Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) belongs, according to Forest Pyle to the subgenre of sci-fi, which builds a story on a "distinctly dystopian tone and premise" and uses "the cyborg - hybrid of human and machine - its thematic and formal focus". But Blade Runner brings more than that. The film is multilayered, thrilling and unsettling, offering visual richness which contributes to the overall futuristic vision of not only a sprawling, technological metropolis, but of an empty, impersonal place. The issues, which I am going to be dealing with, sprang from the materials we read in our seminars in connection with postmodernism and Blade Runner. In addition, I will also be drawing upon Vivian Sobchak's Screening Space; mainly the chapter devoted to postfuturism.
In my essay, there are several topics, which I would like to discuss; first it's Giulliana Bruno's term pastiche and its different realisations that could be found in the film. Secondly, it's the problem of androids and to them connected questions of humanity, history and memory.
Guilliana Bruno in her essay called Ramble City: Postmodernism and Blade Runner explains the term of pastiche as follows; it's "intended as an aesthetic of quotations pushed to the limit; it is an incorporation of form, an imitation of dead styles deprived of any satirical impulse". Vivian Sobchak in her book defined the term as: "a nonhierarchial collection of heterogeneous forms and styles from a variety of heretofore distinguishable spaces and times". From the above quotes it is clear that the term pastiche suggests certain melange and collages of different and in its character opposite features which, when put together, create the characteristic picture of a post-futuristic town. All this is very much mirrored in the visual aspects of Blade Runner. As far as the space from the point of view of pastiche is concerned, the viewer from the firsts shots is faced with powerful but decrepit Los Angeles, in which architectural elements constitute the notion of the film's heterogeneity and ambiguity at the same time. As mutual contrasts stand out the building of the Tyrell Corporation and the one in which J.F. Sebastian owned a flat. The first one is a mix on its own because from the inside it very much resembles an Egyptian pyramid but from the outside one has a feeling of looking at a microchip.