"Blade Runner 2049": A Movie Review.

On the day when I began typing this work I experienced intense computer crime, evidently, coming from New Jersey government computers. 

I have reason to believe that some computers used to commit these crimes are assigned to members of the N.J. judiciary.

The sadism and malice in censorship or silencing efforts against me are obvious after years of coping with this nonsense. 

I am not surprised that the draft I prepared was deleted so that I will have to retype all that I had previously written and tried to post. 

What continues to astonish and disgust me is not the realization that there are persons capable of this level of sadism and cruelty, but that so many so-called "ordinary" people can easily be transformed into "guilty bystanders." 

It does not take much for the vast majority of persons to cooperate even with the most hideous criminal actions.

That American legal institutions may be staffed by corrupt individuals protecting sadistic criminals is even more depressing. 

Complicity by N.J. bureaucrats in great evil  may explain the inability of U.S. institutions to cope with my situation and many other problems in the political/legal system.

Given the "challenge" created by government computer crimes and censorship it may be best to post this essay in stages, section-by-section, as I write each draft with the faltering hope that I will be able to return to these blogs to continue writing. 

Interference with my writing at public computers -- after the destruction of several personal or home computers -- makes it doubtful whether I can make use of the full 45 minutes per business day when I have access to a NYPL computer. 

I will do my best to continue writing and posting essays for many reasons.

I am delighted that international readers will judge for themselves the independence and freedom of expression of American journalists and writers and/or of U.S. media.

In my next essay I return to New Jersey issues. That essay will be sent to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy; Jefferson B. Sessions, Esq., U.S. Attorney General; and to the Cuban Embassy to the United States of America.  

No response has been received by me from U.S. lawyers, judges, police or prosecutors to my many communications over the years even as the public danger that I describe escalates. 

No U.S. media sources have responded to my communications nor are they "permitted" to do so, at this time, whatever that means.

International efforts to obtain the truth in my matters have (so far) been ignored by American officials and legal authorities as well as journalists without explanation or response of any kind in violation of U.S. and international laws and ethics standards. 

March 20, 2018 water was cut off to my apartment from 11:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. 

March 28, 2018 water was shut off from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. in the building where I live. 

March 29, 2018 water was shut off to the building where I live from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. 

Elderly persons and children are affected by these actions which (I hope) are legitimate. No warning or notice was given on any of these occasions.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017): Director: Denis Villeneuve; screenplay Hampton Fancher and Michael Green; based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? & Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner (1982); Ryan Gosling ("K/Joe"); Harrison Ford ("Rick Deckard"); Ana de Armas ("Joi"); Sylvia Hoeck ("Luv"); Robin Wright (Lt. Joshi"); McKenzie Davis ("Mariette"); Carla Juri ("Dr. Ana Stelline"); Jared Leto ("Neander Wallace"); Sean Young ("Rachael"); Edward James Olmos ("Gaff"). Premiere: October 3, 2017.  

Alternative Reviews:

"Blade Runner 2049" http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/blade_runner_2049.

Mark Kermode, "Blade Runner 2049 -- A Future Classic," The Guardian, October 8, 2017 posted to the online edition: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2017.

Peter de Bruge, "Film Review: 'Blade Runner 2049'," Variety, September 29, 2017 posted online: http//www.variety.org 

Listed sources will be organized thematically:

Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? (New York: Ballantine, 1982).

Philip K. Dick, "Notes On Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?," in Lawrence Sutin, ed., The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (New York: Pantheon, 1995), pp. 151-161. 

Philip K. Dick, "The Android and the Human," in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, pp. 183-210 (1972).

Philip K. Dick, "Man, Android, and Machine," in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, pp. 211-232 (1976).

Michael Bishop, Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas: A Novel (New York: Tom Doherty, 1987). (Death in the "Blade Runner" narrative underlines the connection between meaningfulness and mortality.)

Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451 (New York: Ballantine, 1979, 1st Ed., 1953). (Among the most influential works on the imagination of Philip K. Dick is this timeless sci-fi classic.) 

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine (New York: Ballantine, 1976, 1st Ed., 1946). (Mr. Villeneuve's focus on themes of childhood and self-becoming may be traced to Mr. Dick's fascination with Bradbury's early novels examining the loss of American innocence after the Atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagazaki.)

Robert Luis Stevenson, Treasure Island (New York: Dover, 1903, 1st Ed., 1886). 

