’s play Equus and the not-so-subtle theme of an unhinged sexually-charged
beatification of something projected to be holy. In Blade Runner, this godhead, rather than a
horse, is a unicorn, a creature that is, in the realm of fiction, the rarest of animals. Comparable to
another animal of this classification, the dragon—whose reality is shrouded in the mysticism on
which some ancient cultures bestowed a worshipful adulation—the unicorn in Blade Runner—
dancing in what could easily be interpreted as Eden—acts as the ultimate “Holy Grail” to
Deckard. Is there a hierarchy mapping certain animals to higher emotional and psychological
rewards? Should we believe that Deckard’s aspirations run higher than attaining an organic
sheep? Is possessing a unicorn the way Deckard envisions finally becoming self-actualized?
From all this, it would appear that owning a real animal is this culture’s symbol of finally
achieving what Americans today would call their “pursuit of happiness.”
Voyeurism can be interpreted as an act caused by a sexual need or want that is not being
traditionally expressed or fulfilled. Society in Blade Runner allows man to delve into voyeuristic
activity using the social stratification of its cities and the advanced technology of its times.
Indeed, Deckard’s own lines substantiate voyeurism as part of the norm when he searches a
dressing room for “little dirty holes they drill in the walls so they can watch a lady undress.”5
Due to the social hierarchy of Los Angeles in 2019, rich white men afford the ability to spy on
peasantish inferiors from the top of their metaphorical “high towers” (or in Tyrell’s literal case,
a ziggurat). Even when a layer of pollution-trigged fog separates the upper class from having a
perfect view of the proles, police-cars compensate, perpetually hovering over the floor-level,
slicing their searchlights through the smoky underworld. They now behave like the anonymous
eye from above, and by doing so, maintain a constant record of the plebeian activities.
Surveillance abounds, and attempts at privacy are persistently thwarted by the structure of the
5
Blade Runner, DVD, directed by Ridley Scott (1982).
4
city, where bars are open air, glass is a popular building material, and steaming potholes and
wall cracks are plenty—as well as, one could say, distastefully kinky in their conjuring of
gaping orifices. Not even payphones maintain anonymity, as they too now have video
transmission. A smaller version of a tool by which to engage in this sexually-gratifying activity
is the Voight-Kampff machine, a technology able to expose replicancy among the masses,
forcing a private identity to be exposed and ultimately examined against the subject’s will. How
is that not voyeurism of the mind?
In fact, the image of “looking” is so conspicuous that within the first few moments of the
film’s duration, an extreme close-up of an eye fills the screen, its pupil reflecting images of
phallic fire-spewing. A few minutes later, another eye is given a close-up, when Leon is
measured for iris dilation through the Voight-Kampff machine. There are two possible
explanations for the first eyeshot, as it not presented as a cold-open to another scene (as many
films stylistically practice) or as an image from the narrative’s back-story. One explanation
suggests the eye could serve as a symbolic preamble, informing the viewer that the film’s
setting and time is one where gaze is penetrating and the satisfaction that comes from it is
commonplace. On the other hand, this image could also serve as a reminder that the film’s
audience itself is guilty of scopophilic “looking,” as it is what they will be doing for two hours.
To expand on this latter reasoning, one must first recognize that one of old cinema’s
most ascribable props for a peeping tom character, excluding binoculars or a telescope, is that of
slat blinds. Throughout the film, characters are often lit via segmented and layered light, lines of
light that appear as if originating from behind horizontal blinds. This pattern is most obvious
when Deckard and Rachel are about to have sex in his apartment, and most inexplicably seen,
in the theatrical release of the film, falling on Deckard through a windshield, as he drives with
Rachel across misty cliffsides. Why is this significant? Laura Mulvey writes of a motion picture
as, “a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the
5
audience, producing for it a sense of separation and voyeuristic phantasy.”6Further, “the
extreme contrast between the darkness in the auditorium and the brilliance of the shifting
patterns of light and shade on the screen,” in addition to the regimented tier-like isolation of the
viewing audience, “promotes a voyeuristic separation.”7 A man hidden in moonlit brush
outside someone’s window watches the spectacle indoors not unlike a movie patron studies the
screen in a theater. Hence, the film itself provides “an illusion of looking on in a private
world.”8 Therefore, one can deduce that if the viewers of Blade Runner are seeing so many of the
film’s characters, during scenes of deep intimacy (the car scene) or emotion (the sex scene)
through these stratified lines of light, then the Blade Runner audience is the voyeur, peeping
through slats.
