1
3
Philip
K. Dick was part of the generation of 1950’s science-fiction writers
who took as their core task the criticism of American popular-culture.
Thus there is a frequent recurrence of certain themes in his works:
The threat of nuclear war; the evil effects of unbridled capitalism;
and the degrading influence of mass-media (especially television).
However there is another theme which pervades Dick’s work, and
is more personal: An obsession with the blurring of reality, dreams
and waking confused together, mechanical replicas indistinguishable
from their originals, drug-induced hallucinations more real than reality.
His books are often structured as a series of unexpected trap doors.
You think you know where you are and who is whom, then suddenly the
bottom falls out and your certainties are thrown into doubt. 
The main
story-line of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is based around a
bounty-hunter, Rick Deckard, who’s job it is to hunt down and kill
(‘retire’ is the term used in the film) androids (replicants
in the film) who have come, illegally, to Earth.The
androids/replicants are bioengineered humanoids who are constructed to
go out onto the planets, and make them habitable for humans. They are,
in other words, slaves. Theses androids are basically human-beings, except
for the fact that they lack a history - a childhood. As a consequence
of this, perhaps, they also lack proper emotional faculties - especially
empathy 1.
Thus they are very dangerous to other life-forms, which is the reason
for them being banned, upon pain of death, from the Earth. If they do
try to come here, to the Earth, they all have a bounty placed on them.
This defect is also the one way in which the androids can distinguished
from humans (without a thorough medical examination). Thus the establishment
in this world has developed a test, carried out with the aid of a machine
(‘Voigt-Kampff’
machine), which measures a subject’s emotional responses. The results
of which enable the police/bounty hunters to detect any replicants. This
element runs parallel in both book and film, although the Dick novel
makes more clear the purpose of the strange questions asked in the test
are intended to achieve (primarily I am thinking of the questions about
animals which strongly allude to the sense of empathy).
In Blade Runner the machine makes its appearances both in
the opening scene: Where Holden,
the senior ‘Blade Runner’ interviews Leon (one of a group of
escaped replicants) who was trying to infiltrate the Tyrell Corporation’s
headquarters;and
later it is utilized to discover that Rachael Tyrell is a replicant (albeit
one with implanted memories of a ‘real’ human’s life). The
film’s official press release described it as a “...very advanced
form of lie detector that measures contractions of the iris muscle... used
primarily by ‘Blade Runners’ (bounty hunters in Do Androids Dream
of Electric Sheep?) to determine if a suspect is truly human by measuring
the degree of his empathetic response through carefully worded questions
and statements.” An arm extends from the device, holding a camera
which is aimed at the suspect’s eye (the image from which is displayed
on a small video-screen). The operator asks the the suspect questions and
poses situations specifically designed to elicit an emotional response,
watching the screen and various readout-dials to judge the suspects reply
(much the same as a polygraph).
A
major problem arises when it becomes clear that it can sometimes be
difficult to tell human and replicant apart (the only thing which can
definitely enable one to distinguish an android from a human with any
certainty is a bone-marrow test). Deckard (in both novel and film)
finds himself developing feelings towards some androids, basically
the female ones, such as Luba Luft and Rachael Rosen (Rachael Tyrell
in Blade Runner). In the novel it is taken further still when he meets
up with fellow bounty hunter Phil Resch - whom he mistakes for a replicant.
This is because the man suffers from a condition called ‘flattening of affect’ (which
means a lack of emotion), something which can occur in people suffering
from certain forms of mental illness or brain damage. Deckard begins
to have doubts about his profession, due to the outcome of the Voigt-Kampff
test which he administers to Resch (i.e. - Resch is proven to be human).
The significance of the possibility that some humans experience extreme
flattening of affect is obvious in its implications for the bounty hunters,
but it also throws doubt on reality in general. In his 1972 novel, We
Can Build You, Dick employs this tactic again, with a twist: The replicants
in that story seem to be quite capable of having real emotions, and the
ability to empathize with other beings, whilst one of the central characters,
Pris Frauenzimmer (a human), suffers an almost total ‘flattening
of affect’.
An
example of treating ‘simulacra’ as ‘reality’ is the way photographs
are utilized in Blade Runner, and the ‘real’ world. The replicants
make use them in order to convince themselves, and others, that they
are human - that their contrived pasts are real. In Giuliana Bruno’s
discussion of the film she states that “There is a superimposition
here of reality and of the past. ”Deckard at one point says, “I
don’t know why a replicant would collect photos.” Some people
have taken the line to be a hint that Deckard himself is a replicant.
When one sees his piano covered in family photographs, one can not help
but have a strong feeling of irony. Why is so much stress placed on the ‘family-photo’?
They are obviously supposed to be evidence of a past, a history. They
are also a focal-point for sentiment, and memory. Do we not do this very
thing ourselves - use photographs to prop up our memories? At one point
Rachael, a replicant with ‘implanted’ memories, holds up a
photograph and says, “Look, its me with my mother!,” to prove
to Deckard - and herself - that she is human. Our need for photographic
evidence is not so extreme, but it is very similar. We crave visual reassurance
of ‘reality’, and so we invest too much trust into the photograph
- thinking it to be a reliable reflection of the world. This trust which
we place upon the photographic image is its greatest potential weapon.
John Tagg, in his book, The Burden of Representation, writes of a ‘regime
of truth’ which is brought about by the growth and consolidation
of the capitalist nations’ power, and “in which photographs
functioned as a means of record and a source of evidence.” He pinches
the term ‘Regime of truth’ from Foucault, who coined it to
describe the power structure which places a high value on, so-called,
objective knowledge.
There is one line in the novel which is of particular importance: “Do androids dream of Electric Sheep?” (which is of course the source of novel’s title). Philip K. Dick obviously placed his title in the form of a question because of the general feeling of uncertainty he wishes to portray in the story, both towards the position of the replicants, and reality in general. Baudrillard writes that “...it is our business not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented.” From reading his writings it is clear that he despises the mendacity of calling simulacra reality, and that we would do better to acknowledge the fact that ‘reality’ is a matter of perception. I tend to agree with him on that score. The problem is that people feel the need to feel that their illusory view of the world is absolute - is ‘reality’. The various forms of simulacra are therefore crutches for our minds, or perhaps more accurately - gyroscopes, keeping us level in an existence which we do not really understand, ever more so in this ‘postmodern’ era. Baudrillard defined the postmodern as being an “...incredulity toward metanarratives (referring to simulacra I assume)”. He puts this down to the development of the sciences. I suppose because we have come to rely on science as providing the ‘truth’, or an illustration of ‘reality’. He sees postmodern principles as not being merely a device of the authorities; but as a refinement of our sensitivity to differences and reinforcing our ability to tolerate the erratic. Postmodernism is able to in the put forward the unpresentable (things which deny themselves the comfort of agreeable forms). All this is to say but that ‘reality’ is a lie, but a ‘lie’ which we both need, and need to constantly question, in order to ‘get by’. Both ‘reality’ and ‘simulacra’ are alternately rocks to get footing on or stars to guide our wanderings; depending upon ones motives and point-of-view.
Edvard
Munch’s famous painting THE
SCREAM (1893)
appears in the novel at a Museum where Deckard and a fellow bounty hunter,
Resch, track down, and kill, the Replicant opera singer Luba Luft. “I
think,” Phil Resch said, “that this is how an andy must feel.
I don’t feel like that, so maybe I’m not (an andy).” BACK
