Blade Runner And Frankenstein Comparison
2010 English (Advanced) Paper 2: Texts in time
Band 6 student sample
Analyse how Frankenstein and Blade Runner imaginatively portray individuals who challenge the established values of their time. |
Mary Shelley’s seminal novel Frankenstein and Ridley Scott’s cult classic film Blade Runner express the contextual concerns of the post-industrial and post modern eras respectively. Where Shelley’s novel operates as a Gothic expression of the conflicting paradigms of Romantic idealism and Enlightenment rationalism, Scott’s film functions as a response to a postmodern period predicated upon the dissolution of boundaries, in which logocentric truths are fractured and blurred. Both composers, however, imaginatively portray individuals who challenge …show more content…
the established values of their time, doing so with respect to the values and attitudes of their own idiosyncratic contexts.
Through Victor, Shelley offers a critique of the concerns arising from the mounting tension between the two prevailing socio-cultural ideologies of her own context. Fuelled by Romantic sensibility, Shelley expounds humanity’s unchecked pursuit of intellectual glory and fervent desire to transgress the boundaries of the known as an encroachment of natural order. Utilising the characters of Walton and Victor himself, Shelley represents Enlightenment rationalism as the forging of uncompromising new ideas concerning scientific verity. Shelley’s epistolary form both frames the narrative and becomes, essentially, an exercise in paradox: “a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye” whereby Walton is presented as the embodiment of Rational absolutism tempered by Romantic idealism. Where Shelley’s text explores a natural world on the brink of devastation at the hands of Industry, Scott’s film offers a post-apocalyptic society of rampant capitalism in which fervent consumerism and unbridled scientific progress has resulted in the complete eradication of natural life, an idea that reflects the plight of those textual individuals who undermine and fracture the contextual values of their periods. The opening extreme long shot of the decaying megalopolis of Milton’s city of fallen angels complete with the mournful, non-diegetic sounds of Vangelis reflects the dire consequences of man’s hubristic commercial greed, with the over-industrialised wasteland reminiscent of a Blakean post-nuclear conception of hell. The hybridity of the text’s filmic genre, a pastiche of film-noir, science fiction and romance allude to the global culture inherent in Scott’s anachronistic, hyper-mechanised cityscape, thereby offering a special-temporal frame around which the composer’s protagonists might contradict their own contextual epochs.
Where Shelley’s novel rises from a period of radical socio-cultural turbulence, Scott’s film reflects a time of constant flux in which fragmentation is routine and uncertainty is all-pervasive.
Victor’s Promethean allusion, “flow dangerous in the acquirement of knowledge” acts as a condemnation of Enlightened man’s hubristic desire to achieve intellectual triumph, while Shelley’s allusion to Galvanism, “I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet” suggests an elaborate circumvention of the natural process of procreation. Furthermore, the sexual imagery, “they penetrate into the recesses of nature” expresses scientific progress as both phallocentric pursuits of domination and carnal gratification, in turn allowing for Shelley’s critique of man’s narcissistic exploitation of nature. Moreover, Victor’s emotive expression “the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!” is ironic in its negative reference to the expedience of the Industrial Revolution and his own metaphorical function as Faustian figure, repudiating Erasmus Darwin’s evolutionary theory and, by extension, challenging the established values of the era. The growing chasm between religious institution and empirical dogma of Shelley’s era is rendered obsolete in Blade Runner with the aerial shot of the towering Tyrell Corporation building acting as a dual metaphor for the fusion of technology and history’s worship and scientific domination. In Scott’s film, the sublime alps of Mont Blanc are replaced with the architectural juxtaposition of pyramidal form and electric surface, an ironic representation of a postmodern culture, one which collapses formerly rigid social boundaries in favour of a universal consumerism. Scott characterises a detached Deckard as the 1940s film-noir hard-boiled detective, evocative of an existential nihilism that forms the foundations of an omnipresent sense of collective isolation, one which
perversely parallels Romantic individualism thus, Shelley’s lament for the impact of Industrialisation on nature and Victor’s subversion of traditional contextual values becomes, in Scott’s film, a dystopian vision of a world in which nature has been completely annihilated.
