Comparing Frankenstein And Blade Runner

Analyse how Frankenstein and Blade Runner imaginatively portray individuals who challenge the established values of their time.
An individual can challenge conventional ideals in society in their time. The novel, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley in 1818 and the film, Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott in 1982, incorporate characters, which challenge ethics in their society. They challenge values of dependent responsibility and the fundamentals of being human.
A dependent is like a parent, someone who needs to take responsibility of another to support and tech them. In these texts, the characters of Frankenstein and Tyrell are expected by society to take on this role but don’t which leads to dire consequences. In both contexts of the texts,
The audience is able to acknowledge the monster’s feeling and experiences, to emphasise the problem that is occurring. The monster becomes ‘dependent on none and related to non’ due to Victors desertion. Although Victor ‘bore a hell within [him], which nothing [can] extinguish’ he still took no responsibility in the beginning. Shelley is reflective of the context of the industrial revolution. This revolution involved machines taking over daily tasks in the workplace and placed less responsibility on the employees. Blade Runner also involves Tyrell, being the creator, rejecting and alienating his creations, in particular Roy. Tyrell takes succession in his is power of creating these replicants but is blind to the consequences. Symbolic use of Tyrell’s big glasses suggests he has lost sight of his responsibility; he is having difficulty seeing it. Roy questions Tyrell about the problems he faces, he ‘wants more life’, which Tyrell cannot answer for leaving him angry, resulting in Tyrell’s death. Tyrell’s inability to support his
Despite different contexts, they both challenge socially accreted human traits of their time. This idea is explored through the characters of Tyrell and Victor, the individuals living in society. In Frankenstein, the brutality of Victor as he swears vengeance on the monster, becomes the beginning of his downfall. As he lets Justine and Elizabeth die, along with many others, the audience questions how he could let this happen. Shelley uses a Walton as a foil to Victor to highlight the various features different between them, especially Victor’s flaws. As we refer to Victor’s creation as the ‘monster’, he starts to more of a human than Victor. The monster makes an ultimatum out of desperation because he feels ‘solitary and abhorred’ and the only rational option is a companion, he makes a plea to Victor to ‘create a female for [him], with whom [he] can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for [his] being’. This is imperative language emphasises the loving qualities the creation has grown compared to Victor who is lacking. Shelley is reflective of the gothic genre, popular at the time of writing; she makes reference to much bloody murders and foreboding settings. In Blade Runner, Tyrell claims that is creations, the replicants are claimed as ‘more human than human’. Tyrell declares that ‘Commerce is [their] goal’, not the welfare of the replicants. In one of the last scenes, there is a