An academic essay reviewing and exploring Blade Runner Black Out 2022

Produced in: December 2020

Special Thanks to Dr Stuart Cottle

The Blade Runner franchise has a significant group of films providing its audience with a reading of the future. Set in Los Angeles, Blade Runner 2019 and Blade Runner 2049 are American productions employing the genre of cyberpunk to imagine a dystopian post-modern world. In between the two feature films, Blade Runner Black Out 2022 is a short film using Japanese anime aesthetic and production to tell a story bridging 2019 and 2049. The short film can be argued as adding an alternative gaze to the franchise. As Park (2005, p. 62) asks, “what happens… when Japan ‘look back’ at the United States?”. Despite the relation between the West and the East, Black Out 2022 also actively comments on gender and human-machine relations. Thus, this essay will demonstrate that Black Out 2022 functions as a “look back” challenging the power dynamic existing in 2019 and 2049 in various levels, which grants voices for the East, the female, and the replicant that seem as mere supplement in the two feature films. Specifically, the essay will first explore the concepts of Orientalism and techno-Orientalism, as well as how they are used and then challenged in the franchise. Further, by casting a female replicant as the protagonist, Black Out 2022 questions the dominant male gaze employed in 2019 and 2049. Lastly, the essay will explore a shift of narrative from human-centric to replicant-centric in Black Out 2022.

In the construction of mise-en-scène in 2019 and 2049, Asian references are frequently featured within the cityscape. For example, the giant billboard filled with a Japanese woman dressed and made up in a traditional Kabuki style (Fig. 1). There are also a large number of street signs written in Asian characters. A more detailed example is Deckard’s visit to the noodle bar (Fig. 2), where he encounters a fully Japanese-style environment. Most staffs and customers are Asian and their conversations are carried out in a non-English language. This scene thus situates Deckard in an Eastern environment that he is unfamiliar and alienated, which reflects the idea of Orientalism, a term defined by Said (1978, p. 10) as “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’ ”. According to Said (1978, p. 11), in this process of thinking, there is the gaze from the West, so the image of the Orient is the West’s imagination with an intention to appropriate the Orient into the West’s own culture. Hence, in the case of Deckard and the noodle bar, the bar symbolizes the exotic Orient and so in this environment, the alienation of Deckard is evident. The audience can tell a clash between “the West” of Deckard and “the East” of the environment.

Nevertheless, the Orientalism presented in Blade Runner films has its contemporary variation by integrating Asian symbols with technology and metropolis. Examples are the inclusion of skyscrapers, simulation, neon advertisement signs and electrical billboards within the Oriental backdrop. This depiction of Blade Runner world thus exits from the traditional Orientalism and enters a techno-Orientalism, referring to a display of “a technology-overloaded present/future (which is portrayed as belonging to Japan or other Far East countries) through the promise of readable difference, and through conflation of information networks with an exotic urban landscape” (Chun, 2006, p. 177). Being similar to Orientalism, techno-Orientalism presents the West’s looking. The East functions as a blank canvas allowing the imagination from the West to paint it as the exotic, the fantasy, the high-tech, and the alienated (Yu, 2008). Either being conscious or not, as Hollywood productions, Blade Runner 2019 and 2049 engage with techno-Orientalism and present the idea through its mise-en-scène construction.

However, in the case of Black Out 2022, with Japanese artists as the production team and anime as the film’s medium, the short film provides an alternative gaze from the East looking back to the West. Specifically, director Watanabe and his team were once the audiences of Hollywood cinema, but when creating Black Out 2022, as Watanabe said, his team was given the freedom to design the short film’s characters and narrative (Chrunchyroll, 2017). This means the team can actively imagine Los Angeles, cyberpunk, as well as the Blade Runner world located in the future from their perspective. As a result, the Oriental city in film is a reproduction of what the team can see in their everyday life. It is no longer an exotic imagination locating far away from the creator.

In terms of the medium of anime, it is an aesthetic tradition different from Hollywood cinema. As discussed by Swale (2015), anime starts from Japan’s Edo period (17th to 19th century), and until today, it is developed in a relatively independent environment away from the tradition of film. He further draws on Collingwood’s idea and suggests that to make sense of different types of aesthetics, the viewer needs to use different sets of perception, emotion, knowledge and eventually imagination to process what he/she sees on the screen (Swale, 2015, p. 122). Hence, when encountering the anime aesthetic, spectators tend to associate the on-screen image with their pre-existing knowledge of the East rather than the one of Hollywood. Consequently, in Black Out 2022, anime can function as a suitable aesthetic to stage an Oriental-look city, or in other words, the medium is able to match with the content. Thus, the sense of exclusiveness and alienation defining techno-Orientalism no longer stands out in the image.

