I have feelings about androids and AI.
http://CuriosityStream.com/ladyknightthebrave
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Featuring
Aranock: https://www.youtube.com/@Aranock
Lola Sebastian: https://www.youtube.com/@LolaSebastian
Music by Epidemic Sound: http://epidemicsound.com/creator
0:00 – Intro
01:33 – Chapter 1: Bioengineered Humanity
10:32 – Chapter 2: Cyber…punk?
18:48 – Chapter 3: You’ve Never Seen A Miracle
25:25 – Chapter 4: Human Evolution
31:41 – Chapter 5: This Breaks The World
38:07 – Chapter 6: A Team of Dreamers
43:58 – Chapter 7: You Look Like a Good Joe
49:46 – Chapter 8: Within Cells Interlinked
1:02:04 – Chapter 9: A Poem of Pain
1:11:22 – Ad Read
1:12:52 – Credits
Land Acknowledgment:
This video was produced on land that traditionally belonged to the Kizh, Tongva, and Chumash Nations. https://native-land.ca/
SOURCES
Queer Relativity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di1aTOJUncM
The N@zi Alt-History Show That Was ‘Hijacked by Sjws’ – The Man in the High Castle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyl7HzRHc9Y
Cowboy Bebop x Blade Runner – Cycle of Influence (feat. Spike)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxTDa6FK2iE
“The Art and Soul of Blade Runner 2049” by Tanya Lapointe
Sicario: Day of the Soldado Is Dead Behind the Eyes by David Simms
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/07/sicario-day-of-the-soldado-review/564257/
His agent brought him the sicario script
https://deadline.com/2015/12/denis-villeneuve-sicario-interview-best-director-1201664634/
When Did Japan Stop Being The Future?
https://gizmodo.com/when-did-japan-stop-being-the-future-5295925
Why Don’t Dystopias Know How to Talk About Race?
https://www.vulture.com/2017/08/why-dont-dystopias-know-how-to-talk-about-race.html
Blade Runner 2049 screenwriter Michael Green answers our burning questions
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/blade-runner-2049-screenwriter-michael-140033696.html
‘Blade Runner 2049’ Writers on the Ending, If Deckard Is a Replicant, More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1ibTaoVU4g
Blade Runner 2049 Screenwriters Decode the Secrets of the Acclaimed Sequel
https://www.cbr.com/blade-runner-2049-hampton-fancher-michael-green-interview/
Why Does Sci-Fi Love Asian Culture But Not Asian Characters?
https://www.slashfilm.com/553849/blade-runner-2049-asian-culture/
Cyberpunk Cities Fetishize Asian Culture But Have No Asians
https://www.vice.com/en/article/mb7yqx/cyberpunk-cities-fetishize-asian-culture-but-have-no-asians-blade-runner
The Dubious Portrayal of Women in ‘Blade Runner 2049’
http://theyorker.co.uk/film-and-tv/the-dubious-portrayal-of-women-in-blade-runner-2049
Is Blade Runner 2049 sexist – or a fair depiction of a dystopian future?
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/09/is-blade-runner-2049-a-sexist-film-or-a-fair-depiction-of-a-dystopic-future
why blade runner 2049 is a misogynistic mess
https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/evpwga/blade-runner-2049-sexist-misogynistic-mess
Blade Runner’s problem with women remains unsolved in its sequel
https://theconversation.com/blade-runners-problem-with-women-remains-unsolved-in-its-sequel-85398
Director Denis Villeneuve Tries to Defend His Portrayal of Women in Blade Runner 2049
https://www.themarysue.com/denis-villeneuve-blade-runner-2049-women/
Interview: ‘Dune’ director Denis Villeneuve made a movie to satisfy his teenage self
https://preview.houstonchronicle.com/movies-tv/interview-dune-director-denis-villeneuve-16542883
Denis Villeneuve: ‘I’m obsessed by the idea that humans can evolve’
https://lwlies.com/interviews/denis-villeneuve-dune/
Denis Villeneuve’s Un 32 aout sur terre: Lost in the desert
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Denis+Villeneuve%27s+Un+32+aout+sur+terre%3A+Lost+in+the+desert.-a030136605
VFX Artists Refusing to Work With Marvel Due to Stress and Overwork: ‘They’re a Horrible Client’
https://www.primetimer.com/news/vfx-artists-marvel-stress
source
New LKTB video?!
You GD right.
Excellent video . The epilogue hits hard. Thank u for this video
I always love any essay on blade runner 2049 hearing people gush and love on it just makes me so happy. And just brings back up my deep love for the movie, it’s truly one of my most favorite movies of all time.
