Blade Runner: Visual literature

There is much to say about Blade Runner: 2049 as a movie, but there are compelling reasons to see it as even more. The movie is thematically rich, touching on topics such as humanity, slavery, and sacrifice, but without preaching an agenda. Instead we are given a moral sandbox to explore. The world of Blade Runner may look starkly different than ours, but the cultural and societal dynamics are right at home. The writers of the movie show a mature restraint in not overlaying a Hollywood morality where the protagonist is an uncomplicated hero that is easy to root for and all the villains plot maniacally in their hollowed out volcanoes. Every character has complex and resonant motivations that feel true to the backstories we imagine for them, a rare thing for movies. It isn't a slight against the validity of movies as an art form to say that they typically lack the richness of character found in literature any more than it is a criticism of Michelangelo to say that the statue of David doesn't exhibit much emotional development. It's rather that the new Blade Runner is an oddity among movies in that it is maybe more like literature. 

If Harriet Beecher Stowe were alive today, it's true that she might be writing novels, but she may also be expressing her ideas in an art form that simply wasn't available during her era. If she were to feel compelled to bring her ideas to the world, maybe she would write a movie about two fugitive slaves and their child trying to avoid capture by a ruthless hunter. Blade Runner's Agent K is introduced to us as a ruthless and brutal hunter of fugitive slaves, just like Tom Loker, but he is also truthful, subservient and naive, and importantly criticized by his peers for being complicit in his own indenture, just like Uncle Tom. Stowe might also include a virtuous young girl who displays an endless saintly love towards everyone because in her estimation, even the slaves have souls. The Blade Runner character Ana Stelline isn't a perfect overlap with Stowe's Eva, but they share an efforts to kindle some confidence in a slave's own humanity. There are plenty of coincidental overlaps, and finding similarities between works may be as much of an exercise in confirmation bias as in constructive comparisons, but I think there is a compelling argument that Blade Runner has enough substance to be viewed through from a similar vantage point as many of our favorite literary works. 

Am I trying to argue that a sci-fi movie is as good as a seminal work in the cannon of American literature? No. But I would say that even given the flying cars, it's a surprisingly worthy, even if a bit faint, reflection of it. Uncle Tom's Cabin was a cultural cataclysm, a boulder thrown in a still pond, Blade Runner: 2049 is showing us that there are ripples still on the pond even after a century and a half.