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- Title
Moviegoing and Golem-Making: The Case of Blade Runner.
- Authors
Wilson, Eric G.
- Abstract
The article presents the author's comments on the film "Blade Runner," by Ridley Scott. The film self-consciously explores the affinity between the matter of the android and the subject of the cinema. Scott's meditation on the conjunction between miracle and monstrosity reflects on the double binds that issue from the attempt to embody freedom in a determined pattern. This golem movie is an artistic depiction of a man's struggle to reconcile crass mechanical limitations with noble human affections. The golem originates in the Cabbalistic cosmogony of the Zohar, a thirteenth-century revision of Genesis. The Cabbalistic God is En-Sof, the Infinite, who manifests its depths in Sefiroth, numbers. Roy Batty, the primary golem-figure in Blade Runner, oscillates between Abulafia's miracle and Loews' monstrosity. On the one hand, Roy suggests the anthropos, a harmony of bodily grace and mental aptitude, matter and spirit. On the other hand, he intimates the fallen world, the split between determined body and yearning mind, fate and freedom. In Blade Runner, the Cabbalistic magus is Joe Tyrell, a technological genius whose corporation manufactures androids known as Replicants.
- Subjects
BLADE Runner (Film : 1982); SCOTT, Ridley, 1937-; MIND &; body; HUMANOID robots; HUMANOID robots in motion pictures; MOTION picture plots &; themes; DUALISM; MOTION pictures; MIND &; body in motion pictures
- Publication
Journal of Film & Video, 2005, Vol 57, Issue 3, p31
- ISSN
0742-4671
- Publication type
Article