Analysis on Bladerunner 2049

What is a soul? Do robots have souls? Or will they have souls in the future? Those are questions that pervaded modern controversies regarding robots and humans. Humans, with the possession of the so-called soul, claim uniqueness among all beings, including products of human—artificial intelligence or robots. The film of focus in this article, Bladerunner 2049, puts forward the discussion of the soulness of replicants, indicating that they are equal to humans regarding their mind and their capability to love, which denotes their capacity to evolve humanity, or in Freysa’s words, to become “more human than humans” (Bladerunner 2049). With this focus, the essay title “Who am I to be souled” is not only a question that puzzled the replicants. It also functions as a rhetorical question that allows the essay to respond to the confused replicants in the film, to enlighten them of how well they love and how complete they are souled.

In Bladerunner 2049, replicants—bioengineered beings made to serve humans—broadened the boundaries of humanity by displaying qualities often reserved for their creators. The protagonist Bladerunner or Officer K, who was tasked to hunt down old model replicants, stepped on his journey in search of the truth of his background with his hologram partner Joi when he found out that a replicant was given birth. The birth of the replicants’ child will obscure the line between humans and replicants; in other words, that child is the Messiah in this narrative, the ultimate saviour of replicants. Throughout his journey, K became increasingly convinced that he was the child in this grand movement. And when K finally met Deckard, the father of the mysterious child who told K about the child’s deceased mother Rachael, the potential family reunion was cut off by the antagonist Luv, a well-devised and almost invincible angel replicant from the notorious Wallace Corporation, who also terminates K’s beloved hologram, Joi. Being rescued by Freysa after the encounter, K recovered and finally realized that he was not the child (Messiah). Given this sharp turn in mindset, he continued with the mission of liberating replicants which could not have better proved the replicant’s capability to love. When K eventually paved the way for the reunion of Deckard and his daughter Ana Stelline, Deckard asked K “Who am I to you.” K just nudged him forward to meet his daughter, later lying down in the snow, completing the most renowned scene in the film when a replicant defines love and soul in such a noble manner.

First, Bladerunner 2049’s discussion on the replicants’ humanistic self-consciousness, or soul, indicates a transcendental possibility that they are “more human than humans” (Bladerunner 2049). The real backbone of this film is still the tale of a Messiah. It is only under a cyberpunk story setting with a final call for the replicants’ revelation and revolution, which is a form of preserving and saving humanity, but not by humans. In the film’s discussion of humanity, the existence of the soul is an unavoidable topic. The conversation between K, a replicant, and his boss Lt. Joshi, a real human, “‘Hey, you’ve been getting on fine without one,’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘A soul,’” became interesting when they assumed that K does not have a soul (ibid). This predetermined superiority of humans’ soulness is generally the reason for all sorts of human conquering of nature, animals, replicants, etc (Becker). This topic became more intriguing when humans have already conquered nature in this cyberpunk setting where only artificial constructions remain (Like Stories of Old). The extermination of the external conquered objects like nature creates a vacuum that logically leads to the questioning of the internal, “the beginning of the soul” (ibid). Here, “the replicant’s a mirror to our own humanity” (ibid), telling us that they can also define what is human.

Another perspective on how the soul is discussed in the film is the process during which K and Luv, as replicants, gradually gained self-consciousness. Both replicants are not asked to carry more thoughts on the world; they are just required to work for humans. Without questioning, K hunted down his people, and Luv worked ruthlessly for Wallace. To some extent, they are treated as robots. However, neither of the two is content with the situation, which was made clear when K decided to go seek the truth of his life and later contribute to the revolution of his kind, and also when Luv, implicitly, was not satisfied with just being a servant of Wallace and wanted a similar end as K’s, “to be a Messiah, the saviour of her species” (ibid). The pursuit for truth was kept a secret under both replicants and this act of keeping a secret is like that of a child, or in Becker’s words, “a great and liberating moment,” which “represents the staking out of his claim to an integral inner self,” away from the surveillance of the outer master world (Becker). Replicants gained their soul (or consciousness) gradually, just like man’s children. Even back to the Cartesian dualism of mind and body (René Descartes), one can still say that the replicants have souls: just that some part of their mind is modified does not erase the fact that K had such emotional shocks and could not pass the baseline test (test ensuring that a replicant can maintain highly rational) when he recognized that he may be that one child. That he was unable not to be conscious of this shock shows how the Cartesian mind-body dualism works here, the slowly constructed internal consciousness in K is emotional like humans and could not be deleted like data in computers: K thinks, therefore he is.

Yet the search for the meaning of life does not simply end in finding consciousness, as the completion of a soul lies in the fulfilment of greater dreams (Like Stories of Old), which again demonstrates how those replicants outperform humans in humanity. As mentioned above, the biblical pursuit of both replicants was an authentic justification for the existence of their soul, because the very establishment of a grand narrative, e.g. a saviour, functioned as a precondition or ultimate reason for humans to live for centuries as stated by clergies, replicants are no more inferior if they have their narratives. One without a soul can probably carry out orders like the K in the past, but if one can sacrifice himself in service of a grand movement in which he is “only part of” and not the great hero (Guynes), there is no better indication of the soul’s presence. This great dream, as Fresya puts it, “dying for the right cause is the most human thing we can do,” straightly denotes how replicants value this narrative of saviour, how they wanted to be part of the big movement even though they are not “the child” (the Messiah) (Bladerunner 2049). To some extent, humanity has evolved already when the replicants are gathering for the call of emancipation under the Messiah, the dream-builder Dr. Ana Stelline. Such role as dream builder and Messiah is no coincidence, as the biblical narrative is ultimately a way of dream building. This internal drive for the liberation of replicants is just what completes them, a call from the soul.

