Music surrounds us, no matter where we travel or what we do it is impossible to not be exposed to two notes that create a musical tone. People use music to sometimes cope with emotions, relive certain moments where they felt euphoric either by relating to the lyrics or even just through hearing certain sounds of music. In ‘Blade Runner’, the sound design of the movie helps us, viewers, tremendously in understanding and depicting the emotions and the environment each character is facing in each scene of this dystopian-thriller. Throughout this essay, I am going to focus on how the musical work of this movie relates to the mystery behind the cultural theme of identity depicted in the movie.
‘Blade Runner’ directed in 1982 by Ridley Scott and orchestrated by the talented Greek composer Vangelis is set in a dystopian futuristic universe that takes place in 2019. A dystopian environment is used to describe an unpleasant place or even the worst of all worlds. The Tyrell Corporation specialized in genetic engineering, advanced the evolution of the robots into the Nexus phase, which now makes them virtually identical to humans known as replicants. They are superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence to the genetic engineers who created them. They were used in off-world colonies to serve as human labor in the hazardous exploration and colonization of other planets. After a revolt from some of them, they were declared illegal on earth and persecuted. That’s where Harrison Ford or Deckard, the main protagonist of the movie, intervenes as a blade runner, a special force on the police, to get rid of any remaining replicants on earth. This is where the mystery of ‘identity’ comes in, how can someone recognize a robot from a human if they are engineered to look like humans by humans? Vangelis, the composer, does a great job making that question persist in our heads through mysterious chimes that resound throughout the movie and futuristic sounds through synthesizers and classical compositions.
Vangelis, working in a dystopian environment, where it always rains and thunder, no trees, plants or animals can be seen and where minimal interaction between people is met. Throughout the movie, I could feel my thoughts isolated in a hostile environment with only thinking about survival while being in a modern society just by listening to his work. LA being run by Tyrell corporation could only make the environment more anarchistic.
To understand the relationship between film music and the mystery behind the cultural theme of identity we must look at the work of Vangelis. As we saw in week 14-15 of the class, among the ways that critics and historians have assessed the cultural significance of electronic music, one dominant trope has been the idea that it has a special connection to science fiction and speculations about the future. And this is exactly how Vangelis makes use of his talent to produce music that is ‘futuristic’, but also sounding mysterious, as we try and understand each component of the mystery behind replicants by the way it sounds in our ears and fits perfectly with the futuristic theme of the movie. The key insight here is that electronic music allows artists and listeners to express the anxieties, fantasies, dreams, and ambivalences we have about technology and human identity, in this movie we can apply it when Roy, a replicant who was created to kill seems powerless when he has to kill Deckard, the main enemy to his cause. Another aspect to understand Vangelis’ music choice for ‘Blade Runner’ is the distinction between extra-diegetic and diegetic music and sounds. These terms are based on the Greek word for narration or storytelling, ‘diegesis’, and they describe how music relates to the fictional world represented by the movie. 'Extra-diegetic' refers to music on the soundtrack that comes from outside of the fictional world that characters cannot hear but help the viewers understand the mood the composer wants us to feel throughout the scene. In contrast, 'diegetic' (or 'source music') refers to sounds that originate in the story world that both viewers and characters can hear as observed in the scene where Deckard hears the record player when ordering from the food stand.
‘Blade Runner’ is classified as a synthwave genre, which makes the movie score sound like a voyage through space. It remains prominent dominant for decades in its originality and was even nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Film Score in 1984. According from fans of the genre, synthwave also called retrowave draws its sources from everything to do with the 80s. The main sounds and typical instruments of synthwave are similar to other genres like electronic music in general, synthpop, new wave, progressive music and space music for example. According retro-synthwave, “The origins come from SYNTH(esizer) and (new)WAVE which give the name synthwave. Some legendary musicians such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Giorgio Moroder, Wendy Carlos, John Carpenter, Vangelis or Tangerine Dream brought so much to this style. The base of the rhythm is also characteristic with sounds of drums (kick, snare, hat) directly taken from 80s”.
