Dreaming of Electric Femmes Fatales: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: Final Cut (2007) and Images of Women in Film Noir

Abstract

Blade Runner is cited amongst many as a classic neo-noir, a science fiction film which applies 1940s films noirs’ visual style in order to create a dark and dystopian vision of humanity’s future. However, this borrowing from film noir is not only limited to visual style: Blade Runner’s representation of women, that is to say female replicants, can be read as a reworking of female roles in film noir. When discussing women in film noir, it seems essential to pose some questions, i.e. where are they situated within the discourse of film noir and in relation to which characteristics are they defined? In answering those questions, different feminist perspectives on two female archetypal roles in film noir, namely the roles of the femme fatale and the redeemer, will be considered. Femmes fatales signify sexualized, active danger to men, whilst redeemers signify moralized, passive security and domestication. Generally, both roles are defined in terms of their sexuality, regardless of whether they are sexualized or desexualized, as well as their either threatening or non-threatening relation to the men surrounding them. An interpretation of the female roles in Blade Runner will clarify how the place assigned to women in film noir accords with the place of women/replicants in Blade Runner, that is a place located outside what Lacan terms Symbolic Order. Above that, Blade Runner’s orchestration of women is based on defining them through their sexuality and in relation to men: they are subjugated to marginalizing processes of sexual othering. Through a close reading of Rachael, it can be theorized that she transmutes from femme fatale to redeemer throughout the narrative. Similarly, both Zhora and Pris can be read as textbook examples of classic fatal women.