2006 In the Wild
The desire for control can have disastrous consequences and both Aldous Huxley’s Brave new world and Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner :Directors cut” are dramatic futuristic depictions of potential worlds. Through the destruction and replacement of nature, natural processes and exploitation of freedom, controllers have turned the future worlds into dystopias, bringing to the fore consequences for the desire for control.
The destruction and replacement of nature in Brave new world is the world state’s attempt at maintaining conformity and increasing control. “Civilisation is sterilisation”, “a squat grey building” and “pale dead as a ghost…corpse coloured rubber”, these are Huxley’s bleak images of the world state. However, his depictions of the savage reservation where nature is limited to are “it’s horrible it’s horrible” and “infantile decorum”. Lenina, as a product of her controlling and conditioning, finds no joy in nature and remains adamant about her “conditioning”. This emphasises that in the world state’s desire for control, and in the past WW1 context of Huxley, that disconformities and nature must be eliminated. This is further explored through Scott’s opening long panoramic shot of a hellish megalopolis scatted with towering smoke stacks emitting intense fireballs. The film uses film noir techniques of acid rain, smog filled low lighting and dirty alleyways in this concrete jungle to reiterate the lack of nature. The controlling and dominating shot of the Tyrell Corp building coupled with low angle shots of Roy batty and high angle shots of Deckard, emphasise that in Tyrell’s quest for control and “more human than human” “replicants”, he has merely destroyed nature. Scott was mixed into a time of increased environmentalism due to the hippies’ awareness of global warming, pollution, and the OPEC oil crisis. These detail humans’ desire for control and its draining effects on the fragile Earth. Both Huxley and Scott show through the destruction and replacement of nature that dramatic consequences have been foretold, bringing to the fore the consequences of the desire for control.
