Both 1990’s Hardware and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 invoke the Bible: from the apocalyptic 13th Chapter of the book of Mark, which declares Hardware’s evil robot’s mission, to the evil industrialist Wallace and his obsession with his role as a creator of ‘angels’, and the ‘death’ of the mysterious twin by “Galatians Syndrome” in Blade Runner 2049. Both films represent post-human versions of the Messianic story central to the New Testament—from a Christmas Day edict that makes procreation illegal, to K’s search for the child of a miraculous birth.
Both films, additionally, center these discourses on the female body, as a cipher for fertility and identity: Jill creates art and desire (though some malign), while K’s assistant/servant/slave Joi functions as a figure of sexualized (and infertile) desire that draws K toward his own quest for subjectivity (of course, at the cost of her own), and the briefly reincarnated Rachael demonstrates the limitations of scientific ‘reproduction’.
Almost thirty years separate these two films, and this paper will seek to explore the differences that grew in that span on the figuration of the female body, male subjectivity, and science fiction’s seeming need to continue to ground itself not only in contests over the bodies of women, but as well why it feels the need to reach toward the primal mythos of religion to create a posthuman reality.
About the presenterAJ DeLong
AJ Delong is a Professor of English at Suffolk County Community College. She completed her graduate work in 2003, with a PhD in Medieval Crusader literature and gender. She has a lifelong interest in science fiction, fantasy, and war movies.