Brooker Horvath, "Thinking Inside the Box," Free Inquiry, February/March, 2018 and posted online at https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/9675. (Review of Arlindo Olivera, The Digital Mind: How Science is Redefining Humanity, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2017.)

Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 47-72.

M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), pp. 199-240.

Ilya Prigogine, From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1980).

Humberto Maturana & Francisco J. Varela, Autopoesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Boston: Reidel, 1980). 

Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980). (Synthetic organisms may be patented under U.S. law.)

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Notice, "Animals -- Patentability," 1077 O.G. 24 (April 21, 1987). (The patenting of synthetically created organisms has not yet resulted in patenting DNA that is "naturally occurring" or "born" even if "code" or methods and sources of information for A.I. systems is subject to intellectual property laws nationally and internationally. The development of so-called "gene editing" techniques has created a new issue concerning "ownership" of these techniques or methods. More importantly, this new phenomenon also raises the issue of the "control" or title to the natural -- or "synthetic"? -- processes or "substance" governing relevant DNA in humans.) 

Edvard Grieg, (1843-1907) Peer Gynt (1876) ("Peter and the Wolf").

Cordelia Fine, "Coded Prejudice: Is Technology Exacerbating Social Injustice?," Financial Times Weekend Edition, March 10/11, 2018, p. 9.

Safiya Umaju Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (London & New York: St. Martin's Press, 2018).

James Gleick, "A Geometry of Nature," in Chaos: Making a New Science (New York & London: Viking, 1987), pp. 81-119 ("Snowflakes"). 

James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood (New York: Vintage, 2011).

Mark Rowlands, "Blade Runner: Death and the Meaning of Life," in The Philosopher at the End of the Universe: Philosophy Explained Through Science Fiction Films (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003), pp. 233-259.

Mark Rowlands, Everything I Know I Learned From TV: Philosophy Explained Through Science Fiction (New York: Random House, 2005), pp. 1-26.

Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2007), pp. 160-175.

Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Western Philosophy From Plato to Popper (New York: The Modern Library, 1997), pp. 228-251. 

Kevin Rooke, "It Was Only a Matter of Time: Here Comes an App For Fake Videos," The New York Times, March 5, 2018, p. A1. (A "holographic" Elvis Presley and Maria Callas will be seen and heard in concerts in selected cities this Summer. The "layering" of images drawn from film with gestures by actors will result in more holographic concerts being reproduced on stages by way of three-dimensional images of the "actual" artists "performing" long after their deaths. It is estimated that a long-anticipated fusion of laser technology with these cinematic techniques is about five years away. Who now owns these actors' performances or images? Their estates? Sony Studios or successor corporations purchasing their intellectual or aesthetic "products"? The issue of ownership and royalty rights for such "performances" is undecided in American law.)

Sandra Blakeslee, "'Computer Life Form' Mutates in an Evolution Experiment," The New York Times, November 25, 1997, p. A1. 

Evan Hendricks, "When Your Identity is Their Commodity," The Washington Post, "Sunday Edition," March 6, 2005, p. B01. 

Shura Frenkel & Kevin Rooke, "Facebook's Chief Admits Mistakes in Guarding Data," The New York Times, March 22, 2018, p. A1. (Whose data is it? Who profits by it? Was this "mistake" made "on purpose"?) 

Fidel Castro, "If There is Faith in Man, Any Dream or Utopia Can Come True," in Speech at the Closing Session of the VIII Congress of the Latin American Federation of Journalists (Havana: November 12, 1999), pp. 10-13. (Prophetic?)

Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1992, 1st Ed. 1959), pp. 434-437 ("From Surplus Value to the Mass Media").

Norman Mailer, Of Women and Their Elegance (New York: Tor, 1980), pp. 170-173. (A literary retelling of Marilyn Monroe's life in the first person as imagined by Mailer.)

Sarah Churchwell, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (New York: Henry Holt, 2004). (A feminist interpretation of Ms. Monroe's life and death.)

Veronica Hollinger, "Feminist Theory and Science Fiction," in Edward James & Farah Mendelsohn, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2003), pp. 125-136. 

Michael Ruse, "Sexual Identity: Reality or Construction," in Henry Harris, ed., Identity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 65-98.

Henry Harris, "An Epistemologist Looks at Identity," in Identity, pp. 47-63. 