Villeneuve loves the desert, huh?
Wonder why he'd want to remake Dune…
You can see the overwhelming influence of American aesthetics and design all over the world. Often times you can see people talk about American movie actors or movies or products or behavior in foreign movies and yet there isn't a single American of any race or color in them. It is pretty clear why they use the Asian aesthetic, first, it looks cool, and second, it follows a line of thinking about East Asian economic and cultural impact on the world affects the future. Good job missing the point there. The discussion isn't about where are the non-whites in dystopia but why aren't people able to have a nuanced discussion about bigotry and racism in dystopias. When it is the focus it's always laughably dramatic or it's unable to correctly represent it. I think it's because real racism and fictional racism cannot talk about or represent the same issues. If you want to talk about racism make it so just set in the future. Not with robots or aliens but with actual people. Bigotry isn't some interchangeable experience to be used for dramatic effect.
Within Cells Interlinked.
Great Video! I loved it! BR 2049 is my favorite film.
This was such a good video
Fantastic essay, thank you for this.
the day you were born was the day god decided that the world could not exist without you… thank you
If a Western Movie uses the "Asian Cyberpunk Aesthetic" and then populates it with even a near-majority of Asian Characters and extras, then media critics will complain that the movies is RACIST in its depiction of how Asians have created (are responsible for) the future as a dystopian (in its most negative sense) world.
Plenty of countries have a huge English language/Latin character presence without many anglo-celts being physically around, why couldn't it be the same in a world where 80s Japan continued on to become the dominant economic and cultural power? Dumb nitpick, I'm out.
56:06 my name is also Sebastian lol
Woman, that video was a journey!! It broke me. I know it's just a vídeo about a movie, but beyond the amazing read you had from it, it was everything I've needing to hear recently. ❤️
I also found the original movie altogether pretty uninteresting, and yet this movie also really sunk its claws deep into me. The cinematography, the architecture, the characters, the relation between K and Joi. It's altogether such an incredible experience, and I have a hard time pinpointing why, but various video-essays do help and yours is one of those!
Bautista smokes that scene. It annoys me how good he is because now I realize other directors haven’t given him a proper chance
With incels interlinked
Ty for this
I really liked this movie and I came in to see a critique. Why do you have to yammer on for 5 minutes about a thing that it does NOT have, which is discussion on racism. How brinwashed are you that you cannot look at a piece of media without thinking about racism, and if it's absent it bothers you. It really fucking irks me how insane you white americans are, I mean, jesus. I'm not white by the way. Downvoting
This is one of my favorite movies! A few years back while I was in undergrad film studies, I wrote a paper approaching BR2049 from the perspective of the Donna Haraway cyborg and reproductive futurism (gotta have some direct criticism of capitalism in a proper cyberpunk story after all), both in contrast to the original film and on its own. I'm glad I found this video and channel; you completely blew me away with ideas I never even considered here, and I loved that we actually agreed on Joi's role in the film (at the time I thought it was controversial as an undergrad to go that route in the face of all the other opposing critics lol).
I almost never sign into my account, but I really had to say thanks for this video, it really is top notch, inspiring work and I look forward to seeing more!
11:30 only racists care about race
Am I blind?! I don't see Rick's eyes lit in that clip.
Damn, you manage you make me cry in basically all of these. Even ones where I have no knowledge of the media you’re talking about. Amazing as always.
This is one of my favorite films, watched it many times. It never occurred to me there might be some kind of special tactile interface between AI and replicants. Really smart, damn.
Love that you cited Angelica Jade Bastien. I found her through one of my favorite podcasts, We Hate Movies
I think the topic of whether the "real" Joi's relationship to K/Joe was "genuine" or "manufactured" can be explored if you flip the premise of "are the experiences of the Replicants and AI inherently lesser in value than humans" to "are the experiences of the humans inherently greater in value than Replicants and AI". At its most base level, the entire human experience boils down to chemicals firing off neurons in response to environmental stimuli. That's it. All your memories, hopes and dreams, every feeling you ever had for anyone or anything, even your very own perception of the self and "reality" are constituted by nothing but sparks flying between gaps. Our brains and our minds use tricks to juggle this mass of activity; false memories, stimuli associations, skewed perceptions, the unconscious "gaps" in cognition. Instinctual subconscious "programing" (the id) keeps us within an operating band. Thusly, there is always a layer of construction, of "artificiality" to the human experience, whether one is aware of it or not. So why, then, is it treated as more valuable, more "real" than these synthetic people? Because we were born of the pressures of evolution? Yet surely they were designed under an iterative process. Because we were "born" in a womb? The piece by piece manufacturing of our cells into a whole are surely analogous of the factories that produced these beings. Is it because we have a "soul"? A creation born from the same processes that claim to have it, subjective and nearly undefinable. A phantasm as equally "artificial" as the rest of the mind.
