Blade Runner And Frankenstein

Blade Runner And Frankenstein

Good Morning/Afternoon Mr Magee and class. The two texts we have been studying over the past term, Blade Runner and Frankenstein, both reflect the changing values and perspectives of their times. The context of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is of social and philosophical alteration.   The Romantic movement of the 19th Century was a direct reaction to the “Age of Reason” which proposed a new way of thinking about the individual and his or her relationship to society. On the contrary in the context of Blade Runner Ridley Scott’s impetus stems from the contextual climate of the 1980’s where the emphasis is on global economy, and where commerce and economics run the world, not religion. The composers of the two texts Blade runner and Frankenstein by means of, their differing contexts, pose questions concerning humanity through the medium of the exploration of the values of Alienation & Corruption, and Human Mortality. This questioning of humanity is inherent in both texts, as Mary Shelley and Ridley Scott are reflecting upon the social, political and cultural conditions of their time to shape conclusions of the way they believe our world is changing, altering or heading to.

Imminent in both texts is the value of Alienation and Corruption. Shelley portrays the value of corruption as the outcome of alienation from society, and the questions of human development stem from Shelley’s belief that the corruption of humanity is consequently a result of the human quest for knowledge. This is evidently expressed in the segment of the novel in which Frankenstein encounters the creature in the desolate ice cave, in which the setting itself is symbolic of alienation, “vast mists…opposite mountains, whose summits were hid in the uniform cloud...melancholy impression” and “the field of ice…bare perpendicular rock...icy and glittering peaks.” This symbolic use of nature serves as an outward manifestation of the characters inner state in relation to...