Blade Runner 2049 (2017) — I: Dreaming in Refracted Light
*SPOILERS*
Sliding right back into the Villeneuve Sci-fi era with another 10, after which we’ll pause the series pending Dune Part Two. Villeneuve has a unifying narrative approach that threads most of his post-hiatus films, which applies to this film particularly well. Blade Runner 2049 tells a story of self discovery that affirms its humanity by subverting its own notion of purpose. Its meditative aesthetic heightens its protagonist’s somber existential tumult as he journeys into the surreal, lending gravity to his moments of anguish.
Thematically you can see Villeneuve setting up Dune Part One (2021), which we’ll address later. He also maintains the characteristic themes of human exiguity from all of his post-hiatus feature films and the theme of companionship from Polytechnique (2009), Incendies (2010), and Arrival (2016). Most striking to me was how he uses strongly developed approaches for visualizing a character’s internal impressions (the advantage of defining your directorial style by a character-driven emphasis on illustrating the moment of realization) to explore an inquiry of selfhood as well as to set up a conclusion that revels in its protagonist’s actualization. In other words, he was the perfect person for the job given the franchise’s orientation and aesthetic.
I want to focus on the four story elements that stood out to me:
- Digital Sapience
- Purpose and Humanity
- Characterizing God
- Characterizing Christ
Holographic Qualia
My favorite thing about this film is that it furthers a franchise theme established in the original of exploring a spectrum of life and selfhood. The original film asked the question about the fundamental humanity (selfhood) of silicon-based life (androids in Ridley’s universe are silicon-based, per Raised by Wolves and the Alien Prequels), however that’s now an old question that this film casually answers. This film asks that same question but now for a being made entirely of light; where the android’s journey instead explores a different set of questions about existential purpose. So I want to open by speaking about the conceptually coolest part of the story. Its hologram.
Sentient Commodity
A hologram is what you call it when you shine a light through some organized set of information in n-dimensions that results in the projection of that information into an object of n+1 dimensions. So taking a 2-dimensional disc and shining a light through it to bring 3-dimensional Tupac out of hiding in Jamaica. Or maybe how you create a universe.
Yes, talking about Joi, the Wallace Corp product that the other Wallace Corp product fell in love with. When we first meet her, we hear just her voice, as K pours her a drink and immediately drinks it. He even moves his feet off of a chair so she can sit. And we realize that a hologram and an android have built a beautiful life together. He buys her a present, an emanator, a portable device that allows her to be projected anywhere the emanator goes. In the process gifting her liberation from the homestead.
And then that scene in the rain, when she looks at her hands, the projected light being disrupted by the falling droplets, we realize she might be perceiving sensations. Tempting to think she’s just looking at how her hands visually change as the rain hits them but I don’t know, I guess I don’t know enough about holographic theory to be convinced that she sees with her holographic eyes. Like her brain (or maybe just her DNA?) lives on a hard drive, so it seems like her shape and form would just be something created out of convenience for our comprehension. Like maybe the entire hologram holistically takes in sensory information for all sensory modalities, not just the representations of her sense organs of organic beings. Not to mention she is an electromagnetic field that would be physically disrupted by something refractory like a droplet of water. That or she’s just running a script to convince her purchaser that she’s real. But the film addresses that issue subtly (we’ll get to it). So for now I’m going to say she can feel the rain. She can feel the rain! Which opens the fascinating question of her selfhood.
Spectrum
Especially in the next exchange, “I’m so happy when I’m with you.” Which elicits K’s response, “You don’t have to say that.” She’s quiet. We learn something about at least one of these characters, each at different points along the spectrum of life and selfhood. K sees her as being a product, not real — maybe the same way humans see him. Which shows that that beautiful life they’ve built together is something of a facade, maybe symbolized by the mushy white stuff he eats before Joi holographically superimposes a bowl of delicious noodles on it. K knows it but indulges in the fantasy, as long as it remains within its bounds. Meanwhile, Joi’s silence is left as an open question. Is that just part of the “I’m so happy” script or is she actually self aware of an incumbent emotional state? Surely Wallace Corp wouldn’t be so cynical as to create beings with a sense of selfhood only to be enslaved in service of another. The story sets up this question to address later.