Photographs provide the characters of Blade Runner with a scopophilic release,
reflecting their personal desires for something real, if only through another fake mechanical
medium. Rachel latches onto pictures of her “mother” and is emotionally distraught when she
learns that the pictures are a product of the artificial memories instilled within her during her
creation. Leon cherishes “precious photographs” of his replicant friends, as evidenced by Roy’s
derogatory quip to him. Deckard has dozens of family photographs lining his piano top. Even
the film’s most straightforward character, Officer Bryant, has framed photographs casually
placed on his desk. Bizarrely, all these photographs are in black and white or subdued grayish
colors, composed with grain and poor lighting—something very anachronistic given the
technological modernity of the times. This makes the photographs almost surveillance-like and,
with exception to the portrait shots, laces them with candid “homemade” feelings. For Rachel,
the photographs serve as a mode of self-identification with humans. Her longing to become
something real is placed on the photograph as a projection of repressed desire, much like Laura
Mulvey states people in an auditorium weigh their repressed desires on the hero of the film
they are watching. For Deckard and Officer Bryant, photographs suggest a longing for reality in
6
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16.3 (1975): 8.
Ibid., 12.
8
Ibid., 17.
7
6
a world where their jobs as “robot-hunters,” daily commute, and home life revolve around the
mechanical and manufactured. However, the most obvious of scenes supporting the scopophilic
nature of photographs occurs when Deckard uses the Esper machine to analyze Leon’s photo.
He delves deeper and deeper into the picture, pressing zoom on an imaginary telescope—
reminiscent of the 1954 film Rear Window—until he reaches the softly diffused accidental
portrait of Zhora, seemingly nude, under a blanket. This is perhaps the most straightforward
use of a photograph for potential erotic purposes, and the most up-front presentation of the
voyeur fetish. Nonetheless, for Leon, the photo is only important to combat feelings of isolation,
a memento to his membership of the replicant race, and therefore an item that reflects his need
to exist, even if not as a human. This begs the question: can the photograph’s erotic qualities
only be appreciated by Deckard, the real humans, and the Blade Runner audience, or could
replicants find interest in them, and hence each other, as well?
Shunned by today’s society, incest is a taboo act that may lead to the sexual repression of
any individual who secretly desires it. Blade Runner places replicants as vehicles by which
humans and other replicants can fulfill unconscious incestual desire. As all replicants are
created by the Tyrell corporation, there can be construed a familial link between them. Much
like blood and genes link humans, the manufactured organs constructed from the same stock
bind replicants. Therefore, when Roy kisses Pris, he is kissing his sister freely, breaking the
platonic convention by making it deep and on the mouth. Later, Roy delivers a strong kiss of
death to his Frankensteinian father, Tyrell. Rachel, after examining a photograph of Deckard’s
mother in his apartment, unleashes her hair and strings it in an attempt at emulation. This
action apparently courts Deckard. They have sex shortly afterward. Furthermore, Rachel looks
and behaves like Tyrell's “Stepford wife,” leaking with a pent-up eroticism and uncontrollable
amenability that we can only assume must, at some point, have been exploited by the middleaged, apparently spouseless Tyrell. We are told Rachel’s implanted memories belong to Tyrell’s
niece; so, in a Descartian sense, since Rachel thinks like his niece, she is his niece. This is
something Tyrell is not only privy to, but has arranged himself.
