Blade Runner: The Cruellest Cut

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BLADE RUNNER The Cruellest Cut by Elaine Lennon Introduction - Genre Genre films are Hollywood's lifeblood: they define American cinema as we know it. These are standardised films made to type engendering a disciplined framework not only in an aesthetic sense for filmmakers but also (and crucially in an industry renowned for its flops as well as its hits) economically, guaranteeing repeat success with the mass audience. A genre film (like any other kind of film) has a social and cultural function, sometimes aligned with the myths of the past, perhaps even reducing them in importance. The Great Narratives of the West (typically Judaeo-Christian belief systems) are now rivalled in the cathedrals of celluloid that we call the multiplexes. It could be claimed that generic forms transmit ideological precepts, be they social, political or whatever, either imposing values or questioning pre-existent ideas. Whether or not this is the case, film is a participatory and collective experience, reflecting ideals, expressing tensions and conflicts and celebrating their resolutions onscreen, however temporary or unreal, in “the guise of entertainment.” [1] BLADE RUNNER was released in 1982. It was a commercial narrative film and publicised as a science fiction thriller. Made for the then enormous amount of $27 million, it swiftly became a cult film, revised by its director (former adman Ridley Scott) in 1993 with that (occasionally dread) proviso, ‘The Director's Cut.’ [2] A film fantasy, it is set in a future metropolis where it is almost impossible to tell real people from ersatz humans. The plot is summarised as follows: Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckard, an ex-‘blade runner’(detective/android killer) who is coerced into tracking down a group of cyborgs, known as ‘replicants,’ who have mutinied on a space

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