Comparing Brave New World and Blade Runner

Human relationships, and humanity's understanding of the wild, are shaped and reflected in Blade Runner, by Ridley Scott, and in Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) through their composers' use of the contrast between true nature and the wild. The human relationship with the wild is tenuous, and this is shown within both texts. More often than not, nature is understood simply as a force to be dominated, controlled or exploited for the benefit of humanity. The new wild is one created by human society however, although developed and sustained by the characters, the wild seems to control and manipulate humanity, rather than the reverse. In Blade Runner and in Brave New World, the nature of happiness and freedom is one of the most recurrent themes; it appears in both texts that stability, and through stability, happiness, requires the loss of self identity to society. The theme of humanity overturning nature; true nature versus the new wild, is also seen.

The contexts behind both texts give overall meaning to the texts; each is attempting to address the social situations of their times, making a comment about society as a whole. Brave New World addresses communism, through the use of production-line styled humanity; conditioning, and Bokanovsky's process. Blade Runner, on the other hand, focuses on the domination of capitalism and commerce, through the godlike depiction the Tyrell Corporation. Nature and the environment is one of the common elements of context behind the texts; in Blade Runner, this shown through the absence of anything truly natural, which is reflective of the 1980's sudden awareness of the damage done by humanity to the environment, and that nature was not an inexhaustible resource. In Brave New World, the concerns for the environment are also present, however, the concern is not for the ultimate destruction of the environment, rather, it shows humanity becoming separate entirely from nature, of it being contained and controlled; this is seen through