Blade Runner and the 'postmodern condition'

Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 9:33 pm

Research homepage
Blade Runner and the 'postmodern condition'
by Crispin Thurlow

http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/research/bladerunner.html#sectiona

The sample of the beginning:

Blade Runner hold[s] up to us, as in a mirror, many of the essential features of the condition of postmodernity (Harvey, 1989b, p.323).

In responding to a statement such as Harvey's, one is faced with the daunting task of entering into and exploring a wide and complex range of discourses that criss-cross, intersect and imbricate themselves, and, in so doing, create the two principle discourse â€˜spacesâ€™ known as postmodernity and postmodernism. Together, as what I would call the Great Postmodern Discourse (GPD), they constitute one of the most significant of contemporary mythologies (Ferguson, 1992). By this it is meant that the GPD has become the symbolic gravitational centre for a large constellation of ideas and beliefs about social history, politics, economics, culture and communication. This overarching set of ideas, in turn, structures our understanding of changes that are taking place around us. Within the GPD, the terms postmodernity (and postmodern) are commonly understood to account for the social, political and economic dimension of these changes, whereas postmodernism (and postmodernist) are used instead to describe concomitant cultural changes (Lyon, 1994). Although this distinction may serve the demands of analytic convenience, the theoretical and political relationship between the two terms is more one of intricate, dialectical interdependence.