Second, love is the key to this film in unlocking the door that separates replicants and real humans. The line  “You have never seen a miracle” at the start of the film makes an innuendo about the part love is playing here (ibid). It could even be said in some ways that this is a film about the replicants’ love and saviour, as those beings who seem not to have a soul compared to humans gradually found their mission and ability to love. Above all, the miraculous love between replicants must be addressed. Deckard and Rachael’s love was portrayed as an impossible event, signifying the Messiah of the replicants yet an apocalypse of the world. While it seems to humans that replicants don’t have a soul, they reproduced and heroically carried out the plan to protect the child from being found, demonstrating love through act. Deckard never even had a chance to see his child under this plan. His words, “Sometimes to love someone, you got to be a stranger”, are demonstrations strong enough to show his capacity to love someone even better than real humans (ibid). Further, Deckard’s love is not only directed towards his child but also to Rachael. Seeing the reappearance of his partner created by the villainous Wallace, he withstood the huge temptation to yield and give information about where his child lives, and lied that “her eyes were green” to Wallace, indicating he was not moved by the new Rachael, while he truly was (ibid). The presence of love between replicants is more justified when their relationship (Deckard’s especially) can sustain much tougher challenges than any human being’s. Villeneuve rendered love an outstandingly powerful force in the film that goes beyond the traditional understanding of an inter-human relation. Rather, love is something more universal, at least including the replicants.

The protagonist K must not be omitted, who had a romantic relationship with his digital hologram Joi. Though it seems that Joi is just a product of Tyrell (Wallace’s company) that merely fulfils any need and desire from its host which makes it a non-being, the real question does not lie here. What really matters is that given the impossibility of real interlinking between beings, replicants and holograms still demonstrated love to the audience so well. Joi certainly loved K in her way when she cried out, “I love (you)…” before she was about to be destroyed. She loved K when she told him to delete all data about her so that hunters cannot find traces of K’s mission, which is self-sacrificial as then she will be gone if that only simulator of her is damaged. In K’s perspective, his line “you are real for me” is an alternative way of stating that his love for her is also real. In such a sense, humans are not superior in defining what love is, as, in fact, all beings love in their own ways. Take Deckard’s dog as another example, who was called “him” by Deckard, respected as a being of tantamount positions as humans, and loved equally. This was epitomised when Deckard replied, “I don’t know. Ask him” to K’s question, “Is it real?” However, it just seems that paradoxically, real humans are sometimes the least capable of love in the film. Wallace, the tycoon who controls Tyrell and plans to dominate the world, has “millions of children” but never knows how to love a child like Deckard. Villeneuve made a very sharp point that replicants, or other beings, understand love in a different way and, in Deckard and K’s case, a more ideal and powerful way. Will this put the human capability to love into question, or will humans still arrogantly say that only they can define love? (Ibid)

Whether or not the questions can be answered, Bladerunner 2049 reformed human understanding of humans just by showing. The recent outburst of A.I. zeal around the world again triggers discussion on topics like can robots think like us, whether are they going to replace us, etc. But those issues are not as interesting as the question of why are we asking those questions: humans are fundamentally afraid of being transcended and losing their privilege against all other species, and that is why people are concerned. History will give its judgement on who is going to last. One could argue that the replicants won because the plot says so, but it could also be said that they won against human tyranny because they are more capable of carrying the mission of evolving humanity. Under the biological concept of ESS (Environmentally Sustainable Strategy), the replicants are equally able to love, mentally and physically superior to humans, which makes it logical that they are the ones to move on with that divine task of evolution (Dawkins). Similar to current conditions, if humans are no longer environmentally sustainable beings, perhaps AI is a good way of continuing humanity. One should never let one’s biases veil his vision towards a better future.

Looking back at the narrative, Bladerunner 2049 puts forth issues vital for understanding the relationship between replicants (or robots) and humans, in which figures like K and Deckard, though created as replicants to serve their creators, made their way to rebirth as equally loving and souled beings. After all, what is a clear boundary between robots and humans? To cope with this problem, perhaps one should no longer focus on what the replicants keep asking themselves, “Who am I to be souled?” Rather, humans should interrogate ourselves with its new form: who are we, to be arrogantly souled by ourselves?

Sunday, November 3, 2024 at Middlebury

Bibliography

Becker, Ernest. The Birth and Death of Meaning. The Free Press, 1971.

Bladerunner 2049. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Warner Bros Pictures (USA, Canada) Sony (International), 2017.

Dawkins, Richard. The Extended Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, 1946.

Like Stories of Old. “In Search of the Distinctively Human | the Philosophy of Blade Runner 2049.” http://Www.youtube.com, 29 Jan. 2018, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4etinsAy34.

Neill, Calum. Lacanian Perspectives on Blade Runner 2049. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

René Descartes. Meditations on First Philosophy. 1641. Hackett Publishing, 1993.