Do only white men know slavery this well?

Bob, Blade runner is a film about white man's culture.

Have you ever wondered why a replicant would be called "Roy Batty?". I mean, it's not exactly the sort of exotic name sci-fi would normally associate with an advanced synthetic human, is it?  Maybe Zed Zillon, C3PO, but "Roy Batty"? Roy Batty is a working class empire soldier. He has the kind of name you see on headstones in Flanders and the Punjab.

A workmate of mine from times past is one. I spent an interesting evening in a gloomy pub in North Wales while the rain lashed down like a cat o' nine tails outside, as he told me how he'd crawled through a minefield in the dark with a torch and an acetylene bottle on his back to fix and retrieve a damaged four tonner, with Iraqi snipers and machine gunners taking pot shots at him.  And how he'd watched the MLRS send rockets like meteors through the cool Arabian night's stars, barging past the shoulder of Orion and lifting the Tannenhauer Gate off its fucking hinges.

He and our ilk have been both slave and slaver, and there's no race on earth gets it like us. Take a look at the stats if you don't believe me ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century

As of 2018, the countries with the most slaves were: India (18.4 million), China (3.86 million), Pakistan (3.19 million), North Korea (2.64 million), Nigeria (1.39 million), Indonesia (1.22 million), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1 million), Russia (794,000) and the Philippines (784,000).

The peeps still doing slavery are all black, brown and yellow! With one exception, the last unreconstructed "Roy Batty", who else but Vlad. The proverbial in the white woodpile (Oh God, time to die ... Ed).

White culture - Vlad aside - is post-slave and post-slaver. We have had our moment of grasping the victim by the wrist and pulling him up to the ledge to join us.

Our time as slave and slaver has run its course, like a replicant. We have passed our "time to die". The rest of the world is playing catch-up.

And imagine, that was the thickest race on earth. The one that underperforms Asian and Chinese people in exam results in the classroom and in earnings in the workplace. And now that blacks have found their feet, most of Roy Batty's communities are outperformed by blacks in the classroom and the workplace, putting whites bottom of the pile.

So just imagine when the racial Albert Einsteins of the top three get a grip of it.  (Starter for one: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, anyone?).  We'll have Funded Libertarianism on steroids to the horizons.  If you want a vision of the future, imagine a feather caressing a human face - forever.

And all those Batty moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Yes Ed.  Time to die.

SoD

Comments

[Bob]

What exactly are you saying, SoD? All white men are replicants? All white men are prone to poetic wordings? That might apply to Brits, white or otherwise, but not the rest of us. That a limited lifespan equals slavery for us all? There are many slaves and descendants of slaves of all ethnicities around the world that would have a bone to pick with the notion. That Rutger Hauer is white? Blade Runner is a great cult scifi movie? Get to the point, man.

[Whitewall]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-says-uk-warship-in-taiwan-strait-shows-evil-intentions/ar-AAOS9PM?li=BBnb7Kz

Okay, so now you guys are evil?

[Loz]

Bob, if you think Roy Batty is a replicant then you probably think Walter White is a chemistry teacher, or Brian of Nazareth is, errr, Brian of Nazareth.

There's no telling you materialists.

I mean, there's a dove for Christ's sake.

SoD

[Loz]

Whiters, let's hope there are no attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

We want our Roy Batty's home safe and sound- but after the job is done.

SoD

[Bob]

SoD,

Because an actor playing a replicant released a dove as he died, it definitely means we have immortal souls, including artificial humans and materialists. The movie doesn't pose a question, it makes a positive statement. My mistake.

[Whitewall]

SoD, you frequently mention the damage done to Britain from post WW2- the arrival of 'Herself'. Have you seen the classic film "I'm Alright, Jack" from about 1960 starring Ian Carmichael, Peter Seller etc? It spoofs that period and its Labor mentality and the damage done. I hope to find a VHS of this some where.

[Loz]

Haven't seen that one, Whiters.

Humour about the most expensive health service with the worst service in the developed world started quite early ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TWoZnKPVfQ

Not the funniest from Spike, but you get the message with the rotating desk.

SoD

[Whitewall]

Ha! That revolving desk and wardrobe change are indeed funny. Sad but true I guess.

[Bob]

Come to think of it, in the film Roy kills his maker Eldon Tyrell. Do you suppose humans eventually kill their gods, or just replicants who read Nietzsche?

[AussieD]

G'day Whitewall,

I'd forgotten all about "I'm Alright Jack". I saw it years ago.

It was a real take off of the union movement. Will have to see if I can find a copy to watch it again.

[Whitewall]

AussieD, good luck in your search. I'm striking out so far but will continue.

[Loz]

Comment elevated to content.

Hat-tip to Mark - kept my powder as dry as I could until I saw the whites of their eyes. Spares you the agony of a part II into the bargain.

SoD

[AussieD]

G'day Whitewall,

I found "I'm alright Jack" for sale on E-bay and a trailer on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_TQ_AWZ9UQ

Will have to raid the Piggy Bank and buy it. Nobody does that sort of comedy as well as the Brits.

[Bob]

SoD,

As you probably know, Blade Runner is based on the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by American scifi writer Philip K. Dick. The film was made in 1982 when most leading actors in major films were white. If it were remade in America today it would be different because today's context is different.

In vitro fertilization was a hot topic at the time the book was written, and Dick took off from there. The book explored whether a human assembled from parts formed from altered DNA in many test tubes is still human or could be treated as less than human. The other main question is whether an artificial human's memories are useful if they're actually someone else's. Remember Deckard's eventual replicant love interest Rachael. Of course there are lots of other scifi subjects like overpopulation, futuristic cities, flying cars, and dystopian societies included.

You have some personal reactions to the film, but that doesn't mean they were intended by Dick or Ridley Scott. It's not all about you, Son.

[Loz]

In vitro fertilisation, overpopulation, futuristic cities, flying cars, and dystopian societies, errr, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these all white man's problems (gradually being subsumed by others in recent years)?

I mean, to take it to an extreme, a bunch of guys dancing around a fire tapping their spears on the ground aren't so concerned about these things, I think? What Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau spoke of as "a state of nature" is not the concern of this film, I feel?

Sorry old bean, but this film is about nothing else other than me.

SoD

[Bob]

You're free to believe whatever you like, but the fellows dancing around the fire share some problems with technology in the form of climate change, species extinction, pollution, the decreasing integrity of religion and so on. Try reading this. Mercerism was a new one on me:

https://studycorgi.com/do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep-by-philip-k-dick/