Advertising in Blade Runner

A rough count of the ads could be around 30 in the whole movie:
Coca Cola, Tyrell, Beauty products, etc.

The most prominent ad throughout, I beleive, is the Chinese woman ad; throughout the film, foreign products are seen advertised in this futuristic America. This suggests that the USA has become a victim of junk culture and and imperialised advertising. The use of ads suggest that race or nationality no longer matter; people are all equal because of their relation to products. People are therefore consumer beings. This seems like a tarnished sense of equality.

The massive size of the adverts reflect this also. The increasing size of billboards show how consumerism is literally consuming the environment, and it's citizens. The floating advert blimp stalks the sky like in eclipse; metaphorically eclisping the people's world.

Pretty cool stuff.

The Island is another new Frankenstein tale of note. Sean Bean plays the Frankenstein role, creating a colony of human clones who are literally outcast from society. The clones are born with the intellect of 15 year olds and are not programmed with knowledge of sex; therefore they have no will to reproduce. They function as organ hosts for rich people in need of operations; Sean Bean wishes to playthe role of God in seeking everlasting life. Ewan Mcgregor, a clone, becomes a menace to his creator and therefore must be hunted down. However at the end, the tables turn and the creature ends up hunting down the creator.
There are alot of themes in the Island that are similiar to Frankenstein. Sean Bean excercises a desire for control, like Frankenstein. His creations are subject to strict rules under his watchful eye.

creatures's kids

The idea of Frankenstein's creature having children strikes me as a really cool idea. Though the creature is a human invention, the children could be considered much more 'natural' beings. They would be stronger than normal humans, but really would look no different. Seeing as their birth would be from a natural (albiet recycled) womb, they would have fresh, normal bodies, not sewn together from dead parts like the creature. if raised by normal humans, they would be able to blend in with the rest of humanity.

Different cyber-culture narratives show similarities to this idea. The main characters in the Matrix are all products of their own creations. The computer system creates human 'farms' where they are all created. Yet we consider Neo and Trinity, when in the flesh, to be just as human as you or I.

Dark City

Just bought the dvd for Dark City, which is an awesome movie to see. Here's a little synopsis stolen from imdb:

John's life has become a nightmare. He is hunted by the police for a series of murders he knows nothing about, a woman who claims to be his wife is after him, and so is a mysterious "doctor". But his worst trouble is the strangers, a series of vastly powerful beings who seem to manipulate just about everything in the city, and want him because of the extraordinary powers he manifested. John decides to find out what is happening in his city; why is it always night? And why can nobody tell him a way to leave the city?

So its pretty much like the Matrix, but it came out before hand. The main character is in a city which seems perfectly normal at first, but then realises that there seems to be nothing outside of it. Everything is subject to the control of the 'strangers'. Keifer Sutherland plays a crazy doctor. The strangers stop time and alter people's perceptions at will. All memories seem to be false, and created.

cyborg search

Stephen Hawking.
Digital voices on Daft Punk songs.
HAL from 2001.
A guitar and a talkbox.

All examples of cyborgs in our culture. Its amazing how many you can think of; the list must be endless. I think that the above ones are quite unique, and are ones we didn't really think about in class. The guitar talkbox is neat: the guitar is an extension of the person; the guitar notes go through the talkbox to create tones; and a robotic voice is created in combination with the singer's voice. Its a kind of half-human, half-robotic cyborg.