‘Blade Runner’ is an interesting mix between a sci-fi-thriller with a twist of film noir, which is a style or genre of film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace. The term was originally applied (by a group of French critics) to American thriller or detective films made in the period 1944–54, according to Britannica, to emphasize the dystopian environment and emotions felt by the characters. In the beginning scene, we also hear this voice on speakers broadcasted throughout the city about ‘escaping your problems’ and selling what it seems a far more utopian environment that the one Deckard finds himself in as well as a few bystanders walking around with virtual reality headsets to escape the view of the dystopian environment with reverbing echoes as extra-diegetic sounds. The presence of technology is heard throughout the movie with the diegetic sounds of machines making noises constantly, giant screens lit up in the background. It is also classified as a thriller for the nervous music and sense of stress and danger felt through the classic piano and electronic synthesizers as extra-diegetic sounds throughout the movie. The scenes of Roy putting his fingers through the eyes of his creator Dr. Tyrell and the gunshots to Zhora, a replicant working as an exotic dancer, who is later killed by Deckard help classify this movie as a thriller as well.
The theme of futuristic advancement and identity are at the center of the sound design of the opening scene in ‘Blade Runner’. Evan Puschak, creator of ‘The NerdWriter’, comments that the movie music in ‘Blade Runner’, orchestrated by Vangelis, plays a different role: “The score isn't laid on top of the visuals...It's not a guide or an addition. The music is sort of baked into the DNA of the movie itself. All the audio that you hear, including score, sound design, and dialogue, it's tightly integrated. Each blurs into the others”. As discussed in week 14-15, “Electronic music has often been thought of as the music of the 'future.' Given that science fiction often features speculative and advanced technologies, electronic tones and timbres can effectively suggest these technological worlds”. This is exactly what we encounter in the scene where Rachel meets Deckard which can be found in my work cited. The source music coming from the movement of the wings of the owl attracts our attention on the animal. The owl which represents the symbol of knowledge and wisdom, thus the genius genetic engineer’s pet but also appears as a replicant as it reflects every bright color in his eyes depicted in the scene. Rachel, Mr. Tyrell’s assistant but also a replicant, enters the scene with chiming sounds accompanying her at 0:09 as the beam of lights hit her well-preserved and radiant face which attracts Deckard’s attention immediately. This is one of the only scenes we’re the environment doesn’t seem so dystopic but rather utopic. The chimes also seem as if they were coming from machines present in the room as they are repetitive and resound through the whole scene. As if Rachel and Deckard we’re aware of it but not acknowledging it in anyway because of their ‘busy interaction’. The chimes can also remind us of a futuristic environment like almost the sound of a star shining deep in the sky which is only a matter of miles for the characters to travel too in the movie. What makes this a key scene and is essential throughout the movie, is the prominent use of digital reverb. For some critics, “it's the manipulation of reverb that gives ‘Blade Runner’ it's distinct feeling”. As we saw in week 5, reverberation is in regards to audio signal processing, the effect of reflected sound on the perceived depth or character of an audio signal; reverberation comprises the sum total of all such reflections as expressed by a prolongation of the sound, where individual reflections are not discretely perceivable. Essentially, it’s a digitally produced echo, an imitation of the real effect of reverberation and a variety of echo, except that echo has a long delay in between repetitions, according to Justin Morrow. In this case the reverb emphasizes on the chiming and stops immediately when Dr. Tyrell enters the room.at 1:03. The chiming then returns with a more mysterious tone and a rustling wind accompanies it at 1:06 as source sound, it brings an ominous feeling of fear and danger but also a sense of intrigue to the scene which brings our attention to how Dr. Tyrell is perceived as a villain and is behind the whole mystery of recognizing real humans and replicants.
As we saw in the last weeks of class, the film score becomes an essential element of the world-building which is the creation of an imaginary world and its geography, biology, cultures, etc., especially for use as a setting in science fiction or fantasy stories, games, etc. It is essential for sci-fi fans the idea that an unfamiliar world is real, richly detailed and coherent, as well as exotic and perhaps unsettling in its foreignness. In ‘Blade Runner’ this exactly what we encounter with the musical work of this movie relating perfectly to the mystery behind the cultural theme of identity depicted in the movie.