Sam wk8

Questions answered this week;

Research the number of films that have been adapted from Philip K. Dick novels or short stories. Which have generally been acclaimed as the most successful? Why?

According to McKee (2004), what relationship did Dicks ideas have to a) Christianity b) religion and philosophy in general?

BladeRunner is almost indisputably the most successful film to date of those adapted from the novels of Philip K. Dick (my personal favourite, with Minority Report coming a close second). Misunderstood when initially released, it has since built up a cult following, having been recognised as a darkly prophetic and masterful exercise in science fiction noir. Both visually distinctive and thematically strong, it acts as a cautionary tale against the potential pitfalls of an increasingly technology-dependent society, presenting dystopian visions of a future in which the lines between artificial and organic have blurred to produce nearly-human simulations that threaten mans well established precedent of dominion. What is more, some of the simulations have had memories programmed into them, out of which they’ve formed personalities, subsequent faculties of emotion and all the behavioural idiosyncrasies of a human being, thus making true differentiation extremely difficult.

As McKee observes (2004), coping with rapid technological advancement and its breach of our everyday lives is a recurring theme across Dicks body of work, and to this BladeRunner is no exception, warning as it does of the dehumanizing effects thereof while asking for a clearer definition of ‘human’ so to clarify this essence for which Dick begs preservation, before the eminent assimilation of our elusive ‘humanity’ into the hyper-efficiency of the automaton.

However, BladeRunner also muses on the ambiguity of memory itself, being but a collection of references to the past from which we construct our identities and subsequently, our realities. As the Replicants of BladeRunner hold completely doctored memories, Dick appears to be questioning the illusory nature of memory itself; can we reliably entrust to it the sense of our own reality?and like with the Replicants, how are we to check the authenticity of our memories to ensure they are not false or implanted?

All of this ties in with McKees reading of Dicks theosophical standpoint, and Dicks ideas about the manifestations of the ‘logos’ in the world around us (2004). If the logos as truth, as implacable, unobservable synthesis of subject and object in which the divine duality (like the Taoist yin/yang of the I Ching) is seen to be a dynamic and self sufficient unity, then the practical separation of past/present/future stands as a functional lie, and the purposes of memory are made redundant (in view of ultimate reality). That is, the ‘practical separation’ of experiencing time sequentially is a lie, because no such sequential borders of experience exist. Obviously, the human observer has adjusted to temporality to order what would otherwise be an overwhelming sensory input; or in other words, experiencing everything simultaneously. But Dick acknowledges that the illusion of separation or ‘suffering’ has its place, likening (or perhaps literally describing) human beings to synapses in the Brain of God (McKee, 2004), substantiating the ‘blueprints’ of creation by experiencing them microscopically.


MKee describes Dick as “protean”(2004) in his rapid shifts from truth to truth, and from this it could be assumed that he held personal verification overall, the individual alone having exclusive access to his or her own logos.