wildcat

So, before I forget, thoughts on Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep:

There's this really interesting inversion which didn't make it into Blade Runner - naturally, because there's just so much going on in the book that they had to be choosey - essentially, because of the polluted atmosphere from World War Terminus, a large number of animal species are extinct or extremely rare, and the big thing is having an animal to call your own. Now, naturally that's not too far-fetched, but it's shameful to have an electric animal, a machine copy of an animal, because while they can be produced to simulate life amazingly, it's not keeping up with the neighbours. It's enticing that the latest model or technology is looked down upon (Rick Deckard hates to admit to his neighbour that the sheep is electric) in favour of the "classic" model (i.e. life). The rarity of real animals makes it make sense, but on one level it's a delightful shift that I focused on a bit. And it also reflects the fear of the androids infiltrating society - they don't want to admit their synthetic because then people know they're inferior.

I think I like Pris better in the movie; in fact, I like all the female characters better in the movie. It's rather bizarre to feel that a misogynistic Nineteen-Eighties science fiction film did more for the female characters than the source material. Although, the book does present an interesting meditation on the "female androids as sex toy" idea that comes up often - Deckard feels awkward about attraction to "objects," the android women. And it inevitably happens with each female android. Rather than the usual removal of inhibitions, which occurs places like Fritz Lang's Metropolis (all those dirty Twenties Germans of the future, lusting after the Maria Robot's Erotic Dance), Do Androids has Deckard paralyzed by his inability to deal with desire for synthetic women; he knows they aren't human, but he desires them, so he feels guilty (instead of just using them as toys), and ultimately is used by one of them sexually. And strangely, he feels no guilt about the event afterward even though he has a wife and it was definitely consensual (if manipulated). He still thinks of them as androids rather than beings. Deckard is quite layered, especially when you consider the issue of "killing" / "retiring" androids, which also paralyzes him at times.

Something else that didn't really fit into the movie but fascinated me: the androids can only be identified by empathy tests which constantly have to be improved with each model. But someone also points out that those empathy tests can fail for another reason: schizophrenic humans who experience a "flattening of effect" (is this term still in use?) and don't have as much empathy as non-schizophrenics can also fail the test and be killed as androids. Interesting, especially because of Dick's battle with schizophrenia.