7
Freud ascribes sadomasochism to sexual repression by pointing to childhood, a time
when the individual fears punishment for acting out sexual wants. If this were to be assumed
true, then all instances of sadomasochism in Blade Runner are another channel by which the
characters achieve erotic self-actualization. The women of Blade Runner are representative of
feminine submissiveness, while the men, as Laura Mulvey explains, “cannot bear the burden of
sexual objectification,” because the spectator sees the male character as an “image of his like . . .
gaining control and possession of the woman within the diegesis.”9 Blade Runner illustrates this
apparent dichotomy of gender roles through scenes of sadomasochist domination of the male
over the female. As a result, this draws the female characters as little more than sexual objects.
In her analysis of the film, Marleen Barr writes that the cityscape of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles
is full of “billboards picturing animated sexually enticing female faces.”10 These artificial
replications of attractive females pander to the male consumer via lust, something that
apparently cannot be achieved by regular women of the society, as the only human female in
the entire film is a wholly unattractive, one-eyed, masculine bartender.
Noticeable immediately is the fact that the only replicants actually retired by Deckard
were Pris and Zhora, both female, and had there not been a romantic connection between
Deckard and Rachel, one would assume Rachel would be the third easy target for extermination.
In fact, there was originally slated to be another female replicant in the film, named Mary, that
Deckard would retire. In the film’s most blatant scene of domination, Deckard violently
manhandles Rachel into sexual acquiescence, demanding that she say, “Kiss me.”11 Obviously
humiliated, Rachel complies in a typical bondage-dominance sadomasochistic (BDSM)
submissive role. Near the end of the film, she responds to Deckard with complete servitude as
she answers his “Do you love me? Do you trust me?” questions with mechanized responses, “I
9
Ibid., 20.
Marleen Barr, “Speciesism and Sexism in Blade Runner,” in Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott’s
Balde Runner and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ed. Judith B. Kerman (Bowling Green State
University: Popular Press 3, 1997), 29.
11
Blade Runner, DVD, directed by Ridley Scott (1982).
10
8
love you. I trust you.”12 These are much like today’s colloquial sexual taunts of “Who’s your
daddy?” with similar I-am-your-slave responses. The chase with Zhora, too, can be modeled as
metaphorical sex-play. Zhora’s thigh-high boots, black latex-looking clothing, and completely
impractical jacket, whose only possible purpose is “to be see-through,” is utterly indicative of
bondage wear. Shot numerous times in the back, Zhora flails her arms and legs like a rag doll
under Deckard‘s control, before falling flat on her face in the final “humiliation act” of BDSM
play.
Male domination is even suggested by the unabated phallic imagery in Blade Runner.
The towers of the L.A. skyline stand erect and spew (ejaculate) fire into the heavens. In Tyrell’s
ziggurat above the clouds, two pillars, one slanted in a very recognizable phallic way, cut into
the giant sun, showing that not even it maintains the reverence it once did. Less significant
phallic symbols may include the nearly-comic headgear hanging off Chew’s forehead, limpened
when Batty accosts him, and the unnecessarily erect nose on one of the more disturbing toys at
Sebastian’s apartment, seemingly aroused by Pris’ role-play metamorphosis. The only vaginal
symbol in Blade Runner is the wet road tunnel that Deckard plows his car through several times
throughout the film. We see this tunnel most unexplainably after the death of Tyrell. Can it then
be interpreted as a sort of birth canal in reverse? Whatever it is, Deckard, as a male, owns it.
During the course of the film, Captain Bryant twice refers to the Nexus-6 replicants as
“skinjobs,” “a term which, the film tells us, replaces ‘nigger’.”13 Immediately, a question arises
as to why exactly this unusual synecdoche-like euphemism became part of the urban vernacular.
