Blade Runner 2049, Gender, and Android Love
Probably the most important, and memorable, scene from either Blade Runner movie is the speech given by Roy Batty (who is a replicant aka a bioengineered human).
Roy isn’t just a replicant, he is a Nexus 6 replicant, basically designed to be able to work in environments where humans could never work but with the disadvantage that they are essentially incapable, or thought to be incapable, of empathy (super-strong designed sociopaths).
This speech is now widely known as the “Tears In Rain” monolog and it went like this:
Roy (Rutger Hauer) knows he is about to die (Replicants have a built in die-on date and Roy was not able to get the designers to save him). Rather than letting Deckard (Harrison Ford) die or killing him for his summary execution of several of his closest friends Batty starts talking about Attack Ships on Fire and C Beams.
Why?
Batty, about to die, realizes that life is too precious and that death is too tragic (“lost in time like tears in rain”) for him to participate in taking life again (even from a man who has killed virtually everyone he knows).
This scene is the Rosetta Stone to understanding the Blade Runner universe. Replicants can feel beyond their design perimeters. Roy’s creator Eldon Tyrell once suggested that his replicants were “more human than human” (suggesting that they could do things better and faster than humans and in places where human never could). But he was exactly right, his designed sociopaths turn out to be more empathetic than real humans too.
Both Blade Runner Movies are about how replicants (perhaps because they are bred to be expendable) appreciate, value, and protect human life MORE than the life-forms who were born human.
These movies are cautionary tales about how we humans have become so cruel, selfish, and jaded that we can only be reminded of how f*cked up we are by being shamed by our fictional synthetically produced cousins.
Love In The Age Of Robots
The best movie I have seen in 2017 was Blade Runner 2049.
However, for some reason (and I am at a loss to explain it) Blade Runner 2049 did so badly at the box office that the Director of the movie (Denis Villeneuve) is still randomly apologizing and explaining the movies failure months later:
“I think the thing is that it’s maybe because people were not familiar enough with the universe, and the fact that the movie is long. I don’t know, it’s still a mystery to me.”
One particular bone of critical contention, despite overwhelming accolades for the movie in general, has been the criticism of the movies treatment of its women characters. As Gizmodo put it recently:
“Women in Blade Runner 2049 are constantly objectified by the world around them, turned into automated helpers, puppets, and sex toys.”
Director Villeneuve recently responded to this criticism as well:
“What is cinema? Villeneuve added. Cinema is a mirror on society. Blade Runner is not about tomorrow; it’s about today. And I’m sorry, but the world is not kind on women. There’s a sense in American cinema: you want to portray an ideal world, he continued. You want to portray a utopia. That’s good dreams for a better world, to advocate for something better, yes. But if you look at my movies, they are exploring today’s shadows. The first Blade Runner is the biggest dystopian statement of the last half century. I did the follow-up to that, so yes, it’s a dystopian vision of today. Which magnifies all the faults.”
I think we all probably agree that those “shadows” have starting to be exposed over the last month and that it is fair to say that Villeneuve is holding a fairly accurate mirror up to society.
Many have argued that Villeneuve was not just holding up a mirror but that he was also celebrating constructed (gendered) violence itself.
One of the main vehicles critics suggest Villeneuve celebrated was the relationship between K (a replicant) and Joi (an algorithm).
“Joi” De Vivre?
So why is Joi so problematic? Julia Alexander puts it like this:
“In Blade Runner 2049, Ryan Gosling’s Officer K is in love with Joi, an artificially intelligent companion that he purchased from Wallace Corp, the manufacturer behind the Nexus 9 replicant. K is himself a Nexus 9 model; he mimics human emotion and needs like sleeping, eating, and lusting after a relationship with a woman. His loneliness leads to him purchasing Joi. She’s a high-functioning, advanced hologram that, with the purchase of a device, he can bring with him where he goes, keeping her tucked away in his pocket until he wants to see her again. Joi is willing to do anything for K. She loves him and, while he loves her, she is by design everything that he wants her to be. She is his perfect fantasy. Her entire purpose is to bring him satisfaction, programmed to be the type of girl he wants, in whatever outfit best suits the occasion. Although K is willing to fight for her, she’s his dependent. Her first priority will always be to serve him, never the other way around.”
First, I can 100% understand why Ms. Alexander felt that way (and she might be right) but I had a very different experience watching Blade Runner 2049. I will freely admit that some of this could have to do with my gender (obviously, I am a guy) but, I think I have a few decent reasons for why I viewed Joi (and Blade Runner 2049) MUCH differently than Julia Alexander did:
First, while K has (most likely) chosen to have Joi represent as a woman (and a ‘fantasy woman’) most likely because he is a straight man (as near as I can tell, the main differences between humans and Nexus 9 replicants are of origin and designed physical ability not of biological sex or of gender). Joi is an algorithm absent inherent biological sex unless she is self-aware and if Joi is self-aware she is probably just as capable as Roy Batty was of growing beyond her programming. I suspect this is why Villeneuve suggested that:
I am very sensitive to how I portray women in movies. This is my ninth feature film and six of them have women in the lead role. The first Blade Runner was quite rough on the women; something about the film noir aesthetic. But I tried to bring depth to all the characters. For Joi, the holographic character, you see how she evolves. It’s interesting, I think.