I think what truly defines these beings' existences is context. The context of these experiences is what matters. Joi may be not be "real", her relationship with K/Joe may be born under the crucible of artificial boundaries and programing. But contextually, in the moment of experience, it was real to K/Joe. And it was real to Joi. As real as Deckard's relationship to Racheal. It's artificially doesn't really matter. The human experience is filled with artificiality. But the context on which it is used with the people and world around us is what gives it percieved value to us. Does it really matter if it was "real"? Does it matter if your treasured memories are as accurate as you believe? Does it matter that the reason you love someone is because the chemicals in your head made it so? Ironically, the value of what people constitute a "soul" exists singularly within this context.
I think this is something that K/Joe comes to discover for himself while facing the Joi advertisement. Not only in terms of his relationship with Joi, but also in his experience as himself. It doesn't matter that it or he was artificial, because the context that artificialality existed in matters to him. He valued what he had. And so, he becomes prepared to face his fate by the end of the film.
That's my simplistic reading of it, anyways. I'm sure there's holes in my argument and one can counter argue compellingly. Another line of thought related to this concept that I wanted to bring up: If another species of human were alive today (say, H. Neanderthalensis) alongside H. Sapiens, would their experiences "differ" from ours, and would we value their experiences as much as are own? Would the "difference" matter in the end?
I love BR2049. Thank you for taking the time to talk about this beautiful film.
its aimed at guys ….guys are sadder when women die
Just real quick RE: the first Blade Runner. I've always thought that the point of the story wasn't "what makes you a person," rather, it is "does it even matter if you're a person?"
Is Deckard a replicant? Is he human? It doesn't matter because he's still the same slave that kills other slaves. Gaff's last line of "It's too bad she won't last. But then again, who does?" drives home the fact that there is no functional difference between humans who are made to kill and replicants who are made to kill. In 2049, K is the Deckard as a replicant character, as a given.
Also, the whitewashing of dystopias I think is a by-product of the futurist idea of the human genome being homogenized through interbreeding (a nightmare for some, I'm sure) until everyone becomes the same flat, raceless mix with no discerning racial features. As far as why we don't really see any Asians in Blade Runner for example when Asian people clearly still exist (and I will stoop to some hoop-jumping here), is maybe based in the fear in the 80s (I lived through them, this was a real thing) that the Japanese and Chinese would just buy all of America but not live there, instead being these distant overlords who influenced American culture to an extreme degree, but were aloof and faceless. Absurd, I know. But….Regan's America was a helluva place.
I viewed K's response to seeing "Joi" not as despair at the idea that his Joi was "fake," but rather that at that moment, just after the revelation that he wasn't special but rather just another manufactured life, he was reminded that Joi was also mass produced – and that as a result of this technically, society treats her and him as disposable, worthless, their lives meaningless. What I think I see in K's expression at that moment is the anger and frustration at the world for that fact. And the action K takes that follows, from saving Deckard to reuniting Deckard with his daughter, stemmed both from the goodness of his heart and defiance to the idea imposed upon him by the world that his life is meaningless. He dies in satisfaction that even a normal, unremarkable replicant, a life born of an assembly line like himself or his Joi, can catalyze the change that breaks this world. K didn't need to be "special," he just needed to be true to himself – the good Joe that his Joi fell in love with.
Blade runner is boring AF
The fact that you complain about Mr. Cotton being a child slaver means you've missed one of the fundamental aspects of the cyberpunk genre. Cyberpunk is a form of dystopia. Everyone in cyberpunk is, to some varying degree, an asshole. The more you see of any given character, the more you will see that they're an asshole.
The big reason why you won't see much but pale-skinned people is because we're used to being portrayed as assholes. Hell, we're downright passive about it. Everyone else seems far less okay with Hollywood representing their race as assholes.
Think about it; do you really imagine that pale-skinned people sit around high-fiving each other about looking like the assholes in all these movies? You point out even Mr. Cotton's name, but what if it was someone pale getting called "Mr. Cracker", "Mr. Wonderbread", or "Mr. Chuck"? I'd bet you wouldn't speak a single word in defense.
We aren't the victors in these movies. We are the fodder. We are the ink that can be used to write any message, because no one cares what is said about us.
😭😭😭😭😭😭