Blade Runner - Como é que alguém pode esperar de um clone humano algo diferente disto: o desejo de viver mais tempo?

“The idea that those who have human DNA are irrepressibly human – regardless of how they have acquired that DNA – was implicit in Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, re-released with a bleaker ending in 1992. Set in 2019 in post-apocalypse Los Angeles, the film explores the problematic status of the mutinous “replicants”, short-term human clones created to perform the demeaning and dangerous jobs once performed by those assigned (because of their social class, race, or sex) to the lower strata of society. The replicants provide sex for hire, colonize dangerous territories, and fight wars. These clones supposedly have no real feelings – no fear and no shame – though they were programmed to express such emotions as desire when the expression would please their human users. Programmed to have a four year life span, they are also believed to have no personal regrets or will to live. The plot of the movie, however, is built around their uncontrollable humanness; for the replicants – as clones with human DNA – want to live. They begin going AWOL in order to find the scientist responsible for creating them, with the aim of convincing him to help them live longer.
The story uses the replicants to explore the problem of ethnic and social class differences and hopelessness of seeking technological solutions for social problems. But it also explores questions about boundaries presenting the replicants – manufactured humans concocted of manipulated DNA – as more “human” than the evil corporate planners who made them. Though constructed only to serve society’s needs and exploited as slaves, the replicants have a fundamental will to survive. They have identity, selfhood, (false) memories of childhood, and hopes for the future. They are therefore fundamentally human.”

O texto acima transcrito é um excerto deste livro aqui:

Nelkin, D. & Lindee, M.S. (1995) The DNA Mystique. New York, W.H. Freeman and Company. (p.44)