Mere Data Makes a Man: Artificial Intelligences in Blade Runner 2049
Kingsley Marshall · Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2022
This chapter explores how the representation of artificial intelligences in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) proposes a wider discourse around notions of identity, memory, and the reformulation of the human self and subjectivity. The author traces the links between Villeneuve’s deployment of AI as a biocapitalist venture and our own consumerist, technocratic world. The film’s representation of the Replicant protagonist’s subjectivity and consciousness encourages the spectator to question the roles of technology, capitalism and neoliberalism in contemporary society.