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Originally Posted by tore
...but Blade Runner contains so many beautiful details I had not noticed before which now popped out, such as the details of the city models or the apartments of Sebastian or Deckard.
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So true! "Blade Runner" has a memorable, dark ambiance of damp, cluttered decay mixed with advanced technology enabling humanity to create genetically engineered beings.
Since people in the real world have already made genetically engineered animals, the issues raised in the movie (set in 2017) aren't *too* far beyond ethical questions being debated now.
For example,
genetically engineered salmon raise alarm because they grow twice as fast as regular salmon, which might allow them to out-compete regular salmon if they escape. Similarly, the "replicants" in the movie scare humans because the replicants are better than us, with our greater genetic limitations.
The movie asks, implicitly, what are the limits that humans should impose on themselves when deciding how they manipulate and treat other beings as individuals and as groups? Eventually, the ability of humans to manipulate their environment and other animals can end up damaging humanity and the rest of the world...not to mention the animals themselves.
Sometimes, Tore, it seems to me that people just take actions to make money and fulfill pleasurable desires without considering long-term negative effects on humanity and the rest of the beings here. Most genetically engineered organisms, for example, are created to compensate for bigger (human-created) problems that are the *real* ones humanity should solve: too much exploitation of the natural environment such as through over-fishing; great disparities in wealth and power among people, leaving billions in poverty; global warming (which relates to the first two problems).
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Originally Posted by Zaqarbal
OMG, Blade Runner! One of the movies with more substance ever. BTW, have you seen this thread's tag? " Deep philosophical sh*t". That's just what I was thinking about (I mean, seriously) right now. That film is so thought-provoking!!! 
Just to begin with: A priori, what main analogy between animals and replicants the film draws? I think that's clear: they both are NOT conscious of their own finiteness. That is, they don't know that they are going to die, sooner or later. However, we finally see that it wasn't true. Replicants are aware of their own death, and they're worried about it. And that makes them human. They are even " more humane that humans" themselves. Here lies an amazingly beautiful poetic paradox: the awareness of Death leads to the awareness of Life. |
Yes, it is a thought-provoking movie and this thread contains some deep philosphical shi*t!
I don't believe, though, that the awareness of death leads to the awareness of life, Zaqarbal. I see much evidence that animals, like human children, can be very aware of their own life and experiences without awareness that death awaits them. They can express fear and have a sense of danger without knowing about death.
When I was a child, for example, I first began to realize when I was 13 years old that I, and everyone I knew, would die, truly die, eventually. Yet before I was 13, I experienced life just as vividly and was full of emotions and thoughts. Knowledge of death just led to greater fears and nostalgia, a sense of impending doom, and the knowledge that loss was a definite in my future.
I mention this just in case someone is going to make the bogus claim that "animals don't know they are going to die; therefore, they aren't aware that they are alive; therefore, we can do with them what we will."
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Originally Posted by Il Duce
actually, the other day, i was watching a Korean movie about abattoirs
the slaughter of the cow was quite grisly
and i was a bit unsettled and thought "so that's how my favourite meat gets done"
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This reminds me of how in 2003 during the North Korean famine caused by the government using food and donations to feed government workers and the military while allowing the populace to starve, reports came in that people were killing children and selling them as meat:
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Famine-struck N Koreans 'eating children' - Telegraph
Cannibalism is increasing in North Korea following another poor harvest and a big cut in international food aid, according to refugees who have fled the stricken country.
Aid agencies are alarmed by refugees' reports that children have been killed and corpses cut up by people desperate for food. Requests by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to be allowed access to "farmers' markets", where human meat is said to be traded, have been turned down by Pyongyang, citing "security reasons".
Anyone caught selling human meat faces execution, but in a report compiled by the North Korean Refugees Assistance Fund (NKRAF), one refugee said: "Pieces of 'special' meat are displayed on straw mats for sale. People know where they came from, but they don't talk about it.
Another witness, named only as Lee, 54, said he feared that his missing grandsons, aged eight and 11, had been killed for food. As he searched widely for them, they boys' friends said they had vanished near a market.
Mr. Lee said police who raided a nearby restaurant found body parts. The business's owners were shot.
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