John Finnis, Intention and Identity: Collected Essays (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2011), pp. 277-321.

P. Basile, J. Kivelstein, P. Phemister, eds., The Metaphysics of Consciousness: Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 67 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2010), pp. 5-60.

Kristin Gjesdal, Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2009). (The new idealism and information theory.) 

Markus Gabriel, Transcendental Ontology: Essays in German Idealism (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).

T.L.S. Sprigge, The Importance of Subjectivity: Selected Essays in Metaphysics and Ethics (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2011).

T.L.S. Sprigge, The Rational Foundations of Ethics (London & New York: Routledge, 1990, 1st Ed., 1988), pp. 213-233. 

Sebastian Rodl, Self-Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 2016), pp. 154--160. 

Nicholas Rescher, Ethical Idealism: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Function of ideals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 26-54 ("Does Ought Imply Can?").

James Richard Mensch, Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism (New York: SUNY, 1988), pp. 262-307 (Selves as Information). 

Rudiger Bubner, The Innovations of Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2003), pp. 119-145.

Rudiger Bubner, "Habermas's Concept of Critical Theory," in John B. Thompson & David Held, eds., Habermas: Critical Debates (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), pp. 42-57. (See the Fidel Castro essay cited above.)

Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 1-23. (Frederick G. Lawrence translator.) 

Michael Dummett, "Causal Loops," in Raymond Flood & Michael Lockwood, eds., The Nature of Time (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990, 1st ed., 1986), pp. 135-170.  

John Von Neuman, Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966). (Explanation and theory of "Evolutionary Algorithms"). 

Films Receiving Homage in "Blade Runner 2049":

Blade Runner (1982).
A.I.
Metropolis.
Minority Report.
Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman.
Westworld (1973, 2017).
Wings of Desire.
1984.
Brave New World.
Pinocchio.
Treasure Island.
Peter Pan.
2001, A Space Odyssey.
The Shining.
The Wizard of Oz.
Solaris (1971).

K/Joe: "It's O.K. to dream a little, isn't it?"

Humanity mostly lives "off-world" by 2049 because the Earth has become a garbage dump and climate warming has devastated food production. 

"Replicants" are "biological and cybernetic humans" engineered to serve as slaves. 

An analogy to the situation of the majority of the residents of our planet today is obvious and will be underlined at key points in the film-narrative. 

Not surprisingly women and/or "female replicants" (Luv) and computer programs simulating women as sexual objects or ideally "cooperative" girlfriends (Joi) are also depicted as subhumans struggling for self-definition. ("'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review.")  

"K" (Ryan Gosling) is a replicant employed as a "Blade Runner," an officer of the LAPD who hunts down and "retires" (kills or destroys) rogue replicants. 

At the outset of the story K "retires" Sapper Morton who operates a protein farm in a dusty post-apocalyptic landscape. K discovers a box buried under a tree which is only one of many Biblical references in the script concerning the "birth of the human species."

The box contains the remains of a replicant ("Rachael"), a character from the original Blade Runner played by Sean Young, who died during an emergency c-section performed by her lover and the father of her child (or children) Rick Deckard. 

It seems that a replicant autonomously developed the ability to give birth after falling in love. 

Is this birth in a manger-like setting a miracle? A version of the "Virgin birth"? Or an illusion that is technologically impossible? 

Birth and death are themes in the films as is the suggestion that traditional boundaries between such events as well as between human and android, personal and impersonal, male and female have become fluid and may be disappearing entirely. 

There are evaporating boundaries between and among "selves" since information may be the fundamental underlying reality of what we are that unites all of us: DNA, computer codes, mathematical descriptions of elementary particles, conscious universe models may all indicate that numbers are the only "real" entities and all the rest is merely epiphenomenal in a manner that would please Max Tegmark.  ("Is the universe only a numbers game?") 

It is deliberately ambiguous, as we will see, whether Deckard is also a replicant, or if K is Deckard's son and the brother of Dr. Stelline. 

This is to place K's quest for identity at the center of the movie's mystery and adventure as well as dramatizing key philosophical issues examined by way of these stories of "puppets" (male and female) seeking to become "real" boys and girls, men and women, through the discovery of a destiny. 

