On Dick, Film, and PhilosophyDr. Dennis M. Weiss

York College of Pennsylvania

“I’m supposed to act like they are not here. Assuming there’s a ‘they’ at all. It may just be my imagination. Whatever it is that’s watching, it’s not human, unlike little dark-eyed Donna. It doesn’t ever blink. What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can’t any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone’s sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do then I’m cursed and cursed again. And we’ll only wind up dead this way knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”

—Bob Arctor, “A Scanner Darkly”

Blade Runner’s first main argument1. Blade Runner contributes to longstanding debates in philosophy of mind over the status of the

soul/mind as distinct from the body by demonstrating and dramatizing the philosophical claim that our attribution of a mind to a given creature is a response to the behavioural repertoire with which their particular embodiment endows them (34).

2. Unfolding throughout the film is a counter-proposal for attaining humanity that focuses on the role of acknowledgment. One’s humanity is established in the recognition of the humanity of others, as in Deckard’s recognizing the humanity of both Rachel and Roy Baty (36 – 37).

3. Mulhall’s reading of Blade Runner very clearly indicates a second philosophical argument he sees at the core of the film. As he writes, “To show that Roy Baty misconceives this quest as one for more life—as if a replicant might become human by living longer—is the goal of the film” (33)

4. This point is closely connected to an even deeper philosophical claim Mulhall sees the film making, as it addresses what it means to live an authentic human life. Mulhall argues that Roy Baty comes to learn over the course of the film, as does Deckard, and presumably as do we, that the value or worth of life is determined not by its length but by the intensity with which he experiences each moment of it—“in other words by its manifestation of a specific attitude towards the temporality of his own existence” (40). This allows Roy to see “that the true significance or point of the moments which make up one’s life should be generated from within that life rather than from a reliance upon external guarantors” (41).

Mulhall’s missing Dick1. Dick is certainly a towering figure in the realm where philosophy, literature, and science

fiction intersect, and one gains some easy traction when connecting philosophy to film via Dick’s science fiction, as might be implicitly recognized by Mulhall’s extended treatment of Blade Runner and the centrality of it to his argument.

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2. The issues that were central to Dick and which are central in many of the films based on his works are very similar to the issues that Mulhall tackles: the human condition, the impact of technology on human flourishing, the status of the self, the problem of finitude and human embodiment, the nature of being, and the question of authenticity.

3. The sheer fact of the number of movies that have been made based on his works, likely more than any other 20th century science fiction writer, and the collective impact of these films. As Wired Magazine noted in a recent article on Dick’s impact in Hollywood: “Dick's anxious surrealism all but defines contemporary Hollywood science fiction and spills over into other kinds of movies as well. His influence is pervasive in The Matrix and its sequels, which present the world we know as nothing more than an information grid; Dick articulated the concept in a 1977 speech in which he posited the existence of multiple realities overlapping the "matrix world" that most of us experience. Vanilla Sky, with its dizzying shifts between fantasy and fact, likewise ventures into a Dickian warp zone, as does Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor, and David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. Memento reprises Dick's memory obsession by focusing on a man whose attempts to avenge his wife's murder are complicated by his inability to remember anything. In The Truman Show, Jim Carrey discovers the life he's living is an illusion, an idea Dick developed in his 1959 novel Time Out of Joint. Next year, Carrey and Kate Winslet will play a couple who have their memories of each other erased in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Memory, paranoia, alternate realities: Dick's themes are everywhere.”

4. While it would take some significant work to support the following claim, I think it is not too much of a stretch to claim that many of the films based on Dick’s work are self-reflective in the manner that Mulhall demands of films that are philosophical, that Dick’s work lends itself to films which, following Mulhall, reflect upon aspects of the nature of film. I will try and support this claim in regard to A Scanner Darkly.

5. Looking at the films based on Dick’s work raises interesting questions about what constitutes a film series. Mulhall seems drawn to films that raise questions about the nature of a series (the Alien Quadrilogy and the Mission Impossible series) and here we have the interesting case of a series constituted by virtue of being adaptations from a single author. Again, in a moment I hope to address this issue in regard to A Scanner Darkly.

David Edelstein: “Philip K. Dick's Mind-Bending, Film-Inspiring Journeys”June 16, 2002, NY Times

Many people regard the 1982 ''Blade Runner,'' directed by Ridley Scott, as a masterpiece, and Dick, who saw the film shortly before he died, admired its elaborate vision of a corroded future cityscape. But there is no getting around the fact that the movie misses almost entirely the psychological complexity of its source, Dick's 1968 novel ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,'' one of his most tantalizing explorations of the human capacity for empathy.

The bleary gumshoe hero of the film (played by Harrison Ford) has little connection to the book's unhappily married drudge, who mechanically executes ''replicants'' as a means to afford animals (now rare and expensive) for display in his front yard. The movie only fleetingly touches on one of Dick's most beloved motifs: the way humans are becoming increasingly mechanical while machines are evolving to meet them halfway. Dick envisioned scenarios in which the computers would bleed and people rust -- a notion that would be evoked more by Mr. Spielberg in ''A.I.'' (2001) than in ''Minority Report.''

