Frank and Blade Runner

In what ways does a comparative study accentuate the distinctive contexts of Frankenstein and Blade Runner?

Texts are ultimately constructs of composer’s imagination, which often explore the societal concerns and paradigms of the composer’s socio cultural context. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein and Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner formulate similar judgements about the bleak direction of humanity and their desire to overcome the limitations of human. Shelley’s gothic fiction was written during a period where a conflicting views between the scientific age of enlightenment and the Romanticism. Similarly, Blade Runner reflects on the technological hegemony within the late 20th Century. Through the dehumanized creators and the creations that are more humane than their creators, the two texts present a set of linked ideas represented through different medium and time.

Composers often add elements consistent with the societal values at that time to better communicate their ideas. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was composed in an era of Galvanism, when people started to raise questions about bringing life from the dead via electricity. Through Frankenstein, we are able to identify Shelley’s attempt to convey her disagreement in the excessive advancement of science; employing egotism of the Romantic period on the text to describe the disruption in the conventional lines of responsibility between a creator and the creation. The intertextuality between Paradise Lost and Frankenstein through the biblical allusion of Victor becoming ‘like the fallen archangel who aspired to omnipotence’, Shelley attempts to convey the effect of industrialization to the values of humanity. Shelley’s idea of the negative impacts of industrialization on the society is further emphasised through Victor’s realization of ‘how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge’ is.
Likewise, Scott’s film Blade Runner embodies themes of unrestrained technological advancements, which reflects on the...