In addition to explicit references to Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Peter and the Wolf, the Little Prince, Treasure Island, and other narratives about growing up as a dangerous transformation there is a powerful invocation of the myth of Tantalus because K's search for the child born of this union becomes a search for himself -- a search that he discovers to be bound to the transformations of Joi (Ana de Armas) and other characters in the story.

"K" is also, of course, the title character in Franz Kafka's story "The Trial" that offers a critique of the depersonalized society reaching an apotheosis in the bleak and desolate landscape that is "2049." 

Joi's decision will be identical to K's decision (self-giving) and the opposite of Luv's (Sylvia Hoecks) choice to abandon any possible human identity in favor of a machine-like efficiency and slavish devotion to her master. Luv would make a fine N.J. attorney. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")  

This form of inhumanity (depersonalization) is something familiar to viewers after the history of the twentieth century. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script" and "The Wanderer and His Shadow.")    

K's superior at the LAPD, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), is concerned that news of replicants reproducing could lead to a war with humans or to the total replacement of the remaining humans by machines or replicants. This says something about Joshi's moral fatigue and near complicity, eventually, in her own murder. (Joshi says to her killer: "Do what you have to do.")

Humanity is in danger of being eclipsed or forgotten in this postmodern wasteland by humans themselves long before they are surpassed by their gadgets or clones. 

Joshi orders K to find and retire the child born of this union to prevent disclosure of the truth. Analogies to King Herod and the New Testament story place Mr. Gosling's character in the Christ-figure role which may upset Mr. Ford's Deckard who in turn becomes a very flawed deity. (Deckard asks K: "What am I to you?") 

K visits the Wallace Corporation headquarters. The predecessor Tyrell Corporation has gone out of business. As the original Dr. Tyrell wore huge spectacles hinting of moral blindness so the new CEO, Nyander Wallace (Jared Leto), with empty milky eyes "sees" only with (or through) technology, mechanically, primarily where more money and power may be found and without inconvenient human qualms. (Spielberg's Minority Report and A.I. are constant references for this director.)     

Mr. Wallace is seeking the secret of replicant reproduction to expand interstellar colonization. Mr. Wallace refers to his creations, including his utterly ruthless favorite -- the ironically named "Luv" who is a more sinister version of Rachael -- as dark "angels" and dreams of usurping the god-like role of creating a "life-giving" machine. 

In Mr. Wenders' "Wings of Desire" angels envy humans their souls. 

K hopes to find his "soul" by evolving from KD 6-3.7 (K) to "Joe." The name "Joe" is given to him by Joi who explains that he is a "real boy now." 

At Morton's farm, at the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil," K discovers the date 6-10-21 carved into the trunk recognizing it from a childhood memory of a wooden horse.

The wooden horse, like the origami unicorn in the first film, is a symbol whose obvious reference is to Homer's epic of the Trojan war, the idea of a "self-inside-a-self" is a key theme in the movie illustrated by various references to holograms of "Elvis" and the deceased "Rachael" as well as psychological transformations and "sharing of psyches" (Joi/Mariette) along with multiple references to characters whose fates are entwined, K and Joi, to say nothing of the ephemeral nature of memory and quantum theories of reality. With the loss of memory comes the disappearance of the self. ("What is memory?")

After K's discovery of his prospective identity he faces and fails a Turing-like word association test. 

K lies for the first time to his superior, Joshi, and possibly uniquely in his entire existence he speaks something other than what is the case factually. 

Joshi realizes that K's time is limited, finding it impossible to care very much about him, or anything else. ("Westworld: A Review of the TV Series.") 

Philip K. Dick's animating insight is that as our devices become more human and autonomous we become less human and increasingly dependent on our machines. 

Joshi gives K 48 hours to escape his fate. 

At Joi's request K transfers "her" memory (identity) to a mobile emiter, a so-called "emanator." 

Are we something more than who we remember ourselves to be in our life-journeys? 

Joi's brave decision will be to risk her "life" (memories) to accompany the person she loves, as she explains, "like a real girl." 

Joi, unlike Eva in Ex Machina, achieves the moral status of a person through self-giving love of another person and for a greater cause. This is the very definition of a revolutionary which leads me to see why Ms. de Armas was attracted to the role and may have stolen the movie. ("Ex Machina: A Movie Review" and, again,  "Westworld: A Review of the TV Series.")

The director is suggesting that most people in our world, especially the millions of women and children as well as some men literally trafficked (bought and sold) for sexual purposes, are slaves whose "real" lives are sacrificed to the comforts and pleasures of the rich in First World nations. ("Slavery Today.")

