Essay Comparing 'Blade Runner And Slaughterhouse Five'
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five are two works that at first glance appear to offer no similarities. Slaughterhouse Five is an anti-war novel written about the Dresden bombings in World War II, whereas Blade Runner stands as an American science fiction film written in the early 80’s depicting the “cyberpunk” view of life in Los Angeles in 2019. The two settings are completely spread apart and offer no reference to the other. In addition to the diversity of setting is the gap in plot and format of the two works. However, the work of Scott and Vonnegut offer a mutual connection to answering a strong, age old question of the human mind and the value of human life. The main focus of this essay will be to
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analyze the viewpoints the two works offer in understanding philosophical importance of the human sanctity by narrowing two questions, “what makes human life more sacred, or of higher purpose then other life forms, and what does moral action have to offer for this question?” I will begin by first analyzing how Kurt Vonnegut uses his novel Slaughterhouse Five to bring awareness on how the “unmoral” acts of war bring about the complete destruction of human standards and promote animalistic behavior. Slaughterhouse Five is set in Germany during World War II. It is the story of a young soldier who goes through the war and life with no hope in humanity due to being scarred from the tragedies of war at such an early age. Vonnegut uses vivid imagery in describing the setting to show the misery brought out by war, thus exposing emotion’s from the reader that could not be fueled from a film. However, unlike a typical anti-war novel would be expected to portray, Vonnegut does not use strong fear and emotion with his main character Billy Pilgrim in an effort to raise awareness of the tragedies of war. Instead Vonnegut uses the honest approach of indifference and loss of hope to express his thoughts against the war. Some people believe that Vonnegut’s novel is simply science fiction and actually question his sanity. In contrast Vonnegut prides himself on his deeper level of writing and his suffering as a P.O.W released him into the first hand horrors of war. Josh Simpson, a graduate student from Eastern Kentucky, wrote an essay about Vonnegut and the dual meanings of his writings. Simpson tells about how one of Vonnegut’s biggest fears was to be viewed as a far-fetched science fiction novelist, and prides himself on the meanings behind his peculiar style of writing, “I argue that although Slaughterhouse-Five on the surface is Vonnegut 's Dresden novel, on a much deeper level it is also the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man so tormented and haunted by the burden of the past that he finds it necessary to "reinvent" his own reality.” (1) Billy Pilgrim is simply hopeless in humanity and believes there is nothing he can change. Billy’s loss of hope raises awareness to the value of life. He arouses this question even more being quoted, “How nice to feel nothing, and still get credit for being alive” (Slaughterhouse Five 134). These questions and change of quality from the human life shows how Billy has a machine like indifference to the world and suffers lack of all empathy, yet still lives a socially approved quality of life. In addition to the individual destruction war induces on the people who experience it, the act as a whole is a question on the sacred reputation of the human race and this is stressed in the novel Slaughterhouse Five.
Keally McBride is a fifteen year veteran of teaching at the college level and when preparing for her new course, Philosophy and Politics of Peace and War, she writes on her website how she included Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five in her syllabus. She believes that Vonnegut’s novel describes war in the perfect manner through the chaos of his writing. “Vonnegut refuses to tell a story that can make meaning out of war, or out of death. It is pure chance, chaos, and randomness, and even the Trafalmadorians, able to see all moments in time, do not attempt to sum up the moral or political significance of anything. Everything is, precisely as it is, in its surfaces” (7). Vonnegut offers an understanding of the chaotic nature of war through the structure of his novel. While reading Vonnegut’s novel, one can place himself in the senseless act of war. Experiencing this brings out the wisdom that such an act created by humans is against all morality that the human race is founded on, and simply makes us the same as a beast destroying innocent
lives. Journalist Stacey Peebles writes an article trying to understand the violence in various novels and how the writers convey this violence to their readers. The purpose of her argument is to make aware the popularity of violence to the human race, and to describe how we are desensitized and somewhat unaware in understanding the degree of violence each author is trying to portray. Peebles’ article is successful in highlighting the common appearance of human violence and the demoralizing acts performed and accepted by humans and governments. The article is written in hopes to understanding the truth behind violence and the prevention to further such inhumane acts and how authors explain and make aware this violence to an already desensitized world. Peebles describes how a desensitized world is already leading to the self-destruction of mankind and Vonnegut’s novel expresses the impossible. “The painful gestation of this unique novel can hardly surprise, since any writer who tries to reconstruct a historical atrocity of such unimaginable proportions by means of traditional fictional strategies, that is, by storifying the event through an individual narrative perspective, is bound to fail, for the sheer number of casualties transcends the limits of personal empathy. A historical novel about the destruction of Dresden, therefore, is not only beset by the genre-specific problems of recreating the past through the epistemological limitations of the present, but also defeated by the very limits of the human imagination. This is why Vonnegut has to resort to unheard-of narrative strategies and why Slaughterhouse-Five is a tale that defies all generic classifications and introduces strange new ways of dealing with the grievous lessons of history” (2).