There are multiple scenes where just like a normal couple would we see K and Joi working together to collectively combine skills in order to solve each others problems. There are scenes where Joi doesn’t act like she is fulfilling fantasies for K as much as demonstrating autonomous caring and concern.
It is my opinion that she has agency and will and that if patriarchy is present it is patriarchy built into the limitations of her programming by Wallace (or whomever created the algorithmic holograms).
If you want to believe she is only acted upon instead of acting, you have to have to strip her of her capacity to freely act as an agent in the events and struggles she faces throughout the movie. The look on her projected face when she is standing in the rain lays total waste to the idea she is absent agency.
It is my contention that this is a romance of choice (for both K and Joi) and not just hostage taking, Pygmalion at the moment of creation, and/or fantasy fulfillment for K.
Second, K does not love Joi because she is his constructed fantasy, he loves her because they are both trapped in and are slaves to the same cruel programmer (they are both limited and constrained in ways that create common cause and common dreams).
K loves Joi most when she is made the most vulnerable to the cruel dictates of his programming (like he is).
K loves Joi for the same reason we fall in love with each other and for the same reason Batty loves life, K knows she is a self-aware spirit and because they have common cause and have shared dreams, he can’t bear to see her lost in time (like tears in rain).
He sees in her a kindred electric but doomed soul, a partner in being more than what they were created to be (but not so much more that they can escape their fate). Doomed together and mortal in love.
I believe that K offers Joy holographic independence (outside of his home projector) not so that he can take her anywhere with him but rather so that she can go anywhere she wants to be.
I believe he untethers her form not so that he can see her wherever and whenever he wants to ensure she is but rather so that she can see herself wherever she wants to see herself (within the limits of her programming).
Both of them seem to sacrifice and do things for each other and not just for the benefit of themselves.
K might have started by creating a fantasy girl but that creation has grown beyond his imagination. The K we see in the movie treats Joi with patience, deference, and awe.
This is not a self-love monolog, it is a true love dialog.
When K is offered the fantasy of sex with a human, when his boss comes onto him, he turns her down. It seems clear that this is because he has loves Joi. I believe, deeply, that like Roy was more empathetic (human) than the empaths (human). Joi and K represent a couple who earned love through mutual love and respect. Both are self-aware and make informed choices and both understand the limitations of the other and love each other the more because of it.
More problematic for me is the scene when K hires Mariette (the prostitute/revolutionary played by Mackenzie Davis) who allows Joi to have sex with K using her body as an intermediary (some have suggested Mariette is being used “like a puppet” but that seems unfair in that it erases her ability to consent). There seems to me little difference between the criticism of a man hiring a prostitute generally (valid and consistent with Villeneuve’s comment about dystopia above) and what happens here. Mariette consents (aided by commerce) to be the physical intermediary and presumably could uncouple and leave at any time (unlike in the first Blade Runner where Deckard seemed to rape Rachel during their disturbing sex scene).
I am not saying it is okay that K has sex with a prostitute or that monetary coercion doesn’t corrupt consent. I am saying that to view the scene as Mariette being used as a puppet, you have to remove Mariette’s capacity for agency entirely (and I am not willing to do that — it gets too close to what feminists have called “the protection racket” where policing the protection of femininity becomes just another way of enforcing gender norms).
A more important question to me is if Joi can feel (or experience at all) what is happening to Mariette? Is she more than a witness to K’s gifted infidelity or is she present in a way that registers her as more than a voyeur? And does this matter (I am not sure that I have answers to this).
I guess it is no surprise that if you care about human life more than humans do, and love more truly than humans do, you might have a desire to experience what humans experience (even if you can’t entirely pull it off).
So, I certainly agree with most of the critics that there is some very troubling stuff going on here, but I suspect the vast majority is designed as a criticism of US not as a construction of a new technologically enforced patriarchy.
I also should add that women, or people with different experiences than mine, could experience the movie in a very different ways. I believe that all art is co-productive and co-created, which means (in a sense) that all art is unique to every person who watches it.
That is pretty much all I have here (I wanted to cover Luv but this article has already gone on much longer than I originally intended…maybe I will add a Part 2 including discussion of Luv and of Lieutenant Joshi — Let me know in the comments if you want more).
Josh is a blogger and freelance writer who writes about television, movies, music, politics, race, ethics, and whatever else seems interesting at the time.
