Themes of Ecology and Surveillance in Blade Runner

The film was based on the sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, who also wrote the source material for Total Recall and A Scanner Darkly.  The novel was set in San Francisco in 1992.  The world is in a state of ecological degradation.  A nuclear war has exterminated animal life and the ultimate status symbols are android replicas of animals, which only the rich can afford to buy.  Blade Runner shifts the action to the desolate industrial wastelands of Los Angeles in 2019, but as in the novel, the world is in a state of industrial decay.  The planet is an environmentally degraded mess and humans can’t wait to leave in favour of off-world colonies.

Ecology

Ecology is an important theme in the film and the original novel.  A lot of science fiction from the 1970s was concerned with ecological issues.  For example, Soylent Green (1973) is about an overpopulated society in which people are actively encouraged to commit suicide.  Everyone eats an artificial foodstuff called Soylent Green, which turns out to made from the bodies of the dead.  The Andromeda Strain (1971) is about a man-made disaster. 

In Blade Runner, Earth is nearly uninhabitable.  It’s so polluted that the wealthy are emigrating to off-world colonies.  Most animal life has been extinguished, so artificial copies are produced.  The animals are simulacra; they’re copies of things that no longer exist.  The city is washed with acid rain and people carry umbrellas with fluorescent handles to help them see through the murk. 

Surveillance

Another theme is surveillance.  The eye is a recurring motif in Blade Runner.  The opening sequence shows flaming smokestacks reflected in a watching eye.  The Voight-Kampff test works by reading dilations of the pupil.   The replicants visit a genetic engineer called Hannibal Chew who ‘just does eyes.’ Roy Batty says ‘If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes.’  He later kills Eldon Tyrell by pressing his eyes.

The constant references to eyes and visuality create an atmosphere of constant surveillance.  This generates a feeling of paranoia.  Again, this is a reflection of contemporary anxieties.  In London, for example, the average number of times someone is captured on CCTV is 300 times a day.  This raises the question are we actually human or merely the product of large corporations, constantly being monitored to identify gaps in the market which they can exploit?