The Blackberry Walk

I first watched Bladerunner as a kid - the film is a favourite of my father, but I was too young to properly understand the themes. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve watched both the original and the new sequel film; which was surprisingly alright. It lacked some of the ambience and noir of the original film, in part due to the absence of Vangelis’ score, but the film managed to reinvent itself, albeit with contemporary themes. The main character of the new film is a simp. Imprinted with a false memory that he is chosen by being a kind of sacred child born of man and replicant, he acts out the memories and aspirations of the one whose memories they are, giving up and making way for the true child once he realises this is the case. Much like the cuckoo, he cares for the drama and family of another with no gain to his own self. Selfless in a bitter-sweet tricked sense, rather than an altruistic sense: almost the definition of simping. Upon reflection, the film reaffirms much of the Christian symbolism of the first, that the replicants as organism created by man have no clan, no clade, no net, and cannot possess these connections. They are not ‘chosen’ people, nor part of God’s kingdom. That being said, the Christian symbolism of the original, with Roy’s stigmata and the speech he gives at the end can’t be beat. But this article isn’t meant to be about comparing the previous film to the next - apologies for that. We’re here today to discuss the neo-Egyptian style common to both films. By neo-Egyptian, I’m referring to much of the decor, and the distinctive square-based columns, in distinction to the cylindrical columns of Greece. The ‘neo-Egyptian style’ is frequently referenced also as being fashionable in the forerunner of the cyberpunk style, Neuromancer. But what’s the significance of such a style? Our civilisations are part of traditions; long-standing traditions dating t the advent of civilisation. And architecture, as the mother of the arts, reflects both a civilisation’s origins and aspirations, and orients its perceptions of its past and future at different times of its history. Classical architecture harks from Greece, and civilisations wanting to mimic the grandeur of Rome, Athens, and Troy cohabit those nations’ styles. Similarly, the Gothic architecture, which alloyed with Classical architecture casts the form of modern Europe, finds its origins in Germanic traditions; and thus between these two parents is the birth of Faustian Western culture. Given that our culture rightly sees its origins through the Classical and the Gothic style, what does an Egyptian style entail? First we must delineate between Egyptian and Classical culture. In a sense, this is an ur-distinction, preceding many other distinctions: this is the difference between Aryan and Semitic cultures. The Aryan culture focuses on smaller units of freedom, seeking the landowning farmer as an ideal as opposed to the city. For reference, European cities have traditionally been small despite having the technology to achieve larger dwellings, because they didn’t want larger dwellings. An example of the historically small size of European cities can be shown thus: the Aztec capital seized by Cortez had a population far greater than any city of Europe, even though the Aztecs hadn’t even discovered metallurgy on their tech tree. It is no limitation of institutions, nor prevalence of disease that discouraged Europeans from building large cities, as many argue: it was a difference in ideas. The Egyptians on the other hand were a civilisation of slaves. They had a far more state-focused conception of how men should be managed. The Pharaohs were god-emperors, men of immense authoritative power unequaled by the diffuse power of the West. Even the Roman emperors in all their tyranny could not command power like the Pharaohs. The Semitic culture of Babylon was much the same. And we see this pattern of a hive-like communitarian ‘long-house’ culture across Asia, in China, and in India; massive cities of many people, dominated by the emperor and the mandate of heaven in the case of China, and a rigid theocratic order of castes and priests in the case of India. The dystopia of cyberpunk is of a post-Faustian civilisation. And by post-Faustian, I’m referring to Spengler’s description of Western civilisation being characterised by a Faustian spirit of sacrifice for technological power. So what will a post-Faustian society look like? The science fiction of Wells is of a great Faustian character; there’s always an element of man’s sacrifice of some sacred boundary, whether it be time in The Time Machine or of the boundaries of Earth in The First Men on the Moon. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein sees Dr Frankenstein make a similar Faustian sacrifice for science by rejecting the boundaries of humanity. The change in timbre of science fiction in the post-war 20th century I reckon stems from the sense that a new era of mankind is approaching - an era beyond our Faustian culture that these visionaries wished to describe. And the seeming dearth of vision in a lot of contemporary sci-fi, often being swallowed into the fold of the ever-burgeoning fantasy genre, I reckon is due to the first sprouts of the post-Faustian era which we’re struggling to describe. Now, I won’t claim that the cyberpunk vision is the correct vision of the post-Faustian era; but it is a vision of what the future might’ve looked like. Because it isn’t as if such a horrific lot for man has no precedent in the past - I certainly wouldn’t want to slave as a pyramid building! And pyramids - or as they’re more generally known ziggurats - are key to the ethos of these Egyptian-style hive-like states. To put it simply, every ziggurat is a Tower of Babel. The purpose of the Tower of Babel - and the purpose of any ziggurat - is similar to that of an idol in pagan worship: to convince, bait, or trick the gods (demons) from on high down to the settlements below. Pagan gods live on mountains, like Mount Olympus. Much like how an idol is meant to act as a residence to a god so one can share meals with them, a ziggurat is a kind of false mountain made by man upon which the gods can reside. The Tower of Babel was such an attempt - Babylon was an archetypal hive nation of slaves, after all. Babel was no attempt to reach God, as in a kind of Icarus, but an attempt to bring the most high God down into an idol, as if He were a fallen angel, desiring food and incense; hence the folly and subsequent punishment. The story of Babel is a kind of inversion of any other pagan ziggurat building faith. And in the centre of the city of the original Bladerunner stands a very large imposing ziggurat at the centre; a mark of the morph to a hive-like cultural era. Bladerunner, then, takes influence from both Egyptian civilisation and the civilisations of the far East. The film’s aesthetic is marinated in the trappings of downtown Tokyo, which was in the 80s the distinctive image of the future as the time. China too has their fair share of ziggurats, most notably the mausoleums of the god-emperors. And the largest ziggurats in the world are in the New World. Much like Egypt and the East, Bladerunner sees the future of post-Faustian civilisation as one in which individual human life is no longer valued, and the strong local and yokel ties which hold together small tight families against the mass are disintegrating. I agree with this assessment in part. The past strength of family ties are disintegrating, as ideas of individual liberties are being prostrated before as paramount, whilst being contorted to have meanings beyond what their first writers could have intended. The logical extreme is never desired but invariably achieved. And the power of the state is growing, taking greater and greater interest in the lives of individuals, as the technology makes feasible ever-greater intrusions without impressing the outward slavery of the hive societies of Asia and Egypt. But I have hope. Hope that the spirit of Europe is not dead, and that from this slumber, which the Pied Pipers at the helm of these vast supra-governmental organisations have utilised, we shall awake. Our fate isn’t to be oppressed a la Bladerunner, for we are solid and can only be compressed so much, before our spirits spring back. Post-Faustian civilisation is still a mystery too us, and Millenarianism is in the air; the future has thus-far few willing to take the reigns.