It is anger at these injustices and the harm resulting from deprivations of technological power that motivates this director. 

All of the lead actors in the movie understood this theme and brought the narrative to life with exceptional performances.

K has the toy horse analyzed and discovers traces of radiation that lead him to the ruins of Las Vegas where Deckard will be found enjoying a private concert by Elvis. The first line by Harrison Ford's Deckard spoken to K is a quotation from Robert Luis Stevenson's Treasure Island placing Deckard in the role of Long John Silver as K becomes the boy adventurer along with the rest of us in the audience. 

Holograms and layering of realities is emphasized with Joi's "inhabiting" Mariette during sex with K, offering viewers an image-of-an-image-within-a-fictional-narrative concerned with mythical associations and cinematic history. 

What is the "reality" depicted in this love-making scene? 

No wonder Jean Baudrillard was fascinated by the writings of Philip K. Dick. "Simulations and simulacra" have become so "real" and multi-dimensional that authenticity is almost impossible, or is now the greatest illusion of all. ("'The Matrix': A Movie Review.") 

Deckard reveals that he is the true father of Rachael's child and that he left that child (was there another child born of their union?) in the care of the freedom movement. K realizes that he and Dr. Stelline (a maker of memories) may be siblings or the "products" of that union between human and replicant. Two persons with identical DNA. 

The word "product" is used by Luv to describe Joi. The terms "commercial products" and "persons" are used co-extensively at several key moments in the story. ("The Return of Metaphysics.") 

If we are only "information" the question arises whether such information and biological processes can be owned by anyone. If computer codes can be developed creating true conscious A.I. (life) it would also become a moral and jurisprudential issue whether these codes are or can become "property." ("Mind and Machine" and "Consciousness and Computers" then "The Galatea Scenario and the Mind/Body Problem.") 

After killing Joshi, Luv follows K to Deckard's location in Las Vegas. Luv destroys Joi. 

The generic "Joi" as pleasure model remains available and is seen in fifty-foot tall advertisements gesturing at classic sci-fi films that coincide with the birth of the modern women's movement and the newly powerful role for women who certainly dominate this story.  

Feminists in Europe have applauded this movie for calling attention to the plight of women like Joi in our world. ("Protecting Sex Workers.")

Deckard is captured and offered a clone of Rachael for revealing what he knows of his special child. An actress plays the "Rachael" role superimposed on a restored image of Sean Young from the original movie, conjuring yet another holographic vision into existence, also raising the question of whether this or any "Rachael" is "real." ("Her eyes were green!" Deckard says.)

K will rescue Deckard after killing Luv even as she fatally wounds him. Deckard is brought to his "daughter" by K whose final collapse recalls the wisdom repeated twice in the narrative: 

"To sacrifice one's life for an important cause is the most human thing that we can do." 

Joi: "You're a real boy now."

In what follows I focus, first, on current scientific views of the universe and its contents as "information." I rarely think of myself as "information," but (I suppose) if human beings may be reduced to "strings of DNA," while computers or A.I. systems may be no more than "code," mere numbers, then everything is simply "data" of one kind or another:

"We can see now," James Gleick writes, "that information is what our world turns on: the blood and the fuel, the vital principle. It pervades the sciences from top to bottom, transforming every branch of knowledge. Information theory began as a bridge from mathematics to electrical engineering and from there to computing. What English speakers call 'computer science' Europeans have known as informatique, informatica, and Informatik. Now even biology has become an information science, a subject of messages, instructions, and code. Genes encapsulate information and enable procedures for reading it in and writing it out. Life spreads by networking. The body itself is an information processor. Memory resides not just in brains but in every cell. No wonder genetics bloomed along with information theory. DNA is the quintessential information molecule, the most advanced message processor at the cellular level -- an alphabet and a code, 6 billion bits to form a human being. 'What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a spark of life,' Declares evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins. 'It is information, words, instructions. ... If you want to understand life, don't think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.' The cells of an organism are nodes in a richly interwoven communications network, transmitting and receiving, coding and decoding. Evolution itself embodies an ongoing exchange of information between organism and environment."

The Information, pp. 8-9. 

This leads to the question of ownership of information, as I have indicated, and to problems concerning forms of information and "processes" (how to do something is also a kind of information not just a matter of technique) that may be bought and sold. 