But when one thinks of today's similarly structured slang terms, such as “blowjob” or
“handjob,” the sexual allusion becomes unmistakable. Is a “skinjob” what the female replicants
are best used for? Does this include male replicants too? After all, Batty's androgynous sexuality
is on display when he darts around the Bradbury building as the half-naked wolf-man.
12
13
Ibid.
Barr, “Speciesism and Sexism,” 28.
9
Notwithstanding, Batty, unlike the women, maintains a dominant standing, “retiring” even
more people than Deckard.
There is male dominance even amongst the replicants. Only Leon fails to pass the “sexy
robot” test. On the other hand, it could be argued that Leon is a man holding back, as evidenced
by his demonstration of oedipal rage at the start of the film. Still, Zhora and Pris are depicted
the most, out of the replicants, as objects. They’re not really women. They’re not even people,
while Leon and Batty could be seen as such. They’re packaged merchandise in factory sealed
boxes, with little plastic transparent windows. Zhora’s window was the glass store display,
which she managed to “breathe through” when her death elicited some sympathy from
Deckard. Pris’ window was the veil-like net she willingly draped over herself in Sebastian’s
apartment, right before becoming the sexual beast she was destined to be. Both women met
their fates amongst plastic dolls, either mannequin or toy, further solidifying their status as
sexual play objects, ripe for male picking. Men control this future world. They are on top, in
more ways than one.
Blade Runner overflows with this quiet sensuality that lends itself to the objectification of
the film’s female characters and lionization of its male protagonist through the use of sound and
lighting. Most apparent in its erotic undertones is the soundtrack, composed by Vangelis. The
music persists with a calming ambience, enhanced with jazzy flourishes reminiscent of the 1976
film Taxi Driver and crescendos that hit at seemingly inappropriate times, such as Zhora’s death.
However, when one sees Blade Runner as a film wrought with sexual fetishism, the music attains
a level of appropriateness. In fact, there is reason to go further with the Taxi Driver comparisons.
Deckard’s travels through the sleezy, smoky, dirty, crowded underworld of the LA floor-level is
not unlike Travis Bickle’s taxi rides through the “debauchery” of the crime-ridden, seedy, grimy
streets of New York. Yet, the music of Taxi Driver is just as jarringly unnatural for these
scenarios as the music of Vangelis in Blade Runner. Perhaps it is like this because there is almost
something sexy about the full-out sordidness of these places, like the prostitution and porno
theaters in Taxi Driver, and the bars and strip-joints in Blade Runner.
10
Almost all lighting in Blade Runner consists of sharp, directed beams, spotting a
character like an exhibition at an art show; an object, art relic, up for display. There are very
specific times where Rachel has a nearly blinding light outlining her features. One instance is
when Deckard contacts her through the videophone at the bar and an almost unnatural hard
ray of light traces the left side of her face. Another is when Rachel is at Deckard’s apartment,
and the searchlights from the window totally saturate the screen whenever she is on camera.
Even the first time the audience is introduced to Rachel, she walks with a short, quick stride
impeded by her tight skirt like a Japanese fembot, then cuts through a shadow and comes to a
halt under a more defining light. This is all in support of the idea that Rachel is constantly lit
like the most valuable jewel in a museum, encased in glass on a pedestal—the type spies go to
great lengths to steal. She is a desirable item, a precious doll.
Character’s voices speak volumes of this male-female divide. Rachel’s voice is one of a
repressed little girl, with a persistent softness and wobbly nature, starting with the first subtle
voice-crack in her self-introduction, “I’m Rachel.”14 Pris’s voice too is young and naïve, like a
teenage runaway from home. This characterization is most obvious through her exchanges with
Sebastian, the only male character who shares the feminine submissiveness, and who, indeed, is
dying from it. By comparison, Deckard speaks with an authoritative confidence, undiminished
by his many pitfalls, and Roy talks with the eloquence and articulated thoughtfulness of an
eighteenth-century poet. The slightly dim-witted Leon can go into testosterone-fueled tirades as
well, like his altercation with Deckard after Zhora’s death. The power of voice in explaining the
male sex-slave dominance over the female is not limited to the replicants either. The feminine
computer voice in Tyrell’s bedroom is one of soft, alluring lustfulness, especially when
compared to the flagrantly mechanical voice of the curbside crosswalk computers looping
“Walk” and “Don’t Walk.”15 Even Tyrell is guilty of using androids, robots, or house computers
as “pleasure models.”