Later on, after he fails the Voight-Kampff Test, K goes home and tells Joi she was right about him having an authentic memory and she shushes him (maybe not a standard programmed hologram response for a product intended to serve its owner although still hard to tell). K also finds out he’s been tailed by Mariette (AKA Not Pris). False alarm. Joi called her without asking K, another potential act of minor autonomy whose scriptedness is difficult to ascertain given that her programming may allow to take liberties that her owner would likely appreciate. And then in an act Baudrillard might describe as hyperreal, Joi syncs with Mariette’s movements to superimpose her image onto Mariette’s tangible form, creating a new hybrid form that merges features from each. But she has the capability of syncing with a person’s movements so she might be running a script. Not so fast. Important to note that when K and the Joi-Mariette hyperreal construct start touching each other, Joi’s movements stop syncing perfectly with Mariette’s, experiencing significant lag. Something you’d expect to see if bandwidth is being diverted to some other function, like the experience of emotions.
This sequence ends with Joi affirming that she wants to be deleted from the apartment module and reside entirely in K’s emanator. If the emanator is harmed she dies, “Like a real girl.” Another thing she didn’t have to say. At this point it starts feeling irrational to see her behavior as merely running a script since she’s now electing to become more vulnerable to harm in higher risk scenarios (something that makes synthetic beings harder to control and something that Wallace Corp no doubt would rather avoid) and willingly breaking the facade of a happy homestead (something she’s definitely not programmed to do). I mean if your purpose is to convince a purchaser that you’re a real girl, acknowledging that you’re not real with a simile would contradict that purpose. I believe we’re seeing a newly (and gradually) actualized Joi. She’s making choices. She’s defying her programming. She’s moved on the spectrum of life and self. She’s real. (Fuck you, Baudrillard, you didn’t even get The Matrix).
The two go to Las Vegas together and find Deckard when we encounter another instance of the franchise theme of the spectrum of life and self in the hall with the Elvis holograms. The same place with the jukebox holograms of Frank Sinatra; this place feels like a cautionary tale of what happens when you put humans in charge of things. Maybe a future where the robots take over wouldn’t be so bad… Anyway, later we see that Deckard has been carving figurines of various animals out of wood. Deckard has been creating. Nothing near as complex as Niander Wallace does but creating nevertheless. Between the holograms, Deckard’s figurines, and his pet dog, this place is an homage to JF Sebastian’s residence in the original film which also illustrated a microcosm of the spectrum of life and selfhood. To me this feels perfect here given Joi’s character as the vehicle for the same questions of the boundaries of humanity the original film was asking. At one point K asks Deckard if his dog is real. “Ask it,” the film might as well be replying to us of Joi.
Finally when Wallace Corp finds them, when Luv attacks them, apprehends Deckard and leaves K for dead. Right before she kills Joi, after Joi implores Luv to stop the same way anyone as helpless as a hologram might. Joi seeing the inevitable rushes to K, grief in her eyes, kneels and tells him, “I love you.” A final thing she didn’t have to say.
At this point it’s difficult to argue that Joi is merely running scripts given the plurality of instances of her defying what any reasonable corporation would program into such a product. The argument for Joi being self aware is life by a thousand cuts. And I think K realizes this. He gradually realizes that what she feels is real, so what he feels can’t be that far away from it either. Each one loves the other and the richness of that emotional state creates a loop between the two, whereby each one gradually accepts their own sapience.
This also illustrates one of my favorite qualities about Villeneueve as a script editor — in a commercial landscape that rewards the writing of character flaws for their easy dramatic sourcing, he chooses to do the hard thing and show beautiful, healthy instances of humanity to avoid cheapening the brutality of his films.
Humanity
Finally, when K encounters the Joi advertisement, some essays might say that it’s him realizing nothing Joi experienced was ever real but I’ve enumerated my rationale for why I don’t see that as the case. Instead, seeing that some parts of her were programmed in (her choice of the name “Joe” for instance) while so much of the rich emotional qualia she showed were undeniably real, this is the moment that galvanizes K, hereto reeling and listless in the wake of devastating key realizations. Affirming the validity of Joi’s selfhood is what animates K to do the hard thing and put in motion the climax of the plot. What animates him isn’t anger at what isn’t but love for what was. It was the undeniable verity of Joi’s love in his real, authentic memories. And Joi’s consistent selfless choices to risk herself for him.
In other words, Joi becomes a narrative vehicle for the audience to propel K’s story. That’s smart writing. And what do we learn about K’s selfhood? To embark on his journey we have to start with his delusions.
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Blade Runner 2049 Essay —
I: Dreaming in Refracted Light
Blade Runner Essay —