Are there kinds of information whose sale may be regulated or prohibited, legally, for security reasons or because of moral concerns? 

A recipe for a doomsday weapon is one such dangerous kind of information. A rich but unstable and unreliable or untrustworthy person (Donald J. Trump?) should not be permitted to purchase or possess such dangerous knowledge or weapons. ("'This is totally amazing!' -- Donald J. Trump.")

Does capitalism necessarily lead to a view of human beings as disposable commodities? Surplus value problem? If most kinds of information may be sold and purchased then the rich will control vast quantities of knowledge and have exclusive access to biological as well as other natural processes which they alone will be able to manipulate. 

A technique to cure cancer, methods of growing food under water or in harsh conditions, even the genetic code of particular athletes and/or beautiful movie stars may some day become the property of, say, Jeff Bezos or Oprah Winfrey. 

The struggle of K/Joe for self-becoming is a struggle for freedom on the part of the "information" that we seek to own. To escape the status of a slave it is necessary to become self-directing by giving oneself to a cause or another human being or "person" rather than by taking something from others: 

"Financial oligarchy," Che Guevara insisted, "is not compatible with democracy." 

If we are increasingly plural selves, only the latest incarnation of a genetic story that stretches back for millions of years, then individualistic thinking may be the true error. ("'Self/Less': A Movie Review.") 

Like snowflakes whose mathematical forms are predictable and repetitive, but where each is unique, what matters is the totality of the accumulated "selves" and not the particular fragile flake that drifts and melts away. 

As K lays down to die snowflakes fall gently all around him in one of the most beautiful death scenes in recent cinema.

Newspapers are quickly rendering science fiction into controversial fact as debates over the ownership of your information on social sites, Facebook included, explode in the headlines. 

Not only is information of the most personal kind no longer withheld from public forums and impossible to protect, but it can be tampered with, altered, stolen and sold by persons acting without your consent and utterly contemptuous of your privacy producing fraudulent "background reports" perhaps.

Controlling or preventing such thefts or fabrications is almost impossible and even alleged "online security" may be sold to the highest bidder by the very people who are supposed to provide that security. 

Worse, allowing others to define us through alterations in public records, or sheer falsifications, is something many of us have already experienced only to be shocked by the difficulty of explaining that who we are at any given time is distinct from the "persona" or "virtual self" created by others for sinister purposes at their leisure in order to replace our self-assessments or the truth about our "selves" and lives whatever they may be. 

Never allow powerful forces in society to define you in ways that are convenient for them regardless of your wishes or hopes and dreams. 

The struggle for self-definition and personal autonomy illustrated in this story is made more difficult by technology. The metaphor of holograms is useful, again, as Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford (or Ana de Armas) find themselves transformed into characters on the cover of People magazine having torrid affairs with persons they may never have met in the real world.

Ryan Gosling's K becomes a "real boy" only at the point when he can imagine the world to be different or made BETTER for those who are disenfranchised and "used" as things for the pleasure of others. 

The challenge then becomes for K to establish or discover his identity through learning his place in this better world, how he "connects" to others, like Deckard, Stelline, Joi, and what he is required to do "for" others. 

K's Hamlet-like doubts about what is right or whether what he remembers is real is part of the process of identity creation for all of us.

All of the leading theories of identity are represented in this story: the memory criterion fits Joi who is reducible to "bits" of electronic memory that cohere, finally, into a choosing, loving, brave artificial intelligence or non-human "person" with the courage to love selflessly at any cost. ("I am only zeros and ones ..." Joi says.) 

K embodies existential theories suggesting that identity is about building a self in the world, something essentially social that is not a matter of internal choice at all, but concerned with committing to a role or being engaged in a larger social movement. 

Mr. Wallace becomes his "success" and technological power as much machine as human. 

Luv disappears into her role which is something that has become very familiar to persons in our world. 

Joshi also gradually surrenders her humanity to a job with the assistance of alcohol and cigarettes. 

Deckard is the anarchist rebel with a cause forever unwilling and unable to accept conformity to the strictures of any society. 

Joi: "Like a real girl."