The consistency of war and the obvious desensitization of the human population to death and suffering leads one to conclude that the sacred view of human morality is simply not as magnified as we have come to believe and may actually be vanishing completely. In addition to the deterioration of human morality shown in Slaughterhouse Five, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner offers a development of another life form to such a magnitude that one is to simply stop and analyze the point in which human life is equal to substitutes.
In Contrast to Vonnegut, Scott’s film is one of great climax and action. Scott uses the action to stimulate emotion from his audience. The action is not only that from the direct plot but also scenes of fire and hovering cars, flashing billboards, and complex action all in the background. Scott’s setting is also one of great chaos and shows how the human race has improved in technology but absolutely destroyed the standard of living to where many humans are actually street rats showing a first of its kind cyberpunk view of the future. Film critic W.A Senior describes Scott’s cyberpunk world where there is only hunters and hunted and heroes and villains. Senior describes this world to be different then current times, and given these circumstances the separation between human and machine would be much more unclear. In the Essay Senior describes the heroism of Rachael and the love she shares with Deckard, portraying a very vivid picture of a “machine” and human in love. With this criticism Senior distinguishes a very clear point to how machines could be classified as human, or even of higher worth than humans, in a cyberpunk world. Senior redefines humanity to not just human or machine but the deferent roles of minds in society. Although Rachael is an Android she plays the role of hero, saving Rick Deckard from her own kind because of the love she has for him. This opens the idea that in humanity or the life of an Android there will always be heroes and villains, making it impossible to judge life on the basis of genetic makeup but on quality of life. Journalist Dr. Eric G. Wilson relates the film to an age old “Golem Myth” which is a thirteenth century interpretation of the book of Genesis. The myth explains God’s creation of mankind and a Golem. The Golem is a creation made as a purpose to God or man and is a simple life form. Adam was the first Golem example made from mud. He was not perfect but was given the opportunity to be valued. The analysis compares the Tyrell Corporation to being powerful enough to design new life forms as a god. When compared, the Tyrell’s Androids were actually made from a lot purer material then man. Even though the creation of the Android is not perfect, it is designed to greater itself towards mankind and establish itself as a valued life given that it can think on its own. One of the biggest controversial topics in the movie is the Voight-Kampff test. This test was administered to stimulate empathy and emotion from the test taker to determine if the subject is human or not. The Androids were not supposed to be able to show empathy but Rachael advanced past all expectations of the test showing advancement far beyond all Androids. Rachael took an extremely longer time then all other Androids, which leads to the idea that if an android could advance beyond a human then where is the separation of the two. In addition to the test, the movie insinuated the idea that an android does not have the human quality of memory. Deckard tells Rachael that all her memories are implanted at her creation and are not real. However at the end of the movie Deckard was left not understanding some of his memories and questioning whether they were real or not. The purpose behind this was to raise the question if human memory is real or could we be controlled by a higher power. Given that thought there is uncertainty in our separation from Androids. The Androids simply want more life and are slowly becoming impossible to distinguish between humans and the creatures they are. The one action the Androids are participating in that does not help their case of life is the countless killing that they pursue in order to find the answers they want. However, these actions are accounted for by the inhumane actions of war and suffering by humans highlighted in Slaughterhouse Five. The two novels combine to show the rise of a newly created life and the fall of humanity. Whereas the characters in Blade Runner are all fighting for answers, Billy Pilgrim is simply letting go of all belief in humanity and what it means to be alive. The Androids want nothing more than to be recognized as intelligent life and when examining them it is hard to distinguish why they aren’t given this request. The leader of the Androids, Roy Batty, quotes famous philosopher Descartes saying, “I think therefore I am.” This quote simply means that someone wondering whether or not he or she exists is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking. This argument is an ancient argument discussed over centuries to what draws the line in “being”. This is a highlighted reference in the film because it is the main argument that the Androids are actually a form of life and are capable of thinking. Vonnegut’s main character Billy Pilgrim however, is in fact human, but questions the value of the thought of life that is held so dearly. Billy believes that there is no purpose to life because there is no changing it. He loses hope in the war giving way to all form of empathy. This loss of Empathy is what Billy leans on to explain the horrid things he has seen humans do. So seeing that a human can refrain from having empathy, the Androids have a strong case in the race to having legitimate life on earth. Slaughterhouse Five is a novel written in genius manner to show the horror of war and human violence to the point of where one can question all purpose and meaning to human life. It is important to fully understand the feeling of Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim toward humanity to reconsider the value of human life. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is a first of its kind film paving the way to ideas of ethics and human morality. Combining the works one can expose him-self to a new idea of human ethics and question to where the sanctity of human life ends and other life forms are recognized. . The works provides us with insight on how the morality of humans may just be a self-appointed pedestal that can be replaced or overcome by a substitute. The thought of human life with no purpose or order simply preset actions is also exposed by the works. When combining these thoughts one can make a valid decision on where their personal thoughts are on what defines a “being”.
