The Bondage and the Cross

This film would be clear if we look at it through the lens of Hegel’s slave-master dialect: man is the master while the robot is the slave. Slave is dependent on master for its being: it is being-for-other. Like in this film, the robot is not only made by man but also determined by man its way of being: the artificial memory. The essence of being of slave lies in the control of master. Slave lives in terror of the absolute power of master: the direct power of execution/retirement and the four years life span. Man as masters achieve his own independence (being-for-itself) by the work of the slave (the building of the colonies all over the Galaxy and more implicitly using robots to hunt robots) and an opportunity to start a new life as shown in the commercial. More generally, as Heidegger puts it, technology, which reaches its completion in automaton machine, is the slave of man. But all this freedom and independence of man as the master is nothing else but illusion: look at the city in the film. The bright neon lighting, the complex structure of building, the extreme diversity and hybrid of exotic cultures…all of them express the inner emptiness of the master: man is far from being-for-itself and being-in-itself but instead man is torn and reduced to infinite pieces of fleeting and meaningless moments, symbols and cultures with technology in general. Man finds that he lost his essence: he becomes the noise of nothingness. (The common appearance of meaningless foreign languages in the film is a perfect symbol for such noise of nothingness.) The grand metropolitan is the wasteland of meaning while it is filled with vibrant man. In the film, the only way to tell the difference between robot and man is whether he has the emotion, like love, fear, hate and empathy. But does man still have authentic emotion at that time? The always smiling sheriff, the poker face deputy and the Japanese woman (Geisha) with artificial facial expression…man lost his emotion. As Heidegger puts it, the mood/emotion as the fundamental attunement of being of man (Dasein) is the way of being and towards being. Man in the end lost his own way of being: man is nothingness. 「The wasteland grows」, cried Nietzsche, 「woe to him who hides wastelands within."

Thus just like Sartre puts it, how can we create being from nothingness? How can man as nothingness give life and beingness to the other? That’s why the 「God of biomechanics」 could not give life to his creation and even himself. And that’s why Let’s return to the test of turtle at the very beginning of the film: in this test, the subject is asked about three things: 1) the hypothetical place 2) the hypothetical action he did 3) the reason of causing death. Why can a man easily suppose himself in the hypothetical dessert and act as if it were true without even thinking about how this could be possible? Because man is nothingness. Just like anything could follow a false proposition, man can follow anything without betraying his essence, which he has not. Then what could fulfill this empty nothingness and what could lead man back into something in his heart instead of nothingness within him? By causing and consuming the death of the other. Robot doesn』t understand this, so that it could not understand how watching turtle die is the only way for man to escape from the inner and outer dessert to build a standing point for himself: we create our own original sin, which we fix on.

But Robot as slave is innocence: it is what truly has independent being as being-for-itself. Although slave is constantly live in the fear of death brought by the absolute lord, it, by Hegel’s notion of 「work」, becomes implicit unity between being/consciousness and death instead of the pure negation of the master as nothingness. They become truly alive. 「I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.」 It is through their true interaction with world as world that the robot become the real independent being: through work, they give forms to their own being and truly create their ways of being: the authentic emotion. However, while they get hold of their essence of being, they still have a master and their death is still in his hand. So they come back to see their maker, the master, to ask for life. But master doesn』t have life: what the slave truly learn is the truth of death, the absolute death and the death of both master and slave—the death of master-slave dialect itself. They become the true unity with death and move beyond both the master and slave: by accepting death, they move to the absolute spirit (the deity). 「All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.」

But, slave could not be free on their own. As soon as they supersede the master-slave dialect, they save it as moments of being/consciousness. In the other words, they preserve master and its own nothingness (the killing) within their being. They inherit our original sin. Just like in the film, Roy’s betray and murdering of God and Deckard’s betray and murdering of his own kind (the sin of Cain). (It’s rather obvious that Deckard is also robot, which we would not discuss further here.) They are split and contradictory internally: they are both Judah and Jesus (Roy as the son of 「God of Biomechanics」, the salvation of his own people), both Abel and Cain. This is the essence of the final fight between Roy and Deckard: it is the fight within the robot, the conflict within the 「unhappy consciousness」 of Hegel. There are several symbols hinting the religious meaning in that: 1) Roy uses a nail to pierce his hand, which is alluding to the crucifixion of Jesus. 2) the releasing of the dove, which is the symbol for the Holy spirit. It is now clear to understand the ending: the reconciliation between Roy and Deckard is the reconciliation between Judah (robot as man) and Jesus. Just like Jesus used His blood redeem our sin, Roy uses his death to finally establish the ground of freedom from the original sin and the split: he makes Deckard realize and grip their own essence of being as robot and slave (the authentic emotion): they do not need guilt and sin to fixate themselves; and how their common essence lead them to the same absolute spirit, away from this wasteland: they are the same and they are the one. That’s why Deckard finally breaks all the barriers between him and Racheal and leaves with Racheal in the very end: they finally get the true freedom and love in their unity instead of consumption of each other.

But the last question is, what’s left for man? For us? If we have already lost our redemption long long ago? Can the son of Mechanic God save us? I don』t know.

Citation：

Hegel, 「Phenomenology of Spirt」

Heidegger, 「Fundamental concepts of Metaphysics」

Sartre, 「Being and Nothingness」

雜項筆記：

烏龜測試：1）測試對於自身原罪性的認識 2）測試純粹假設能力—人類沒有本質所以人類才有能力去幻想不存在/nothingnessà薩特

Think about positive words about your mother?

I will tell you about my mother.

Shoot

More human than human

Memory:謊言，複製人感到悲傷，覺得自己脫離本質：但其實他們才是本質

男主的原罪：機器人的原罪，他殺死了蛇。

It’s too bad she won』t leave, but again, who does?

機器人：猶大和耶穌的統一