Frankenstein: Reflexive Humanity and Blade Runner

While discussing Frankenstein, we frequently raised the question of the creature’s humanity: is the creature human or isn’t he? In many ways this is a loaded question, one that we, as human beings, cannot possibly answer, probably because we cannot possibly determine what qualities a living thing must possess in order for us to classify it as human. Questions of biology, morality, and language (among others) arise, allowing us to ask the following:


1) Must a living thing be created in the image of a human (i.e. anthropomorphic) in order for it to be considered human?
2) Must human beings act in accordance with human morals/ethics (whatever these may be)?
3) Is language a prerequisite for human classification?


While all of these questions certainly seem worthy of debate, they are, in all likelihood, questions that we will never reach any sort of agreement upon, at least not anytime soon (there’s a reason that people have been discussing these types of questions since Mary Shelley’s novel was first published in 1818). Therefore, it is not my intention to attempt to provide answers to them.

I would, however, like to cite a passage from an essay that addresses this general issue (i.e. the creature’s struggle for humanity). Timothy Morton, the author of the essay, writes the following:


We could call this obsession with the possibility of being human reflexive humanity. It is a very Romantic notion and is thus, not surprisingly, found in Frankenstein. It is the creature’s demand to be treated as a human being that makes him a human being: the contrast between the abstractness of that demand and the concreteness of his horrific body and his doomed situation is what makes this novel both tragic and utopian.


In citing this passage, it is not my intention to provide answers to the aforementioned questions. Rather, I am looking for discussion: why is “reflexive humanity” (which I interpret as thinking about humanity, thinking about being human) a “very Romantic notion”?

If my interpretation of “reflexive humanity” is correct (i.e. thinking about humanity), and if, as Morton maintains, this concept is a Romantic one, then I am instantly reminded of a passage from Chapter II of Frankenstein, when Victor utters “If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows, and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us” (124). Victor is echoing one of the key points in Wordsworth’s “Lines Written in Early Spring”: it is our ability to think, our ability to “Bring sad thoughts to the mind,” that causes so much of our emotional instability, while, at the same time, it remains the very thing that makes us human. I’ll conclude my analysis here, but I’d be interested to see what the rest of the class thinks about Morton’s concept of “reflexive humanity.”



In addition, I’d like to discuss Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, which Morton explicitly mentions in his essay. Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, addresses (like the novel) many of the issues that are found in Frankenstein, most notably the question: what does it mean to be human? My intention, once again, is not to provide any sort of answer to this question, nor to any of the questions mentioned above, but rather to point out some parallels between Shelley’s novel and the film in hopes of drawing some sort of conclusion.

In BR, humans build ‘replicants’ (the film’s term for androids, i.e. robots made to resemble humans) that they exploit for off-colony (i.e. not on Earth) work. In addition to being manufactured with bodies and/or brains that are perfectly equipped for a specific kind of labor, replicants are implanted with false memories that give them the impression that they have lived full lives, when in fact they are built with short-term obsolescence: after four years of existence, they will cease to operate.

In BR, we find again the terror that we first found in Frankenstein: replicants, which both act and appear human, force us not only to reconsider what it is that makes one human—they also force us to question our own humanity. To distinguish replicants from real humans, ‘blade runners’ (the film’s term for cops that are hired to ‘retire’ (i.e. kill) rebellious androids) subject alleged replicants to a test that determines their emphatic capabilities: in both the film and the novel, empathy is a human quality only, one that androids do not possess. Yet in the film, only the opposite is discovered to be true. The only character in the film to display any type of emotion is Roy Batty, an android who cries over the death of another android.

If we translate this question of empathy to Frankenstein, we get an interesting conclusion: the creature, like the replicants, is in many ways more emphatic than Victor. To cite an example, we might mention the creature’s remarks to Walton at the close of the novel, where we get a more objective look at the creature (in the sense that his statements are not subjected to Victor’s scrutiny). For he says: “My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture, such as you cannot even imagine” (241). It is at this point that we feel for the creature—we empathize with him—and it is through this empathy that we come to the conclusion that the creature, if not empathic, has, at the very least, “failed better at empathy” than Victor, to use Janelle’s phrasing.



BR draws directly from Frankenstein several times. Roy Batty, while speaking to his creator, mimics the creature’s narrative recitation to Victor when he states: “If only you could see what I have seen…with your eyes.” Roy Batty’s closing monologue before his death closely resembles the creature’s final words to Walton. And, finally, when Roy Batty dies, Rick Deckard, the blade runner who was hired to kill him, is present to hear his last words, and it is through Deckard’s perspective, much like Walton’s, that we are able to get a story. Roy Batty even recites William Blake’s America A Prophecy. The point is, there is no shortage of references to Romanticism in BR. Therefore, I’d advise anyone who hasn’t seen to check it out, and anyone who has seen it to watch it again and apply all of your new Romanticism knowledge to your viewing experience.