When these memories slip and the replicant realizes their falsity, it’s because something has cracked in the memory’s internal consistency and it strays too far from verisimilitude.īut so it is with writing. The memories are only successful when they are specific, and because of that specificity, they have the power to give the replicants the illusion of a history and a sense of self-even if they’re false memories (and the ethics of giving creatures who think they're human fake memories is too big for the purview of this short blog), these memories gives their lives meaning. In the Blade Runner universe, memories are used to keep replicants docile. Stelline notes (I’m paraphrasing) that the best memories, the ones that really make the replicants believe that they are human, are the most specific ones. Stelline’s process visually resembles a kind of technological sorcery as she uses a cylindrical device to create memories from nothing, but it is also something akin to the process of writing. It might seem strange to begin a blog on writing center pedagogy with a reflection about a sequel to a thirty-five year old science fiction film, but I was struck by the film’s treatment of how memory is translated into something tangible and the effects of that tangibility on the shaping of perception. To escape the loneliness of her existence, she lives in a world of her own imagination and then imparts that imagination to the replicants. Stelline designs a memory of a birthday party, conjuring candles and children and a table before K’s eyes and perfecting each child’s gleeful expression as they blow out the candles.

In her first scene, trapped behind a wall of glass to preserve her precarious health, the doctor lovingly and painstakingly manipulates a perfectly rendered image of a fly in a jungle, contracting and elongating its eyes, adding new antennae, and shrinking it down to the right size. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri), a young woman who designs memory implants for “replicants”-bioengineered human beings originally designed to serve as workers in off-world space colonies. There’s a moment in Denis Villenueve’s new film Blade Runner 2049 that finds protagonist K (Ryan Gosling) meeting Dr. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” – Roy Batty, Blade Runner (1982) I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. “I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

The why of K’s rebellion is a worthwhile question in terms of how he’s different from other newer model replicants, but it’s not a question that defines him.SPOILER WARNING: This post contains mild spoilers for the new film Blade Runner 2049. It’s possible that Ana’s real memories altered his programming in some way that allowed him to lie to his superiors and forge his own path. Granted, there are still some questions, like why K gains the ability to rebel if he’s not a hybrid and not an older model. Without that understanding, K’s actions are motivated by the plot, but nothing internal. When K brings Joi with him and then loses her, he understands the weight of loss and love that Deckard has for Ana. While the Wallace corporation wants love to be nothing more than just another commodity they can sell, the relationship between K and Joi shows how love, and by proxy, humanity, can blossom anywhere even if the status quo would like to build a wall between humans and replicants.

On the one hand, you could cut out all of the Joi stuff and the plot would be largely the same, but that love story-a story between a hologram and a replicant-is what gives weight to K’s actions. For K, realizing he’s not a replicant but a hybrid or next stage evolution is traumatic.Īll of this is bolstered by K’s relationship with Joi. For a human, realizing he or she might be a replicant would be traumatizing. When he realizes that his memories might be real and not implants, his calm resolve shatters, and Villeneuve turns the revelation on its head. He dutifully follows orders, “retires” older model replicants, and then goes home to his holographic girlfriend, Joi ( Ana de Armas).Įventually, K’s investigation leads him to believe that the memories he thought were implants were actually real and that he’s the lost son of replicant Rachel ( Sean Young) and the possibly-a-replicant Rick Deckard ( Harrison Ford). He’s called “Skinner” and “Skinjob” by his peers and neighbors, and despite being an outcast, he seems fairly at peace with his existence. He’s a newer model replicant that always obeys, and what’s more, K knows he’s a replicant. His full “name” is KD9-3.7, and he’s a replicant. A major reveal that’s been kept out of the marketing and (if critics acquiesced to director Denis Villeneuve’s request) reviews is that while Ryan Gosling’s character has officially been referred to as “K”, that’s a nickname.

Carla juri ana stelline