Works Cited
Simpson J. "This Promising of Great Secrets": Literature, Ideas, and the (Re)Invention of Reality in Kurt Vonnegut 's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions Or "Fantasies of an Impossibly Hospitable World": Science Fiction and M. Critique. Spring2004. 261-271.
Peebles, Stacey. "Fighting To Understand: Violence, Form, And Truth-Claims In Lesy, Vonnegut, And Herr." Philological Quarterly 84.4 (2005): 479-496.
Wilson, Eric G. "Moviegoing And Golem-Making: The Case Of Blade Runner." Journal Of Film & Video 57.3 (2005): 31-43.
Senior, W. A. "Blade Runner and Cyberpunk Visions Of Humanity." Film Criticism 21.1 (1996): 1-12.
Armstrong, Richard. "Signs of Life: Soul And Cinephilia In 'Blade Runner '." Screen Education 43 (2006): 117-122.
"Blade Runner (Philosophical Films)." Philosophical Films. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. .
"Slaughterhouse-Five and the Philosophy Of War." Infinite Tasks of Philosophy. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. .
Bloom, Harold. Kurt Vonnegut 's Slaughterhouse Five. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2001. Print.
“Blade Runner: The Script.” Trussel’s ElectriCity. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 May 2012.
.
analyze the viewpoints the two works offer in understanding philosophical importance of the human sanctity by narrowing two questions, “what makes human life more sacred, or of higher purpose then other life forms, and what does moral action have to offer for this question?” I will begin by first analyzing how Kurt Vonnegut uses his novel Slaughterhouse Five to bring awareness on how the “unmoral” acts of war bring about the complete destruction of human standards and promote animalistic behavior. Slaughterhouse Five is set in Germany during World War II. It is the story of a young soldier who goes through the war and life with no hope in humanity due to being scarred from the tragedies of war at such an early age. Vonnegut uses vivid imagery in describing the setting to show the misery brought out by war, thus exposing emotion’s from the reader that could not be fueled from a film. However, unlike a typical anti-war novel would be expected to portray, Vonnegut does not use strong fear and emotion with his main character Billy Pilgrim in an effort to raise awareness of the tragedies of war. Instead Vonnegut uses the honest approach of indifference and loss of hope to express his thoughts against the war. Some people believe that Vonnegut’s novel is simply science fiction and actually question his sanity. In contrast Vonnegut prides himself on his deeper level of writing and his suffering as a P.O.W released him into the first hand horrors of war. Josh Simpson, a graduate student from Eastern Kentucky, wrote an essay about Vonnegut and the dual meanings of his writings. Simpson tells about how one of Vonnegut’s biggest fears was to be viewed as a far-fetched science fiction novelist, and prides himself on the meanings behind his peculiar style of writing, “I argue that although Slaughterhouse-Five on the surface is Vonnegut 's Dresden novel, on a much deeper level it is also the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man so tormented and haunted by the burden of the past that he finds it necessary to "reinvent" his own reality.” (1) Billy Pilgrim is simply hopeless in humanity and believes there is nothing he can change. Billy’s loss of hope raises awareness to the value of life. He arouses this question even more being quoted, “How nice to feel nothing, and still get credit for being alive” (Slaughterhouse Five 134). These questions and change of quality from the human life shows how Billy has a machine like indifference to the world and suffers lack of all empathy, yet still lives a socially approved quality of life. In addition to the individual destruction war induces on the people who experience it, the act as a whole is a question on the sacred reputation of the human race and this is stressed in the novel Slaughterhouse Five.
