If you’ve never seen Bladerunner 2049, you can start with these shorts.
No spoilers for 2049 in the comments section unless fully tagged as spoilers.
Order:
- 2022 - Blackout
- 2036 - Next Dawn
- 2048 - Nowhere To Run
The replicants in both the original Bladerunner and 2049 can be seen as a parallel for the working class.
Replicants are not needed in a world where human labour is expendable. The Bladerunners are just the Police State functioning as designed. In 2049, the protagonist literally works for LAPD.
The State will behave in this way regardless of who is at the helm and controlling the machinery of brutality. Tyrell or Wallace, the incentives for exploitation remain.
2049 strikes a very different tone after the George Floyd Uprisings over the last year. The themes of alienation and sentience emphasize just how inhuman police are. The act of becoming a class traitor abdicates your very worth as a human.
Great suggestion. Will need to watch this. What do you like the most about this video?
well it's a short video that hits the major ideas regarding postcolonialism and the subaltern. and it has dry humor.
The first short, Blackout, is a clear statement that liberation is impossible without acts of extraordinary violence. If oppressors were willing to grant the oppressed liberation, they would have done so already.
Anything short of direct action is begging.
2049 quote (Mild spoiler)
“The world is built on a wall. It separates kind. Tell either side there’s no wall, you bought a war. Or a slaughter.” - Lieutenant Joshi
The powerful are aware of the class divisions they have built. They are counting on us to believe their propaganda and play the roles they have written for us. Gender, class, age, sexuality, etc.
By reclaiming these identities and defining them on our terms, we reject these roles as a method of control.
I wish they did more with the Blackout time period. Seems likes a lot of narrative potential.