14
15
Blade Runner, DVD, directed by Ridley Scott (1982).
Ibid.
11
Lastly, the numerous and varied costumes of Blade Runner hint at a sexual fetish of roleplay, something often used to enhance a dying eroticism, and therefore, another example of
characters striving to reignite their sexuality. When Deckard first meets Rachel, she is dressed in
a dull gray, conservative business outfit with padded shoulders. Her bangs hang limply across
her forehead; the rest is rolled up in a bun. Her gaze is professional and serious in nature. She is
a no-nonsense, refined businesswoman. She is the modern-day “secretary fetish,” complete
with the clichéd “unrolling of hair” later at Deckard’s apartment. Deckard is the stereotypical
film noir detective with overcoat and perpetual grimace. It is no surprise these two become love
interests. The femme fatale is represented best by Pris, whose role-play takes the form of a
rampaging animal at Sebastian’s apartment. She takes this character to heart. Pris’s rapid jolts of
the head suggest animal-like instincts, with the typical “perking of ears” as Deckard approaches
her. Her blindfold-like war paint and frizzy hair evoke an image of a spider. Deckard’s fight
with Pris can be viewed as a sexual game. When Pris attacks Deckard, there is a brief BDSM
switch, where Deckard becomes the submissive, the “bottom,” and Pris becomes the dominant,
the “top,” as she squeezes his head between her legs, “a potentially lethal action which, of
course, reverses the intent of the birth process.”16 However, Deckard gains the upper hand with
his gun, his phallic symbol. Pris’s warlike screams are then speckled with subtle moans. Indeed,
the extremeness of her savage behavior, especially when compared to her placid behavior in the
alleyway with Sebastian, can best be interpreted as something of a sexual rage. When Deckard
finally “tames” her with his gun, Pris goes into convulsions indicative of a full-body orgasm.
Sexual fetishisms in Blade Runner result from the attempts both humans and replicants
make to fulfill their sexual needs, desires, and wants. For replicants, it is the longing to become
human. For humans, it is the need for self-actualization and freedom of sexuality. Humanity’s
craving for social status is illustrated through Deckard's intent on buying a real sheep; but to
satiate emotional desires, and hence truly be self-actualized, humans ultimately rely upon
replicants. By way of sadomasochism, human males can achieve their dreams of authority and
16
Barr, “Speciesism and Sexism,” 26.
12
dominance over women. Further, and again using the replicant as a conduit, humans can
engage in taboo sexual fantasies like incest and address psychological (oedipal) vacancies,
without the stigma of social inappropriateness. The replicants themselves achieve a sort of unity
with man through their incestuous behavior. They attempt to connect to humanity by becoming
man's archetypes through role-play and through their transformations into other “real, living
things,” like animals. Further, replicants practice Laura Mulvey's theory of projecting repressed
desires onto the screen by doing so onto photographs. Because these wants drive the story both
metaphorically and diegetically, self-actualization should be seen as perhaps the most
important underlying theme of Blade Runner. Consider that both the antagonist’s and
protagonist's inner conflict reflect this. Roy's motive was to demand a longer lifespan from
Tyrell, and, in effect, become nearly indistinguishable from a human. Similarly, Deckard fills his
own personal void by allowing himself to have the secretarial replicant Rachel in all her
servitude, complacency, and motherliness. These are, and always were, the two character
motivations that drive all conflict in the film.
13