I liked that the Replicants, not understanding empathy, didn’t really get why exposing Mercerism didn’t really matter that much, like ‘umm ahcstually Spider-Man is really CGI in this scene, ergo, with great power doesn’t come great resposibility! I am so smrat 🤓’. Like teenage edgelords, they might be intelligent (not as much as they think though) but they’re not mature. (Or atleast what I took from the couple of conversations regarding the two main entertainments is that most people understand on some level that they’re ‘tv/showbiz magic’ but don’t care because that’s not the point of it.) Because empathy isn’t something that needs to be dissected and defended on a logical level.
And that humans create the androids without empathy, but Deckard is then disgusted that they have no empathy. Maybe you should be disgusted with who creates them? For example my internet modem doesn’t just decide to be how it is, it’s pointless being angry at it. (Rather, it’s a conspiracy by the manufacturers to intentionally mess with me.)
And I guess the main point of the title that even replicas don’t dream of replicas but of the real things of value. So where is the line between replica and a real thing? If we create a baby and lobotomize it, does it stop being a real human?
And IMO Isidore didn’t sound so dumb as people make him out to be, but because he’s put into the role of being the deficient idiot, he is constantly belittled and his confidence destroyed so he’s ‘less’ than he could potentially be. I think anyone who’s worked in customer service would say he’s more in the second-lowest instead of the lowest quarter of IQ. But again, REAL humans do smart things, like buy things they can’t afford with their unstable income and cheat on their wives, instead of being STUPID.
E: and it was Isidore, not his so-much-above-him-smarterer real people superiors, who turns the awkward situation in the beginning into a sales opportunity. I mean, if chickenheads are so dumb, what does this make them?
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I finished this not too long ago, thanks for putting your thoughts down. I took a couple days to sit and think about it. Isidore was definitely the one I thought about. He’s shunned for being a chicken head, but he shows friendship, true empathy and a need for companionship. Whatever humanity has come to value sure doesn’t make them very human to me. Even Rachel’s reaction in a fit of pique is more human to me than most of Deckard’s behavior. And especially more than his wife. Some of those behaviors reminded me of people in Brave New World, and Isidore’s existence struck me kind of like the primitive or whatever his name was.
The replicants are trying to be human and the humans ard trying to stop.
It’s been a bit since I read it but the humans had the option to just decide (sort of) how to feel by taking pills and imersing themselves in VR Mercer. Deckard otoh is a cop who kills refugees, he isn’t allowed to have human sentiment.
You get plenty of people attaching human characteristics to objects. Just look at artwork of AI and see how many times it’s rendered as a pretty, young female (probably intentionally, but that’s a different topic). I think part of Deckard’s growth was losing his falsely attributed projections of humanity on things that looked human, though how they treated animals and insects mostly.
I think you’re totally right about Isidore. People like to put themselves into a box, and adopt that persona, because that’s easier than going against the grain (have any friends that didn’t go to college and others that did? They’ll act like they aren’t smart, while the only difference is what they learned were different things). I think he could have elevated himself, as he showed certain characteristics that were elevated, especially empathy, but he was comfortable being treated as an idiot, probably because that gave him friends.
My favorite part of the book (that wasn’t even in the movie) was the Mercerism portion. I think it perfectly expressed the difference between man and machine. Machines saw it as a clear taxation on efficiency, while humans saw it as an essential thing to gradually become something better than themselves. Machines want the static situation of being what they are in the most efficient way, while humans always want to change to something better, even if that process is long and requires sacrifice in the present. I think that’s what the electric sheep is referencing; these stupid things humans do to try to grasp as something better than us. And I think the answer is “no” androids do not.
It has been multiple decades since I read this book, definitely before the movie came out, so I’m not sure whether this is self-evident in the book or not, I just remember that the movie didn’t make the point as definitively as my read of the book did.
Zero doubt in my mind that Deckard is a replicant. IIRC, he gets philosophical with (or in analyzing) Rachel - how they have to have their back stories written for them, and those stories are reinforced and validated by all of the pictures that replicants keep. And then we have a scene where Deckard is in his own home reviewing his own photo collection.
Well, he supposedly tests as a human, which would make the other test results pretty ambiguous.