In Frankenstein, Shelley further responds to the socio-political radicalisation of post-industrial Europe and the question of what constitutes humanity via a pastiche of contextually significant ideologies, particularly the impact of Revolution. Shelley addresses the problematic notion of monstrosity via intertextual reference, “they consisted of Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch’s lives...” The direct citing of canonical literary works complies with Rousseau’s philosophy wherein the Creature’s ironic eloquence, “these were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude” is presented as a product of his own self-conditioning. This stands in stark contrasts with a dehumanised Victor, “my rage was without bounds...I sprang on him”. Indicted as a failed Industrial man, reflecting a period in which Revolution has disturbed the natural order, with the ‘agony’ of the monster reflecting the prevailing cultural aspect of Shelley’s era and the inversion of the social dichotomy of master and slave. Contrasting Victor’s renunciation of benevolent parental obligation in Shelley’s Frankenstein, Scott’s Blade Runner presents Tyrell as the proud engineer of his creations, reflecting a consumer culture and portrayed in his materialistic admiration for Batty, “You’re quite a prize.” Ironically Tyrell, the “god of biomechanics” retains the prosperity to view his children in a purely commercial sense, “Rachael is an experiment, nothing more”, allegorically alluding to a consumer society that revels in what Jameson described as the commodification of Max. Deckard’s existential question, “How can it not know what it is?” gives rise to the question of ethical responsibility in a world of gaping moral voids, wherein Tyrell’s clinical dialogue “commerce is our goal, more human than human is our motto” in conjunction with the Voight-Kampff test advocates natural human impulses, “fear, envy, love” as forming the basis of that which is human. The irony lies in the overarching detachment and cynicism of the human characters. In a world in which artifice imitates life and real value is submerged by simulacra, the Replicants become creatures of depth; capable of forging relationships and feeling pain where Deckard, Gaff and Tyrell remain stoic and remote. In Scott’s film, the close-up shot of Roy’s brutal murder of Tyrell further explicates the Replicant’s authority which allegorically reflecting Shelley’s novel in its signification of the dire consequences of the individual’s transgression of the bounds of the known and the accepted values of their time in pursuit of intellectual glory.
Thus, through the characters of Victor, Walton, the monster, Deckard and Tyrell, both Shelley and Scott expound the manner in which their imagined individuals transcend the contextually permissible values and attitudes of their own temporal epochs.
Band 6 student sample
Analyse how Frankenstein and Blade Runner imaginatively portray individuals who challenge the established values of their time. |
Mary Shelley’s seminal novel Frankenstein and Ridley Scott’s cult classic film Blade Runner express the contextual concerns of the post-industrial and post modern eras respectively. Where Shelley’s novel operates as a Gothic expression of the conflicting paradigms of Romantic idealism and Enlightenment rationalism, Scott’s film functions as a response to a postmodern period predicated upon the dissolution of boundaries, in which logocentric truths are fractured and blurred. Both composers, however, imaginatively portray individuals who challenge …show more content…
the established values of their time, doing so with respect to the values and attitudes of their own idiosyncratic contexts.
Through Victor, Shelley offers a critique of the concerns arising from the mounting tension between the two prevailing socio-cultural ideologies of her own context. Fuelled by Romantic sensibility, Shelley expounds humanity’s unchecked pursuit of intellectual glory and fervent desire to transgress the boundaries of the known as an encroachment of natural order. Utilising the characters of Walton and Victor himself, Shelley represents Enlightenment rationalism as the forging of uncompromising new ideas concerning scientific verity. Shelley’s epistolary form both frames the narrative and becomes, essentially, an exercise in paradox: “a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye” whereby Walton is presented as the embodiment of Rational absolutism tempered by Romantic idealism. Where Shelley’s text explores a natural world on the brink of devastation at the hands of Industry, Scott’s film offers a post-apocalyptic society of rampant capitalism in which fervent consumerism and unbridled scientific progress has resulted in the complete eradication of natural life, an idea that reflects the plight of those textual individuals who undermine and fracture the contextual values of their periods. The opening extreme long shot of the decaying megalopolis of Milton’s city of fallen angels complete with the mournful, non-diegetic sounds of Vangelis reflects the dire consequences of man’s hubristic commercial greed, with the over-industrialised wasteland reminiscent of a Blakean post-nuclear conception of hell. The hybridity of the text’s filmic genre, a pastiche of film-noir, science fiction and romance allude to the global culture inherent in Scott’s anachronistic, hyper-mechanised cityscape, thereby offering a special-temporal frame around which the composer’s protagonists might contradict their own contextual epochs.