The most controversial aspect of this movie is the so-called feminist issue: 

Are women depicted "unfairly" or is female sexuality "exploited" in the narrative? Is Luv a representation of alleged male hatred of powerful women? Or is Luv made the "slave" of Mr. Wallace? Is Joi a male fantasy of the beautiful and compliant female who is utterly submerged, as it were, to the wishes of her male master? Can much the same be said of our movie stars in general? Must young female movie stars "embody" male fantasies? And is it entirely possible that this is the point of Joi's iconic presence in the film?  

The enslavement of women to male wishes and concerns certainly seems to be a theme of this movie. 

The question arises whether this device is a matter of deliberate political satire as opposed to subconscious hostility to women on the part of the director. 

Clearly, it sells tickets to the movie for Ms. de Armas to wear several of the delightful outfits that she sports during the course of the story even if she is only a computer program. 

Recognition of this fact alone is hardly "demeaning to women" and far from unique to this director and story. 

Beautiful and scantily clad women are not exactly unheard of in most movies or advertisements, TV shows and political rallies, or reading the news on television and performing popular music for that matter. This says something profound about our culture that should not surprise feminists who have made precisely this point for decades. ("Is clarity enough?" and "Master and Commander" then "David Stove and the Intellectual Capacity of Women.") 

More interesting is the process of evolution undergone by the various female characters in the drama given their starting points.

This evolution (or transformation) is especially true of Joi who chooses her identity through loving K, risking her "life" in order to accompany him, even as he risks his life to discover the truth concerning his origins. ("'Westworld': A Review of the TV Series.") 

K/Joe and Joi share a commitment to one another that transcends all other challenges for each of them and that accounts for their achieved humanity.   

Luv strikes me as a familiar "driven" individual, whether male or female, willing to risk all for "success" of a material kind, perhaps a promotion, and in due course the status of C.E.O., or a judgeship in New Jersey perhaps.  ("'Michael Clayton': A Movie Review.")

A contrast is drawn between, on the one hand, the fifty-foot tall version of Joi with empty eyes ("You're a good Joe!") and, on the other, the genuine, evolving, computer program or A.I. system that becomes a "real girl." 

Enormous advertisements for Blade Runner 2049 -- not surprisingly many of them featuring Ms. de Armas -- reinforce the point being made here that is often repeated by women in the absurd or surreal situation occupied by "stars" of international cinema. 

Cultural illusions surrounding gender and sexual stereotypes are so powerful in our culture that to disrupt them is not only difficult or impossible, but could result in violence because people experience such disruptions as personal affronts. 

Western sexism may be inescapable, but it is not beyond ridicule or challenge nor dramatization for political purposes. ("What you will ..." and "A Doll's Aria.")  

Philosophers may think of this as the "Marilyn Monroe" dilemma.

A false or cartoon-like version of a person as a bizarre or extreme male "fantasy-woman" usually becomes more real to millions of individuals than the embodied human being beneath the disguise or mask. 

This dilemma may be lethal for the unfortunate woman trapped in the "fantasy girl" costume. 

The phenomenon also has a stultifying effect on men's ability to relate to women as "real" persons rather than fantasy-objects or toys. 

Feminists have devoted considerable attention to such phenomena, but so have many novelists and essayists who may not necessarily be described as "feminists" such as Norman Mailer: 

" ... the root of capitalist exploitation has shifted from the proletariat-at-work to the mass-at-leisure who now may lose so much as four or five ideal hours of leisure a day. The old exploitation was vertical -- the poor supported the rich. To this vertical exploitation must now be added the horizontal exploitation of the mass by the state and Monopoly, [Mr. Zuckerberg?] a secondary exploitation which is becoming more essential to a modern capitalist economy than the direct exploitation of the proletariat. If the origin of this secondary exploitation has come out of the proliferation of the machine [emphasis added] with its consequent and relative reduction of the size of the proletariat and the amount of the surplus value to be accumulated, the exploitation of mass-leisure has been accelerated by the relative contradiction of the world market."

Norman Mailer, "From Surplus value to the Mass Media," in Advertisements for Myself, p. 436.

If the machine and "mechanical" relations between persons have come to replace all that is organic in our fantasies as well as reality; if the predictable or "remote control-operated" responses we associate with our technological devices and, increasingly, with our leisure activities (including pay-as-you-go romantic or erotic "experiences") are all-pervasive; then "real live" women must take on all the characteristics of electronic commodities by providing all of us with the illusion of never-ending "bliss" happily becoming fantasy "objects" to reward men's perceived professional success, or simply transforming themselves into the "treats" due to men as a matter of the "entitlement" of the male viewer (or consumer) for whom most cultural phenomena are created even today. ("'Diamonds Are Forever': A Movie Review.")  

