In this film we have a setting that takes place in the future after a nuclear apocalypse in a derelict Los Angeles in 2019. The world now has a hierarchy within this dystopia, and as we see in the scene between Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) and his former supervisor Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh) when Deckard originally refuses the job to "retire" rogue androids but is forced to accept because if your not a cop, your a little person. This reflects on the levels of hierarchy left in the world. It is still based upon economics and status still but it has an extremely large gap between the rich (Tyrell Corporation), the cops, and those who speak "gutterspeak", the commoners. Below all of this we finally have the androids, made by the Tyrell Corporation. These beings are considered the low of the low, not even human, even though they are techinically more than human or the epitome of human perfection. In fact, they do not execute rogue androids, but rather have them retired in a somewhat violent fashion as we see in one of the better scene's from the film when Deckard chases down and retires Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), one of the androids illegally on earth.
So if all of this trouble is being cause by these androids, why do they make them? Why do they constantly improve them to be even more human? Why are the laws not changed to accommodate these anomalies? Why do we see that these androids have emotion and want to live? It is possible to determine if someone is an android by using the Voight-Kampff test, which measures bodily functions such as breathing, blushing, heart rate and iris and pupil dilation in response to emotionally provocative questions which should not trigger a response in a android. Which could lead us down another route in trying to determine what is human. In Blade Runner apparently a human is determined by its emotional responses according to the V-K test. However, we see Rachael (Sean Young) cry after we receive the knowledge that she is an android. Also, do our memories make us human? In Blade Runner, Rachel has memories that are apparently not her own and rather Tyrell's niece's, making her much less likely to be human. Yet at the end of the film it is demonstrated that the androids have memories of there own, and despite having a four year lifespan, they desire to live longer.
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