Where Shelley’s novel rises from a period of radical socio-cultural turbulence, Scott’s film reflects a time of constant flux in which fragmentation is routine and uncertainty is all-pervasive.
Victor’s Promethean allusion, “flow dangerous in the acquirement of knowledge” acts as a condemnation of Enlightened man’s hubristic desire to achieve intellectual triumph, while Shelley’s allusion to Galvanism, “I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet” suggests an elaborate circumvention of the natural process of procreation. Furthermore, the sexual imagery, “they penetrate into the recesses of nature” expresses scientific progress as both phallocentric pursuits of domination and carnal gratification, in turn allowing for Shelley’s critique of man’s narcissistic exploitation of nature. Moreover, Victor’s emotive expression “the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!” is ironic in its negative reference to the expedience of the Industrial Revolution and his own metaphorical function as Faustian figure, repudiating Erasmus Darwin’s evolutionary theory and, by extension, challenging the established values of the era. The growing chasm between religious institution and empirical dogma of Shelley’s era is rendered obsolete in Blade Runner with the aerial shot of the towering Tyrell Corporation building acting as a dual metaphor for the fusion of technology and history’s worship and scientific domination. In Scott’s film, the sublime alps of Mont Blanc are replaced with the architectural juxtaposition of pyramidal form and electric surface, an ironic representation of a postmodern culture, one which collapses formerly rigid social boundaries in favour of a universal consumerism. Scott characterises a detached Deckard as the 1940s film-noir hard-boiled detective, evocative of an existential nihilism that forms the foundations of an omnipresent sense of collective isolation, one which
perversely parallels Romantic individualism thus, Shelley’s lament for the impact of Industrialisation on nature and Victor’s subversion of traditional contextual values becomes, in Scott’s film, a dystopian vision of a world in which nature has been completely annihilated.
In Frankenstein, Shelley further responds to the socio-political radicalisation of post-industrial Europe and the question of what constitutes humanity via a pastiche of contextually significant ideologies, particularly the impact of Revolution. Shelley addresses the problematic notion of monstrosity via intertextual reference, “they consisted of Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch’s lives...” The direct citing of canonical literary works complies with Rousseau’s philosophy wherein the Creature’s ironic eloquence, “these were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude” is presented as a product of his own self-conditioning. This stands in stark contrasts with a dehumanised Victor, “my rage was without bounds...I sprang on him”. Indicted as a failed Industrial man, reflecting a period in which Revolution has disturbed the natural order, with the ‘agony’ of the monster reflecting the prevailing cultural aspect of Shelley’s era and the inversion of the social dichotomy of master and slave. Contrasting Victor’s renunciation of benevolent parental obligation in Shelley’s Frankenstein, Scott’s Blade Runner presents Tyrell as the proud engineer of his creations, reflecting a consumer culture and portrayed in his materialistic admiration for Batty, “You’re quite a prize.” Ironically Tyrell, the “god of biomechanics” retains the prosperity to view his children in a purely commercial sense, “Rachael is an experiment, nothing more”, allegorically alluding to a consumer society that revels in what Jameson described as the commodification of Max. Deckard’s existential question, “How can it not know what it is?” gives rise to the question of ethical responsibility in a world of gaping moral voids, wherein Tyrell’s clinical dialogue “commerce is our goal, more human than human is our motto” in conjunction with the Voight-Kampff test advocates natural human impulses, “fear, envy, love” as forming the basis of that which is human. The irony lies in the overarching detachment and cynicism of the human characters. In a world in which artifice imitates life and real value is submerged by simulacra, the Replicants become creatures of depth; capable of forging relationships and feeling pain where Deckard, Gaff and Tyrell remain stoic and remote. In Scott’s film, the close-up shot of Roy’s brutal murder of Tyrell further explicates the Replicant’s authority which allegorically reflecting Shelley’s novel in its signification of the dire consequences of the individual’s transgression of the bounds of the known and the accepted values of their time in pursuit of intellectual glory.
Thus, through the characters of Victor, Walton, the monster, Deckard and Tyrell, both Shelley and Scott expound the manner in which their imagined individuals transcend the contextually permissible values and attitudes of their own temporal epochs.