ABSTRACT
The year is 2019, and the place is Los Angeles, an environmentally degraded, postnuclear war space of ominous dark rain that never seems to stop. Those few who still inhabit LA (most have fled to the “off world,” a human colony on Mars) live in a chaotic, violent, inhumane world. The poor and the homeless roam the streets, fearful of others and of the all-seeing, all-pervasive police in their hovercrafts, while other people make homes for themselves in abandoned, run-down buildings. The workforce, meanwhile, has become more racialized, with Chinese assigned the role of street vendors. This is the dystopian future represented in one of the most writtenabout film of the past two decades, Blade Runner (1982). Re-released in 1990 in a somewhat reedited form, director Ridley Scott’s film adaptation of Philip K.Dick’s science fiction novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? raises troubling questions about where we are headed as a culture, and about the very real possibility that the promises of democratic public life may become hollow and meaningless in the decades ahead if certain tendencies continue. The film, to this extent, reflects the growing sentiment among many that the promise of democracy, of a better, more humane, equitable, and freer future that lies ahead, always has been a false promise.