Beautiful women are one of the few viable "products" of poor countries offered to privileged males in the First World by way of the mass media. Slavery with a smile. 

Blade Runner 2049's satire and scathing comment on this reality is powerful and not to be denigrated because it is wrapped for us in an "entertaining" cultural object that also serves to make its point as we "consume" the experience of this movie. If the message were not entertaining we probably would not listen or pay any attention to it. ("'Total Recall': A Movie Review.")

The movie is far from endorsing or condoning this sexist reality, again, nor does the director "approve" of the various distortions afflicting female characters playing "roles" in a system of total social control (all of the leading female characters are driven to self-destruction), he is PROTESTING against such injustices by depicting them onscreen in order to ridicule "our" adolescent and absurd erotic dreams resulting in emotional deformations of women that are often best seen in movies and advertisements:  

"You might be doing a character who is very much in love with one of the other characters on stage." 

Mailer imagines Marilyn Monroe making this point based on her published interviews: 

"But it so happens that the other actor facing you is, as a human being, personally repulsive. Then you have to make an adjustment. It's no longer this particular human being you are talking to, but someone imaginary in his place, someone who could bring out your good feelings. Only, for that, you need a whole lot of concentration. ..."

Norman Mailer, Of Women and Their Elegance, p. 173.

Movie stars are not the only women who may have to use their imaginations (or pretend) when they are with a man. ("Protecting Sex Workers.")  

This is something rarely contemplated by powerful men making "use" of the Stormy Daniels-like vulnerable women who are made available to them, often unwillingly, or as a result of financial or other pressures. 

Dehumanization tends to be reciprocated which may be another definition of capitalism.

K/Joe: "To die for an important cause may be the most human thing that we can do."  

Replicants and humans are compelled to seek or create meaning in their lives as creatures doomed to expire, that is, equipped with an expiration date at birth, beings whose subjectivity (inner lives) must vanish as they disintegrate physically and mentally. 

To embody one's inner life in "form" -- such as works of art (like Blade Runner 2049) -- or to accumulate vast amounts of wealth and what such wealth can purchase, monuments or one kind or another, can be attempts to defeat death by leaving behind something of ourselves that is transcendent even if we are not. 

Greater wisdom may be found in acceptance and serenity in the face of inevitable destruction. 

We must come to terms with the nothingness that we are or become. 

In the first film the replicant, Roy, who is in a position to kill Deckard, prefers to keep him alive as an audience for his final words:    

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. I've entered attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched sun-beams dance by the Tanhauser gate. Now all these moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die." 

A life can be made meaningful only if one accepts that all human being is "in time" as a story or narrative unfolding against the terminus of death. 

To be a "person" is to choose our lives and deaths, to make them our own, through the realization of our projects that are (and must be) shared with others because persons are and can only be social animals. 

It is only because we die that our days may be invested with importance and value for ourselves and others.   

Love and creative effort demand that we join with others in collective struggles for justice (or "revolution") that are among the ways in which we "give ourselves" to others in order, paradoxically, to fully possess ourselves at the same time. 

"What we have called love is the way we can reconcile our search for individual fulfillment with the fact that we are social animals. For love means creating for another [person] the space in which he [or she] might flourish, at the same time as he [or she] does this for you. The fulfillment of each becomes the ground for the fulfillment of the other. [This is the "dialectic" in Marxist or Hegelian terms.] When we realize our natures in this way, we are at our best. This is partly because to fulfill oneself in ways that allow others to do so as well rules out murder, exploitation, torture, selfishness and the like." 

Eagleton, The Meaning of Life, p. 168. 

In the single image of K's death there is also a brilliant cinematic representation of the many generations of human lives that are seen as analogous to so many snowflakes drifting from heaven to earth for a moment only to disappear forever as they touch the ground. 

This already famous death scene for K communicates the final wisdom of a complex work of art that helps us not only to come to terms with mortality, but that celebrates mortality as a natural if heartbreaking completion of our fragile "selves" enamored of beauty, wounded by compassion for our fellow creatures, hardened by hatred of evil, and, finally, (if we are lucky) achieving a kind of peace that can only be called grace.