Keally McBride is a fifteen year veteran of teaching at the college level and when preparing for her new course, Philosophy and Politics of Peace and War, she writes on her website how she included Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five in her syllabus. She believes that Vonnegut’s novel describes war in the perfect manner through the chaos of his writing. “Vonnegut refuses to tell a story that can make meaning out of war, or out of death. It is pure chance, chaos, and randomness, and even the Trafalmadorians, able to see all moments in time, do not attempt to sum up the moral or political significance of anything. Everything is, precisely as it is, in its surfaces” (7). Vonnegut offers an understanding of the chaotic nature of war through the structure of his novel. While reading Vonnegut’s novel, one can place himself in the senseless act of war. Experiencing this brings out the wisdom that such an act created by humans is against all morality that the human race is founded on, and simply makes us the same as a beast destroying innocent
lives. Journalist Stacey Peebles writes an article trying to understand the violence in various novels and how the writers convey this violence to their readers. The purpose of her argument is to make aware the popularity of violence to the human race, and to describe how we are desensitized and somewhat unaware in understanding the degree of violence each author is trying to portray. Peebles’ article is successful in highlighting the common appearance of human violence and the demoralizing acts performed and accepted by humans and governments. The article is written in hopes to understanding the truth behind violence and the prevention to further such inhumane acts and how authors explain and make aware this violence to an already desensitized world. Peebles describes how a desensitized world is already leading to the self-destruction of mankind and Vonnegut’s novel expresses the impossible. “The painful gestation of this unique novel can hardly surprise, since any writer who tries to reconstruct a historical atrocity of such unimaginable proportions by means of traditional fictional strategies, that is, by storifying the event through an individual narrative perspective, is bound to fail, for the sheer number of casualties transcends the limits of personal empathy. A historical novel about the destruction of Dresden, therefore, is not only beset by the genre-specific problems of recreating the past through the epistemological limitations of the present, but also defeated by the very limits of the human imagination. This is why Vonnegut has to resort to unheard-of narrative strategies and why Slaughterhouse-Five is a tale that defies all generic classifications and introduces strange new ways of dealing with the grievous lessons of history” (2).
The consistency of war and the obvious desensitization of the human population to death and suffering leads one to conclude that the sacred view of human morality is simply not as magnified as we have come to believe and may actually be vanishing completely. In addition to the deterioration of human morality shown in Slaughterhouse Five, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner offers a development of another life form to such a magnitude that one is to simply stop and analyze the point in which human life is equal to substitutes.
In Contrast to Vonnegut, Scott’s film is one of great climax and action. Scott uses the action to stimulate emotion from his audience. The action is not only that from the direct plot but also scenes of fire and hovering cars, flashing billboards, and complex action all in the background. Scott’s setting is also one of great chaos and shows how the human race has improved in technology but absolutely destroyed the standard of living to where many humans are actually street rats showing a first of its kind cyberpunk view of the future. Film critic W.A Senior describes Scott’s cyberpunk world where there is only hunters and hunted and heroes and villains. Senior describes this world to be different then current times, and given these circumstances the separation between human and machine would be much more unclear. In the Essay Senior describes the heroism of Rachael and the love she shares with Deckard, portraying a very vivid picture of a “machine” and human in love. With this criticism Senior distinguishes a very clear point to how machines could be classified as human, or even of higher worth than humans, in a cyberpunk world. Senior redefines humanity to not just human or machine but the deferent roles of minds in society. Although Rachael is an Android she plays the role of hero, saving Rick Deckard from her own kind because of the love she has for him. This opens the idea that in humanity or the life of an Android there will always be heroes and villains, making it impossible to judge life on the basis of genetic makeup but on quality of life. Journalist Dr. Eric G. Wilson relates the film to an age old “Golem Myth” which is a thirteenth century interpretation of the book of Genesis. The myth explains God’s creation of mankind and a Golem. The Golem is a creation made as a purpose to God or man and is a simple life form. Adam was the first Golem example made from mud. He was not perfect but was given the opportunity to be valued. The analysis compares the Tyrell Corporation to being powerful enough to design new life forms as