In the movie Blade Runner, one of the characters is Roy Batty, a bio-engineered replicant or artificial human. Replicants are virtually identical to adult humans except that they have superior speed, strength, and intelligence. And they can learn. Roy Batty not only had all of these abilities but was also a special model designed for combat.
The early models were designed to have a limited life span of four years. This limited life span was incorporated into their design to prevent them from becoming too smart and start thinking and acting for themselves. In short, they would become unpredictable and uncontrollable.
Blade Runners were employed to hunt down and retire (kill) non-compliant replicants and Roy Batty was definitely non-compliant (in fact, he was a leader of a rebellious faction of replicants) and, therefore, a threat to the established order i.e. the company that produced them.
If the Blade Runner movie were to be adapted to contemporary political circumstances, Roy Batty would be an old, Anglo-Saxon Christian (and, co-incidently, that is exactly what Rutger Hauer was). Those descriptors pretty much describe me and my fellow travellers. They used to call us W.A.S.P.s. The politically correct establishment would like us to get lost. Not us personally, you understand, but us as a disagreeable archetype.
We old Anglo-Saxons have also seen things - things you would find hard to believe. We were witnesses, or were the direct descendants of witnesses, to the bloodiest conflict in human history propagated by an ideology that is remarkably similar to what we see today in some quarters. We have viewed the world before the modern era. We think we are clear-eyed about the current political culture and we do not agree that what is being peddled as social progress is progress at all. In fact, we view the lack of understanding of the lessons of recent history might actually lead us back to barbarism.
As mentioned before, the political establishment would like to dispose of us. They feel that we stand in the way of progress. They are waiting us out since we are, generally speaking, quite old.
The early models were designed to have a limited life span of four years. This limited life span was incorporated into their design to prevent them from becoming too smart and start thinking and acting for themselves. In short, they would become unpredictable and uncontrollable.
Blade Runners were employed to hunt down and retire (kill) non-compliant replicants and Roy Batty was definitely non-compliant (in fact, he was a leader of a rebellious faction of replicants) and, therefore, a threat to the established order i.e. the company that produced them.
If the Blade Runner movie were to be adapted to contemporary political circumstances, Roy Batty would be an old, Anglo-Saxon Christian (and, co-incidently, that is exactly what Rutger Hauer was). Those descriptors pretty much describe me and my fellow travellers. They used to call us W.A.S.P.s. The politically correct establishment would like us to get lost. Not us personally, you understand, but us as a disagreeable archetype.
We old Anglo-Saxons have also seen things - things you would find hard to believe. We were witnesses, or were the direct descendants of witnesses, to the bloodiest conflict in human history propagated by an ideology that is remarkably similar to what we see today in some quarters. We have viewed the world before the modern era. We think we are clear-eyed about the current political culture and we do not agree that what is being peddled as social progress is progress at all. In fact, we view the lack of understanding of the lessons of recent history might actually lead us back to barbarism.
As mentioned before, the political establishment would like to dispose of us. They feel that we stand in the way of progress. They are waiting us out since we are, generally speaking, quite old.
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In the above clip we see Rutger Hauer, as Roy Batty, give his Tears in the Rain monologue. He knows he is about to die and all of the memories he has accumulated are about to disappear forever. He is sad but is reconciled to his fate
Soon, I and my old friends will pass on and if we have said or written anything of consequence that, too, will be made to disappear - like tears in the rain.
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