Labor Day

Eve Moran
Eve Moran
Sep 6, 2018 · 3 min read

You’re watching television.

I have never read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I was scanning through an article on Blade Runner last week. One sentence jumped out at me, because it told me how Rachael failed her Voight-Kampff. It’s because she cared too much for oysters.

How do we decide who deserves our empathy?

The escaped Nexxus Six models are all designed for jobs that kill or hurt human beings. Roy Batty is a combat model. In the novel, it is made clear that he escaped slavery on Mars. Leon Kowalski also escaped from a military base. Pris Stratton was “your basic pleasure model”. Zhora Salome was in a “kick murder squad”. These are intimate jobs, performed by throwaway people.

Blade Runner is about the end of unions and worker rebellions. When you only live for 4 years it’s hard to build and lead a resistance. When you lack any contact with family it is hard to grow deep roots. It’s disappointing to see those ideas hinted at, but not seen, in a movie where sleek, black police cars fly past enormous female torsos.

Even so, it’s painful to note that there is only one, live human woman in the whole thing.

The day I started this drawing, my children were watching an episode of Yo-kai Watch. In this episode, a character is trapped in prison. For Christmas, the prisoners are allowed to choose a gift from a selection of objects. One is a teddy bear. Our main character chooses the bear. He describes growing attached to the bear over time and explains how he draws strength from his relationship with the toy. Then, one day, the toy speaks. Their relationship is real. Eventually the toy moves by itself. The two plan an escape, involving a route through a complicated machine, full of moving hazards that will require great precision. Terrified, they stand at the edge of this route, and our main character is unable to move. The bear volunteers to go, moved by his faith in the plan and his friend. He leaps forward and is immediately caught in some gears and destroyed.

Our character eventually reveals that the bear never really spoke or moved on his own and all of his memories are just his own mind, trying to create a more heroic narrative for his own existence.

20 minutes after the end of this program, after lunch, my son burst into tears over the bear.

Eve Moran

Written by

Eve Moran

A Texan living in California. 2 kids, 2 cats, 4 chickens and a strong suspicion that most people are good.

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