Characterisation exists as a crucial element of both Brave New World and Blade Runner. Huxley’s character positioning of Bernard and John the savage engage the responder with the possibilities of exploring the concepts of humanity, society and conformity in the context of future civilisations. Huxley creates a society in which the idea of individual is erased. Throughout BNW, Bernard struggles to conform to the world in which he was ‘conditioned’ to exist within, “everybody’s happy now”, an ironic suggestion that despite honed behavioural engineering, the existence of individuality and ‘wild’ may never cease. The requisite for soma within the conditioned society also implies the implausibility of this statement. John expresses the necessity for humanity being far greater than the external happiness created by science, “I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.”, where Huxley’s use of repetition accents the inevitable needs of the individual.
The common thematic concerns which thread Huxley and Scott’s textual connections are equally evident in the film noir style text, Blade Runner: Directors Cut. Scott’s contextual concerns of consumerism and individuality provide a valid vehicle through which the composer questions the concept of humanity, and in a sense what it means to be ‘wild’. Scott represents the ‘wild’ as that of irrational action, notably through the characterisation of Roy Batty, who needlessly kills previous characters in the film, but in the final sequence, saves Deckard’s life as he is unable to save his own and ironically grasps a fleeting sense of the meaning of life.
Scott’s contextual influences and concerns of; the rise in power of multinational corporations, globalisation and genetic engineering assist in the severity and drastic nature of the setting, characters and lack of lighting. Through these contextual concerns the thematic concerns of the depravation of individuality, correlated with the concept of ‘in the wild’, and the emphasis on consumerism, are visibly apparent in the final sequence of the film. The rise in the power and control of multinational corporations during the 1980’s stemmed the increase in consumerism and corporate greed, which assisted in the increasing economic integration and the breaking down in barriers between countries, allowing technologies to be shared and the birth of multiculturalism.
In Blade Runner, Scott’s use of camera work emphasises the climactic events of the scenes in the story. The use of deep focus and depth of field camera work using skewed camera angles have a dizzying effect on the viewer, accentuated by the scaled atmospheric effects and ongoing use of chiaroscuro. The chiaroscuro emphasises the film’s character positioning and reinforces the film noir style. This is poignant at the end of the ‘Blade Runner’ sequence when the replicant Roy, and the blade runner Deckard, have their roles reversed through the use of these lighting techniques. The replicant is presented to the viewer in close up surrounded by white light, which suggests emotional connection and understanding and attainment of divine purity through his realisation. This demands strong empathy on the part of the viewer, which is paramount to the composer’s thematic intentions, which are achieved through these cinematic techniques. A replicant is the epitome of engineered control but it is Roy, in the closing scenes of the sequence, whose acerbic dialogue uses analogy to reveal a humane understanding of the value and meaning of life, “all the moments will be lost in time like tears in rain”. The irony of his capacity for reflection, when he has been essentially engineered with the inability to process individual emotion, is not lost on the viewer or Deckard and the scene closes with the concept of the ‘wild’ innateness of humanity at the forefront of the audience’s consideration.
Both Huxley and Scott explore the concept of ‘in the wild’ as freedom, where both employ the use of religious allusions that reflect the necessity for valid emotion. The film genre enables Scott a graphic exploration of this key concept, which is achieved by his effective utilisation of religious connotation and animal imagery. The sequences viewed entail a sacrificial symbolism of Roy Batty, forcing a nail into his hand to intensify the sensation of being alive, signifying the intertextuality with Jesus’ crucifixion in the Bible. Similarly, in the adaptation of Huxley’s Brave New World, the composer accentuates a whip that the Savage uses to inflict pain upon himself, related to his desire to feel, an act symbolic of Opus Dei’s mortification of the flesh, mimicking Christ and his suffering. Scott’s use of animal imagery throughout the text’s sequence, demonstrates symbolic gestures and the embodiment of the ‘wild’. The final image viewed in the sequence is that of the dove flying in mid air, the universal symbol of freedom. The release of the dove from Roy transformed him into a life giving figure, thus reminding the viewer of the foundation of humanity. The liberation of the natural dove represents the critical symbolic gesture which has both religious dimension, in terms of the dove being part of Christian mythology, and a final acceptance upon the terms of life, creating a sense that the replicant was “more human than human” as he was able to process emotions.
Both Brave New World and Blade Runner: Directors Cut, successfully portray the convergence of man’s continual struggle for the control of stability with the natural world, that of the concept of ‘in the wild’. Despite the texts’ alternate contextual influences, their intrinsic thematic concerns ensures an overriding parallel in their validity in the exploration of the loss of individuality through technological advancements and the quest for freedom from predetermined control.
