Windows to the soul

Eyes have always been dubbed as the "windows to the soul" and within the Bladerunner film this has many connotations. The Voight-Kampff test uses a type of camera to analyze pupil dilation and other reactions within the eyes implying that it is effectively someones soul, analyzed by peering through the window or eyes, that determines their humanity. The eyes are also used to symbolically represent power as Tyrell has the largest glasses displaying a disassociation with the world behind his defensive lenses placing him in the seat of a God as he creates life within the replicants. The Nexus-6 android even kills Tyrell by crushing his eyes which could also be seen as him destroying the soul, an interesting end for ones creation to destroy his creator and perhaps this could even be demonstrable of a religious connotation to the eyes in the film as well.

It is interesting the androids would push the boundaries of sexuality and gender especially in the case of the Nexus-6 Roy when he kisses Tyrell just before he kills them. As these androids within the film appear noticeably as male and female their roles they fill challenge the stereotypical gender roles just as Haraway proposes people do in her essay "A Cyborg Manifesto." The replicants are used as tools within the film, an object with which to complete a task and no more. If the androids were just used as tools and no more then why would the distinction between male and female androids be necessary? Is it for the sole sense of fulfilling typical gender roles within the workplace and if so, since they are just tools, is their any reason to have male and female tools? These questions can be reflective of Haraway's dissection of the "patriarchal" society with the ever growing importance of technology within a postmodernist society and bring up interesting topics to debate as many of these symbolic representations offer different lenses with which to view the issue at hand.

One aspect that was within the book "Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep?" but was missing in the film was the strange religious cult known as Mercerism. This religion, or cult depending on your interpretation, utilizes things known as empathy boxes to share their feelings with one another across the planet. The emphasis on empathy in the book and the film makes it seem strange that the humans in the book rely on technology to have feelings as the test for empathy or the Voight-Kampff test is used to find out if someone is an android or if they are human, essentially a test for technology. This again brings up the question of what makes us human? Who is truly acting as a human with the book or the film? The book and the film both show boundaries being crossed between what made us human and the development and integration of technology in our everyday lives showing that the once definitive classifications that were once used may not hold any truth in an ever changing society.