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ACF#19: Blade Runner 2049
This week, Pete and I complete our discussion of Blade Runner. We want especially to attract your attention to the shifts in the questions meant to define humanity. The original film featured replicants who thought they were human; now we see replicants who don’t think they’re human. Questions about soul, the interior, secretive part of the rational, mortal being that we are are replaced by questions of birth and funeral–getting at the family and religion, which define our humanity. We also talk about director Denis Villeneuve, whose previous movie, Arrival, was also very much pro-life.
We also talk about how the new movie describes America’s descent into inhumanity–this time it’s a libertarian nightmare. Human beings have their desires satisfied in a way that leaves them alone, unable to relate, unaware they are not merely individuals, but also relational beings. So we start from family, but we end with some notes on what’s missing from the libertarian nightmare: Citizenship, a political relationship between people.
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Listening now: “knight of the sad visage” — ha ha!
I do it for the fans, Mama Toad! Glad you liked it. Lemme know if you think anything of these conversations on Blade Runner!
I’m looking forward to listening to this later today or tomorrow during my commute. Thanks for putting this up. I did go to see this later version (with Jordan who says “HI”) and we were a little nonplussed with the many extraneous issues and locale sites.
I’ll check back in after I get a chance to listen.
Yes, I know what you mean. At least in my case, it took a little stomaching to get around to the way I think about it–well, you’ll see some of it on the podcast… It was also good to learn from Pete some of what our mentor Peter Lawler would have said–about our relational being, to get a sense of what’s wrong with how K lives his life. That helped me put some of the pieces together.