a god. When compared, the Tyrell’s Androids were actually made from a lot purer material then man. Even though the creation of the Android is not perfect, it is designed to greater itself towards mankind and establish itself as a valued life given that it can think on its own. One of the biggest controversial topics in the movie is the Voight-Kampff test. This test was administered to stimulate empathy and emotion from the test taker to determine if the subject is human or not. The Androids were not supposed to be able to show empathy but Rachael advanced past all expectations of the test showing advancement far beyond all Androids. Rachael took an extremely longer time then all other Androids, which leads to the idea that if an android could advance beyond a human then where is the separation of the two. In addition to the test, the movie insinuated the idea that an android does not have the human quality of memory. Deckard tells Rachael that all her memories are implanted at her creation and are not real. However at the end of the movie Deckard was left not understanding some of his memories and questioning whether they were real or not. The purpose behind this was to raise the question if human memory is real or could we be controlled by a higher power. Given that thought there is uncertainty in our separation from Androids. The Androids simply want more life and are slowly becoming impossible to distinguish between humans and the creatures they are. The one action the Androids are participating in that does not help their case of life is the countless killing that they pursue in order to find the answers they want. However, these actions are accounted for by the inhumane actions of war and suffering by humans highlighted in Slaughterhouse Five. The two novels combine to show the rise of a newly created life and the fall of humanity. Whereas the characters in Blade Runner are all fighting for answers, Billy Pilgrim is simply letting go of all belief in humanity and what it means to be alive. The Androids want nothing more than to be recognized as intelligent life and when examining them it is hard to distinguish why they aren’t given this request. The leader of the Androids, Roy Batty, quotes famous philosopher Descartes saying, “I think therefore I am.” This quote simply means that someone wondering whether or not he or she exists is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking. This argument is an ancient argument discussed over centuries to what draws the line in “being”. This is a highlighted reference in the film because it is the main argument that the Androids are actually a form of life and are capable of thinking. Vonnegut’s main character Billy Pilgrim however, is in fact human, but questions the value of the thought of life that is held so dearly. Billy believes that there is no purpose to life because there is no changing it. He loses hope in the war giving way to all form of empathy. This loss of Empathy is what Billy leans on to explain the horrid things he has seen humans do. So seeing that a human can refrain from having empathy, the Androids have a strong case in the race to having legitimate life on earth. Slaughterhouse Five is a novel written in genius manner to show the horror of war and human violence to the point of where one can question all purpose and meaning to human life. It is important to fully understand the feeling of Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim toward humanity to reconsider the value of human life. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is a first of its kind film paving the way to ideas of ethics and human morality. Combining the works one can expose him-self to a new idea of human ethics and question to where the sanctity of human life ends and other life forms are recognized. . The works provides us with insight on how the morality of humans may just be a self-appointed pedestal that can be replaced or overcome by a substitute. The thought of human life with no purpose or order simply preset actions is also exposed by the works. When combining these thoughts one can make a valid decision on where their personal thoughts are on what defines a “being”.
Works Cited
Simpson J. "This Promising of Great Secrets": Literature, Ideas, and the (Re)Invention of Reality in Kurt Vonnegut 's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions Or "Fantasies of an Impossibly Hospitable World": Science Fiction and M. Critique. Spring2004. 261-271.
Peebles, Stacey. "Fighting To Understand: Violence, Form, And Truth-Claims In Lesy, Vonnegut, And Herr." Philological Quarterly 84.4 (2005): 479-496.
Wilson, Eric G. "Moviegoing And Golem-Making: The Case Of Blade Runner." Journal Of Film & Video 57.3 (2005): 31-43.
Senior, W. A. "Blade Runner and Cyberpunk Visions Of Humanity." Film Criticism 21.1 (1996): 1-12.
Armstrong, Richard. "Signs of Life: Soul And Cinephilia In 'Blade Runner '." Screen Education 43 (2006): 117-122.
"Blade Runner (Philosophical Films)." Philosophical Films. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. .
"Slaughterhouse-Five and the Philosophy Of War." Infinite Tasks of Philosophy. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. .
Bloom, Harold. Kurt Vonnegut 's Slaughterhouse Five. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2001. Print.
“Blade Runner: The Script.” Trussel’s ElectriCity. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 May 2012.
.