Blade Runner represents an interesting form paranoia: a fear of an existential crisis due to the rapid advancement of technology. ultimately about the existential implications raised if humanity and machine cannot tell the difference between reality and fiction, machine and man. This possibility would completely destroy people’s faith in the truth of their own lives. A person only believes they are a person because they are told so. Humans define lives by memories. If humans or robots could be implanted with memories, how could anything know what they truly were? Existential crisis would be inevitable, and humanity would come crashing down around us. Philosophically, humanity is already shaky. If one introduced a variable such as the unreliability of memories, the advent of complete nihilism may be inevitable.
In Blade Runner, the most important example of this existential uncertainty comes when we learn that Rachel believes she is human. The dramatic irony increases the audience’s uncertainty as to who is a replicant. The constant shot-countershot between faces and eyes and heavy use of chiaroscuro lighting serves to heighten the suspense and mystery.
If technology ever did reach such a point where we could no longer determine if memories were truly real, individuals would have no basis for its existence, and spiritual, psychological, and philosophical breakdown would be inevitable. What makes it so frightening is it could be happening currently, and people could be implanted with memories so that they would never know that they had been implanted with memories. Further, we could all be replicants. And as technology increases functionality and daily use, we increasingly are. Like Deckard, humanity could truly be the very thing it believes it controls
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