Authenticity and Artificiality in Blade Runner‘s Androids
This is an unpublished essay I wrote for a class in the fall of 2024.
Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) is monumental in the science fiction genre for its exploration of humanity — and the replication of it — against the backdrop of a futuristic noir setting.
The spread of digital instruments in the 1980s prompted the filmic use of synthesizers, a new technology whose uncanny sound lends the world of Blade Runner an electronically manufactured feel (Spring 273). The film’s synthesizer score helps render its moody, introspective atmosphere and interrogate the theme of the blurred line between man and machine.
The music, mise-en-scène, and camera distance examine authenticity versus artificiality regarding humans and androids, particularly surrounding the film’s humanoid antagonists and the love interest who discovers in-film that her memories were implanted into her mind by the company that created her.
As a then-emergent technology, the synthesizer denotes a scientific futurism; this quality and its digitally imitative sound thematically link with Blade Runner’s portrayal of androids, also known as replicants.
The artificiality of the score backing the artificiality of the androids can be seen in the scene where protagonist Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) kills his target Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), a replicant who has gone rogue from the law.
Deckard — the titular blade runner, whose job is to kill wayward androids — chases Zhora down a crowded city street, the synth score kicking in as he fires his first bullet. The music is supported by a steady heartbeat — both fall silent when Zhora is finally slain, cementing the score’s ties to Zhora’s life.
These sounds are punctuated by the shattering of glass as Zhora breaks through retailer display cases in her attempted escape. Like the score, the setting of display cases adorned with fake snow, unnatural neon lights, and mannequins highlights Zhora’s imitation.
She, too, is manufactured and meant to only resemble reality, not embody it. The mannequins are even dressed near-identically to her as they impassively watch Zhora break through the confines of their own prisons.
Despite this potential and strive for freedom, Zhora too is ultimately immobilized and unable to leave the case that Blade Runner’s world has built for humanoids.
Throughout the sequence, the camera keeps an impersonal distance from Zhora and largely views her through the distortion of glass, just as the audience’s knowledge of her is obstructed.
While Deckard is afforded close-ups, along with her fellow replicants in other scenes, Zhora is the least developed android in the film and remains emotionally and physically distant from the audience even as she dies.
Her obstruction through glass also gestures to the overarching portrayal of androids, or the lack thereof as viewers are hardly given glances at the interiority of replicants.
Just as Zhora is the least developed android, she is the least human. This artificiality is reflected through the synthetic synthesizer score, manufactured setting, and distant camera.
Rachael (Sean Young) — Deckard’s love interest — is perhaps the replicant closest to humanity, and the film argues her authenticity through the subversion of these established elements.
In a scene that closely follows Zhora’s death, the score surrounding Rachael takes a rare departure from its electronic sound. She is in Deckard’s apartment after killing a rogue replicant to protect him. Through this abandonment of her own kind for a human’s sake, Rachael is given a free pass from Deckard regarding her plan to go rogue herself.
In the refuge of his living room, Rachael plays Deckard’s piano. The already uncharacteristic score at the time — marked by saxophone — becomes more unprecedented as the diegetic piano notes blend with the nondiegetic music.
Sound scholar Trace Reddell writes that the piano is “profoundly out of place and, perhaps more importantly, out of time in the film’s imaginary world” (Reddell 400). The piano and saxophone serve as familiar sounds to the audience that offset the foreignness of the synth. This sonic familiarity grounds Rachael in the viewers’ world, creating the appearance of humanity.
The mise en scene also stands apart from the usual aesthetic of the film, playing into the same temporality as the piano with old-seeming photographs.
Earlier in the film, Rachael presents a photo of her and her mother as evidence of Rachael’s humanity; her engagement with these photos reinforces that connection as the pictures represent a level of sentiment associated with humanity. Even if Rachael does not have authentic mementos of her own, showcasing a life, she has the capacity to desire them.
Another aspect of the mise-en-scène is Rachael’s physical transformation. As she plays piano, she takes off her jacket and releases her hair from its professional up-do. These changes humanize her, deconstructing her manufactured nature and communicating an impulse presumably driven by emotion.
This sequence is dominated by close-ups of Rachael as the audience is granted a rare and partial peek behind her deadpan affect. It begins, however, with a longer shot that encompasses some of Deckard’s apartment and Rachael’s headless body, as the frame only captures her from the neck down. Her stiff, unnatural pose makes the framing reminiscent of a mannequin, reminding us of her android status. But, through her embrace of humanity’s audio-visual motifs, Rachael can perform personhood just as she can perform musically.
The camera also focuses on her hands, symbolizing autonomy that defines the power of humans over androids. Although, this framing and the headless shot depict a disconnect between the actions of her hands and the interiority of her mind. She is an ultimately mysterious character, and although this intimate moment establishes her authenticity, the audience is still not privy to her thoughts.
Additionally, this disconnect questions whether she is truly autonomous, or if she will fall into the same fate as Zhora and all other replicants. Yes, Rachael can choose to claim humanity, but she is also forced to rely on the domineering Deckard for protection.
And like Zhora, she is subject to a limited lifespan that was designed to curb replicants’ freedom; this is another concern of time that hangs over this scene and the film. Still, this scene reinforces Rachael’s unique position to act in her own interest.
Blade Runner uses its camera and mise-en-scène to compare humans and androids, specifically the synthetic nature of the latter, but its use of sound in this endeavor is the most analogous to the work’s themes.
Reddell writes that electronically-generated music connotes inauthenticity, with emulative orchestral music — like the vast majority of the film’s score — seeming inferior to the genuine source. He writes that it is “measured by imitative rather than originary capacities” (Reddell 404).
So, too, are the replicants deemed inferior to their predecessors despite the marvel of their technological advancement. Blade Runner reflexively comments on this relationship in technology.
Works Cited
Reddell, Trace. “Sonorous Object-Oriented Ontologies (1979–89).” The Sound of Things to Come, 2018, pp. 361–434, https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv69t6p0.8.
Spring, Katherine. “From Analogue to Digital: Synthesizers and discourses of film sound in the 1980s.” The Palgrave Handbook of Sound Design and Music in Screen Media, 2016, pp.