Blade Runner

“When they are considered together, how do Huxley’s and Scott’s representations sustain interest in humanity’s relationship with nature?”

Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” offer a profound depiction of the state of humanity’s relations with nature. Huxley’s 1932 satire “Brave New World” reflects the controversial view of Huxley in response to the omen of industrialisation upon humanity’s relationship with the wild. Similarly, Scott’s film “Blade Runner” visually showcases the threat of globalisation upon humanity’s relationship with the wild. Both texts act as allegories for totalitarian systems, attitudes towards progress, and the unachievable concept of utopia, as well as the loss individuality and community as a result of the bereavement in the relationship between humanity and the wild.

Both Huxley’s novel and Scott’s film offer a unique insight into relatively revolutionary ideas concerning attitudes towards progress during their respective contexts. Scott’s opening scene epitomizes the detrimental effects of man’s decayed relationship with the wild. Scott’s depiction of the once iconic city of Los Angeles as a dark and depersonalised neon wasteland through a wide angled birds eye shot, elucidates the perception that scientific progress has been permitted a far too liberal existence. Huxley parallel’s this notion that the “age of science” was allowed to “go on indefinitely” through hyperbole. Furthermore, Scott’s use of industrial fires as salient images within the scape of the city as well as through the provision of no natural light upon the darkened city creates a sense of complete artificiality. In addition, the non-diagetic music further affirms the underworld like nature of the films imagery – the use of low, drowning horns as well as explosive sounds creates a poignant sense of constant menace and as Huxley similarly expresses “an independence of God”. The eye motif within Scott’s film effectively reflects both the compromised human place within this world as well as promoting an atmosphere of constant surveillance, a concept that Huxley most sought to achieve in his overly sterile depiction of the hatchery within his novel. Consequently, both texts reflect the notion of a negative attitude towards progress, due to unrelenting consequences that it necessitates upon humanity’s relationship with the wild.

The prominence of totalitarianism is prevalent throughout both texts, Huxley lived in a world filled with tyrants, similarly, Scott produced his work under the influence of the totalitarian TNC. Despite the decades separating the two texts existence, both worlds are, through an allusion to Shakespeare, prominent in Huxley’s work “not the same as Othello’s world”. In BNW it is apparent that as a result of industrialisation and its inherent progressive, syncopated forces of “community, identity and stability”, humanity has become a machine driven by aphorisms. Similarly, Scott’s 1980’s globalisation inspired film is a poignant comment on the state of contemporary relations with the wild. Through the imposing figure of the Zigurat demonstrated through the low-wide angle pan, Scott metaphorically depicts the ability of mankind to replace its “Everest’s” with man-made buildings, ensuring that people are symbolically unable to “escape their social destiny”. Ironically however, Scott has chosen to juxtapose these prophetic images with triumphant non–diagetic music, demonstrating the conquest of technology over nature and the TNC over humanity. This is paralleled by Huxley’s use of the proverbial axiom “suggestions from the state”. In addition, through the mis-en-scene, Scott reveals a dark smog to be surrounding the symbolic TNC figure of the Zigurat, furthermore, the sun is all but blocked out through humanity’s degradation of the wild. This is further emphasised through the appearance of the “artificial owl” which as a consequence of humanity’s detachment with the wild and the influence of the TNC now has a price figure attached to it and therefore “must be expensive”. Moreover, the dead flowers that Scott has chosen to frame in this sequence figuratively depict the lifeless state of relations between the wild and humanity as a result of the greed of the TNC. This concept is parallel by Huxley through his adage “civilisation is sterilisation”, acting as an allegory for Scott’s entire film and Huxley’s novel, and forms a prophetic comment on humanities destruction of nature through the rise of totalitarianism.

Humanity’s degradation of nature has come primarily as a result of humanity’s loss of individuality. Scott’s chase scene, where Deckard discovers Zhora is a replicant highlights the replacement of the individual with technology. Huxley parallels this through his simple sentences “the principle of mass production at last applied to biology”. Similarly, Scott has depicted earth through the convoluted salience of neon lights and polluted squaller that the consumer-driven society of the 1980’s facilitated. Similarly, during Huxley’s time factories and industry were prevailing, and as the old motto in Huxley’s work foreshadows “the love of nature keeps no factories busy”. Scott underlines this through the non-diagetic soundtrack that demonstrates the heartbeat stopping as Zhora dies clouding the regions of life and technology; and slow-motion to stress the ostensible emergence of artificial control over reality and technological ascendancy. Huxley seeks to underscore the same core concerns, and through imagery depicts humans as “goggle-eyed and swine-snouted in their gas masks” to conform human and animal to synthetic anatomy and underscore their increasing similarity and loss of individuality, reflecting an increasing separation of humanity’s relationship with nature.

The concept of utopia has been greatly undermined by the appearance of these two texts and its representation of humanity’s relationship with nature. Scott’s final scene epitomizes Huxley’s personified notion of "what man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder”. This is best represented in Scott’s film through the diagetic noises of Roy howling, demonstrating the subjugated primal nature of mankind and the inability of mankind to decide through animalistic impulses, how to survive within his environment, undermining any chance of utopia. In addition, the mis-en-scene reveals an artificial canopy of wires and ceiling fans that has been constructed figuratively through an idea presented in Huxley’s book of an “orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question”. This serves as an allegory for the containment of man within an artificial environment. Furthermore, through a mid-shot of Roy and a dove, Scott reveals the duality of mankind’s existence with nature; the Nexus six replicants personify the perception that “man has become the proliferation of the standardised” (Reggio). The dove acts as the contrasting last piece of carnal imagery within Scott’s film. It serves as a metaphor for the inability of corporeal beings to function under the artificial hegemony of the two worlds presented within both texts, as Huxley apothegmatically states in his work “we can't allow science to undo its own good work”. This final scene in Scott’s film, and the destiny of the savage in Huxleys satire, serve as powerful reminders that both worlds are progressing towards measures beyond humanity’s control, further alienating us from nature, and eliminating any chance of utopia.

Aldous Huxley’s novel “Brave New World” and Ridley Scott’s film “Blade Runner” sustain interest in humanity’s relationship with the wild, through their profound depiction of totalitarian regimes, individuality, scientific progress and utopia. Both these texts offer a unique comment of humanity’s ever degrading relationship with the wild. Despite the 50 years seperating the two texts’ existence humanity has descended into an even deeper hole of unavoidable dystopia. Consequently, these two texts offer a unique relevance to humanity’s current relationship with nature.