A replicant has died. No, I mean, the actor Rutger Hauer has died. Will we ever be able to not think immediately about his final speech in the movie Blade Runner, a white dove in his hand, when he decides, against all odds, to save the life of Harrison Ford, to be good and kind - instead of being exactly what he has been designed for: a Killer.
I think Hauer was cast for the role because of his features: A white, blond athletic giant, something of the kind the Nazis have dreamed about - a superior Aryan master race having no scruples or ethical standards attached to them. A clone army of cold-blooded killers. His face is now synonymous with this unique character of a science fiction movie, that is so masterful and has so many levels of meaning and interpretation, it withstands time and it is a true classic, if there ever was one. In the film by Ridley Scott from 1982, so-called replicants, the creations of a technotycoon, named Dr Eldon Tyrell and his multi-planetary conglomerate, the Tyrell Corporation, look exactly like humans, indeed are even better looking; they have superior memory functions and are extremely intelligent; plus, they are physically superior to human beings, but they are not robots. They are rather genetically designed, perhaps something within reach now, regarding the CRISPR gene editing method. Are they ersatz humans? According to the definition of ersatz, replicants are in fact not real or genuine, they are made or used as a substitute for something (humans), but in the case of the replicants, they are not, as it would be typical for an ersatz product, of inferior quality. Replicants, like the one played by Rutger Hauer, are designed with the same kind of intelligence that we also find in Humans - but artificial. They progressively learn to acquire real feelings, emotions like love, and even empathy. As we all know, sometimes it is in vain when we look for these qualities in actual Human beings. So, replicants, like humans, gain autonomy by using (artificial or natural) intelligence, and that means, they could pose a security threat to those they were intended to serve; this feature led their developers to design them as fail-safe devices - by coding them genetically for a lifespan of four years. This is the planned obsolescence of replicants, who are supposedly „better“ than human beings, which is to say, less imperfect, less unpredictable. What is the consequence of this? Above all it points to an important aspect of what being human actually means. The first lesson of this is that being human does not -by default- mean, being intelligent. The second lesson is, that, whatever it is we are here for and whatever plans somebody has laid out for us - We always have a choice. We can choose to be good and kind and show empathy. Always. And the third lesson is a very simple one - if we know that we have to die, and we know that we want to live - It should be obvious that all the others around us would want that, too. All of us would want to be able one day to say our own version of the following monologue, delivered by Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner: „I’ve seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.“ R.I.P. Rutger Hauer
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AuthorThomas Behrens Visual Communication is not only taking part in the digital transformation - actively and passively - he will also reflect on it. Hence the blog. Archives
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