Frankenstein and Blade Runner
Blade Runner’s Eldon Tyrell proclaims the company’s motto as ‘more human than human’. How has the notion of humanity been explored in Frankenstein and Blade Runner?
Thesis: The nature of humanity is progression, when we progress too far we play God and lose basic traits of humanity.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein draws on concerns from the romantics era to illustrate the instinctive and greedy appetite for progression that is part of the nature of humanity. Furthermore Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner touches on Shelley’s notions of danger in human enterprise and the uncontrollable drive of scientific evolution. These texts critically inquire into the follies of greed, and moral corruption. Despite there being over 150 years between their compositions these texts similarly represent the consequences of playing God, and in turn the loss of humanity that goes with it. The common thematic concerns of these texts are explored through the use of camera angles, imagery, tone and metaphor.
Both Frankenstein and Blade Runner portray how the ambition to break through human limitations in an act to play God is bound to result in failure. The religious imagery used when Frankenstein grants the “spark of life” upon the Creature in his effort to “pour a torrent of light into our dark world” helps us come to the conclusion that the Creature is the very embodiment of the monstrosity that humans are capable of creating. The metaphor of light in, “until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me” conveys Victor’s instinctive awakening to the possibility of creating a perfect being impervious to diseases. Such an unmentionable act trespasses the realm of the godlike providence, signifying the beginning of Frankenstein’s blindness. He is quick to realise that he has created a monster, as shown by the regretful tone in, “I beheld the wretch – the miserable monster whom I had created.” This depicts that untamed human ambition can lead to the inadvertent creation of
Thesis: The nature of humanity is progression, when we progress too far we play God and lose basic traits of humanity.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein draws on concerns from the romantics era to illustrate the instinctive and greedy appetite for progression that is part of the nature of humanity. Furthermore Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner touches on Shelley’s notions of danger in human enterprise and the uncontrollable drive of scientific evolution. These texts critically inquire into the follies of greed, and moral corruption. Despite there being over 150 years between their compositions these texts similarly represent the consequences of playing God, and in turn the loss of humanity that goes with it. The common thematic concerns of these texts are explored through the use of camera angles, imagery, tone and metaphor.
Both Frankenstein and Blade Runner portray how the ambition to break through human limitations in an act to play God is bound to result in failure. The religious imagery used when Frankenstein grants the “spark of life” upon the Creature in his effort to “pour a torrent of light into our dark world” helps us come to the conclusion that the Creature is the very embodiment of the monstrosity that humans are capable of creating. The metaphor of light in, “until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me” conveys Victor’s instinctive awakening to the possibility of creating a perfect being impervious to diseases. Such an unmentionable act trespasses the realm of the godlike providence, signifying the beginning of Frankenstein’s blindness. He is quick to realise that he has created a monster, as shown by the regretful tone in, “I beheld the wretch – the miserable monster whom I had created.” This depicts that untamed human ambition can lead to the inadvertent creation of