Blade Runner and A Scanner Darkly1. Merely on the surface level and recognizing that Mulhall is predisposed to think in terms of

series and is drawn to directors, it is interesting to think about the contrast between the typical

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Ridley Scott film (Thelma and Louise, G. I. Jane, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, American Gangser) and the typical Richard Linklater film (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, Waking Life).

2. In contrast to Blade Runner and most other films based on Dick’s works, A Scanner Darkly is the most authentic to the novel (and so we can perhaps more comfortably allow the movie to speak for the author), a novel thought to be the most autobiographical of Dick’s works, and interestingly Linklater foregrounds the relationship of the film to its author. Early in the film, Dick’s physiognomy appears as part of the scramble suit and the film closes with the “Author’s Note” from the novel, drawing clear connections to biographical details of Dick’s life. Linklater early on involved Dick’s daughters, who were often present on the set, and who remarked upon the authenticity of some of those sets, especially the suburban Orange County home where much of the action of the film takes place. It is as if the film wants to keep the author in front of us and in this respect runs counter to the other films based on Dick’s works.

3. A Scanner Darkly similarly subverts the heroic central character of the typical “Hollywood-ized” Dick film by taking Neo, the savior of the human race, and, with a nod back to one of Keanu Reeves’ founding roles as Ted Logan in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, placing him in the role of Bob Arctor, described in the film as the ultimate everyman, a constantly shifting vague blur in a scramble suit, a fractured and flawed character addicted to Substance D and subjected to having spy on himself, an action which further exacerbates his already tenuous hold on reality. Here too A Scanner Darkly aligns itself with its originary text, identifying not with the straights but with the freaks and losers that populated both Dick’s life and his novels. And indeed A Scanner Darkly’s cast reads like a list of stoners and losers: Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr. (although his star has recently been rehabilitated in an action-hero role—although not without more than a twist of irony and self-deprecation). A Scanner Darkly acknowledges the humanity of its author and its central character by refusing to rewrite that character into the typical Hollywood action hero who triumphs over technology by sheer dint of his humanity. Indeed transforming Neo into Bob Arctor (the film literally draws over, or rotoscopes, Keanu Reeves, subjecting him to layers of digital, that is technological, transformation) is one obvious step toward questioning that now standard trope in Hollywood science fiction film.

4. These thoughts are further underscored by the interesting parallels and contrasts between Deckard and Bob Arctor. Of course they are both law men, tasked with protecting society from external threats (replicants/Substance D) produced by shadowy organizations (Tyrell Corporation/New Path). They both have a complicated relationship to their professions, are matched with a nemesis whose own humanity is in doubt (Roy Batty/James Barris), and pursue a female whose self-identity is itself in question (Rachel/Donna). While the action of A Scanner Darkly shifts from the urban realm of Los Angeles in Blade Runner to the suburban realm of Anaheim and Orange County, both characters end up breaking through to a more “natural” realm. In the theatrical release of Blade Runner, however, that natural realm is portrayed as an Edenic outside to the nightmarish cityscape, while Bob Arctor, identified as Bruce in the final scenes of the film, ends up in a decidedly more ambiguous place, a corn field owned by New Path which serves as a cover for growing the little blue flowers that go into the manufacture of Substance D. Where Deckard escapes from the dark world that is the futuristic, noirish L.A., Bob Arctor willingly escapes from his sun-dappled suburban life into the dark world: “I hated my life, my house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change. Nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell ugly things and surprising things and sometimes little wondrous things spill out at me constantly and I can count on nothing.”

5. As Mulhall and others note, Blade Runner recounts the education of Deckard and his achievement of humanity. Over the course of the film, Deckard becomes more human and is

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finally offered some redemption in the figure of Rachel. Bob Arctor’s narrative path is decidedly different. A Scanner Darkly tells the story of his progressive de-humanization, the breakdown of his personality amidst the rampant use of drugs and technology. And Donna/Audrey doesn’t turn out to offer any redemption. Indeed, she is the agent behind his destruction, sacrificing his humanity, transforming him into something of an automaton, in order to bring down New Path. While Deckard becomes more human, Arctor becomes more mechanical.

6. Most importantly, however, is the contrast in Blade Runner and A Scanner Darkly over the role of film technology in our lives. Where Mulhall suggests that the gun, the Voight-Kampff machine, and in turn the camera need not deny humanity, that it all depends on how they are used, as we witness Bob Arctor’s fragmentation we understand that it’s not simply a matter of how the technology is used but how the technology may itself alter the cultural condition. Again, it’s worth contrasting Deckard’s relationship to the Voight-Kampff machine or his use of the Esper machine, both of which provide him with privileged sight, with Bob Arctor’s relationship to the holo-scanners he employs. Deckard’s technology remains in his control, is used by him to subject others to its gaze, has the power to confirm or deny the humanity of those on whom its gaze is turned, guarantees results for its user, and its power isn’t turned back on the person wielding it. Bob Arctor’s holo-scanners are seemingly everywhere and yet their powers remain highly ambiguous, especially as they are turned back on the individual who is ordered to use them to spy on himself. What the scanner sees is never clear; a scanner sees only darkly. And rather than confirming or denying the humanity of those who are scanned, it transforms that humanity by being implicated in the construction of Bob Arctor’s schizoid personality.

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