In their texts, the composers’ dramatic use of dystopic settings, illustrate humanity’s dislocation from traditional religious and philosophic ways of thinking. In “Blade Runner”, the panoramic camera shots of L.A. 2019 establish a hellish megalopolis through disorienting imagery of unnatural squalor and the domination of pagan edifices. Ironically, this post-apocalyptic tone has inverted L.A. into a “fallen city of angels”. Contrasting this with the dulcet soundtrack further emphasizes the dissonant nature of this environment. The reflection of this pessimistic setting in the motif eye symbolizes how the triumph of science has commodified individual freedom and happiness prohibiting a relationship with the natural world.
The opening chapter of “Brave New World” uses the accumulated imagery of “the light was frozen, dead, a ghost” and “pale corpse-coloured” to introduce the paradox that human life is scientifically engineered in “fertilizing rooms”. It establishes the novel’s inhumane tone and portrays The World State as a society that has denied its people what defines their very existence – colorful passion and the spontaneity of humanity and the natural world. The World State clearly symbolizing the Totalitarianism in Huxley’s context. Though Huxley and Scott’s settings are diametrically opposed, they both overtly depict humanity straying from its natural origins and becoming metaphorically lost in the wilderness of science and materialism.
Both texts explore ‘In The Wild’ by demonstrating the ways in which scientific progress is divorcing humanity from its natural origins. The technocratic World State of “Brave New World” is populated by scientifically engineered beings – a complete subversion of the natural rhythms of the human life cycle. A love of nature has been satirically replaced with a love of “Our Ford” and it’s hedonistic “orgy porgies”. This parody of religion is a reflection of the spiritual depletion of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ and gives a god-like image to Henry Ford. Now, The World State has “applied mass-production to biology” – people are engineered by the 1000s and The World State even denies nature unless technology is integrally involved. However, the very existence of the necessary surrogates symbolizes the uncultivated nature of the natural order. In diametric opposition, a symbol of the ‘old and uncivilized world’ –is the “raw” human state of the Savage Reservation – an allusion to Democracy. John the Savage, from the Savage Reservation, rejects the “Brave New World”: his characterization as someone who does not want fake “comfort” but rather the naturalness of “god, poetry, freedom and sin…I claim them all”, is reinforced by the accumulation and personal pronoun. By contrast, inhabitants of the World State have been manipulated since their foetal state to fit the requirements of society and to “like their inescapable social destiny”. “Brave New World” portrays a world in which technology is fast growing as the new God and its ironic that it’s the ‘outsiders’ that are each composers’ mouthpieces, used to articulate the human qualities so lacking in the ‘insiders’.
In “Blade Runner”, the responders are forced to question what constitutes a human consider the state of nature: a key difference between texts. In “Brave New World”, nature exists but is denied because, according to their consumerist values, ‘a love of nature keeps no factories busy’; however in “Blade Runner”, they lament its loss. Paradoxically, Tyrell capitalizes/corporatizes the role of God by technologically manufacturing life - Replicants – ironically ‘more human than human´ synthetic beings seeking to prolong their brief existence. Both worlds overturn the natural order by engineering lives and thus clearly have little rapport with the natural world and its rhythms. This lack of rapport is reinforced by contrasting the compassionate and emotional characterization of the science-fiction Replicants, as demonstrated by the personal pronoun in “I want more life”, with the cold and apathetic characterization of the film-noir Deckard. Whilst “Blade Runner” ironically examines the quality of humanity through mechanical Replicants, “Brave New World” examines human qualities through humans who have had them stripped away. By confronting the reader with an unnatural humanity in an unnatural environment, both dystopias force the responder to re-evaluate the essential qualities of their human existence.
Both “Blade Runner” and “Brave New World” explore ‘In The Wild’ by warning of the detrimental human desire to control what God intended to flourish uninhibited – humanity and its relationship with the natural world. Huxley and Scott stress that because “the immediate future is likely to be a reflection of the immediate past”, current ways of thinking must change. They caution that unbridled scientific progress is something that “nature is powerless to put asunder” and thus, will render what it means to be human, meaningless.
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These texts integrate such criticism with each composer’s moral, values and ethics to create a new text with old ideas.
The only non-artificial animal is a unicorn – a mythical creature that was in Deckard’s dream.
The ultimate is the irony of Rachel saving Deckard from being shot by Leon. Roy Batty even displays a spiritual depth, the religious symbolism the dove (a symbol of the human soul) show that he has achieved humanity.
to ask what it means to be human and conclude that genuine, natural emotions are of utmost importance to humanity.
Whilst in “Blade Runner: Director’s Cut”, technology has destroyed emotions in humans but ironically created them in machines, in “Brave New World” technology simply suppresses them. These wildernesses embody what Huxley and Scott prophesize for our world and challenge whether progress is actually beneficial for humanity.
prophesize for our world and challenge whether progress is actually beneficial for humanity.
humanity being violated by the tyrannous science and technology.
the natural world and its rhythms being violated by tyrannous scientific development
In, Huxley virulently attacks this brutal desire to curb our natural state as humans. Also, after the invention of, caused by witnessing devastating,, he voices his disapproval of man’s perpetual craving for technological progress by satirizing the eternal question of “will science be used for the good of mankind or to destroy it?”
voice his own disgust of his context and the deteriorating relationship between man and nature.
The very symbol of life – the elemental force of the Sun – is rendered powerless by the smog of this concrete jungle.
(Reinforcing the values of materialism and Reagonism is the euphemistic retirement of the Replicants after which, they are collected like garbage.)