Apart from challenging the idea of techno-Orientalism, being different from 2019 and 2049, Black Out 2022 casts a girl, Trixey, as the protagonist and provides another “look back” from the eyes of the female. In the two feature films, the stories centre their male protagonists and many designs of the mise-en-scène serve the male gaze. One is the portrait of the eroticized city. In 2019, the electronic billboard repeatedly shows the female Kabuki character swallowing the pill and then smiling to the camera (Fig. 1) (Yu, 2008, p. 56). In 2049, such a feminized and sexualized city is more explicitly displayed with Joi’s simulation, a giant naked woman body, wandering around the city (Fig. 3). Another aspect is the female protagonists, Rachel in 2019 is a replicant serving Tyrell, and then committing to a romantic relationship with Deckard. In 2049, Joi is fundamentally a simulation product for consumption and entertainment. Even though both Rachel and Joi develop human romantic emotions with the male leads, they are relatively submissive and grant the audience with limited access to their inner worlds. In this sense, the landscape and the female characters function “as ornaments” contributing to “the hero’s journey to self-enlightenment” (Park, 2005, p. 61-62). The masculinized hero and the feminized backdrop form a strong contrast with each other.

However, by casting Trixey as the lead in Black Out 2022, Watanabe critically employs and then challenges some gender stereotypes. On one hand, Trixey is provided with a doll-like appearance. Her small body, big eyes, golden hair and red dress is a fantasized and sexualized look under the male gaze (Fig. 4). The scene also shows her lying against the wall and being bullied by a gang, in which her eyes are hollow and her posture is powerless, suggesting her giving up control over her own body and the availability for manipulation. In the following plot, several shots of Trixey’s real doll further reinforce this doll metaphor (Fig. 5). Yet, on the other hand, Watanabe challenges such sexualized construction by addressing Trixey as a replicant, a machine with the potential to be free from the constrain of gender. Specifically, in the second half of the film, Trixey trains herself into a killing machine equipping with strength and combat skills that humans cannot compete with. As a character, Trixey makes a reference to Motoko Kusanagi, the female protagonist in the Ghost in the Shell who is transformed into a weapon through an integration of machine and human body. This body that Trixey and Kasanagi possess is analysed by Haraway (2016, p. 5) as a hyper-gendered “cyborg”, meaning “a hybrid of machine and organism”. This type of body belongs to a post-gender world where bisexuality construction is no longer applicable (Haraway, 2016, p. 8). Therefore, by having Trixey as the protagonist and addressing her hyper-gendered identity, female bodies in Black Out 2022 no longer serve as ornaments and the dominant male gaze is challenged.

Moreover, Black Out 2022 further presents a “look back” from the replicant. Although 2019 and 2049 tell the stories of two replicants, Deckard and K, their stories are told from a human perspective and the film world remains human-centric. There is a top-down governing structure where human stands at the top to maintain orders and prevent replicants from rebelling. In contrast, in Black Out 2022, visually, the cityscape is no longer a view looked from the top, rather, it becomes a view looked from the bottom (Fig. 6). The perspective is thus shifted and it is the replicant who owns the gaze now. Moreover, the conversation carried out between Trixey and Ren, the human character, once again reinforces this shift of power dynamic:

Ren: You worried, Trixey?

Trixey: No.

Ren: because I’m human? I get it. Humans are selfish, stupid liers, but replicants are different. So pure, so

perfect, never betrays. More human than human. (Blade Runder Black Out 2022)

In this conversation, the power is shifting because the replicant no longer worries. In 2019 and 2049, human beings are confident about their existence and therefore owns the superiority. It is the replicant, like Deckard and K, who needs to go through internal struggle, doubt and eventually enlightenment to make sense of one’s existence. Yet, in this case, Trixey is determined and it is Ren, the human being, who has the doubt on his human race and envies the replicant as a pure and perfect machine. Lastly, replicant’s voice is further reinforced by the ending song, Almost Human. The song is written from the perspective of the replicant, functioning like a cry-out telling a replicant’s excitement, confusion and desire when experiencing love for the first time. As Daigle (2017), the singer and songwriter, said, the starting point of her writing was to find the inadequacy of human nature and try to fulfil such inadequacy through a greater power, or in the film’s case, the replicant. Once again, in the creative process, it is human who looks up to the replicant and the replicant owns a chance to bring their voice and subjectivity to the audience.

In conclusion, by comparing Black Out 2022 with 2019 and 2049, the essay has suggested that the short film tells its story from an alternative gaze, providing a “look back” from the Oriental, the female and the replicant. Specifically, the essay has first drawn on the ideas of Orientalism and techno-Orientalism, and discussed how these concepts are challenged by having anime as the film’s medium and Japanese artists as the production team. Moreover, with Trixey as the protagonist, Black Out 2022 desexualizes the female body by constructing it into a human-machine hybrid cyborg. Lastly, the short film makes an effort to challenge the human-centric narrative by shifting the voice to the replicant. As the motif of Black Out implies, when the plane crashes into the giant billboard (Fig. 7), the Oriental city is no longer the exotic, female body is no longer sexualized, and the replicant finally has a chance to become human. What this shot, what the film symbolises is a shift in gaze and a reset of power dynamic.

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