this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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Great vid, thanks!
When I saw the film I had some female friends tell me they felt uncomfortable with objectification and portrayal of women in the film. And I can’t disagree. But I always felt that there was an underlying truth to the dystopia of the film that explained that objectification, though perhaps does not justify it.
This vid does a good job at demonstrating that. I’d never thought about how much of a protagonist Joi is, but you certainly remember her and definitely feel the general energy in the film of lost and desperate agency.
Then, tying all of that back to older millennials and capitalism and how their feeling could ever be portrayed in film was great.
I think the film does justify the objectification, although it does still make me uncomfortable.
Joi is sold as an object / product in the film. We see her advertised all over the place, and I think we are supposed to see her as an AI girlfriend and feel a little sorry for Joe, at least initially - he's replacing a real relationship with an object pretending/programmed to love him.
And then we start to realise that that's not really the case. "Our" Joi has memories with him, and her personality with him is clearly different to the default personality we see in the advertisements. And so what if she's programmed anyway? - that doesn't make the feelings Joe has any less real.
The main theme in the first Blade Runner, and still a major theme in 2049, is having the audience ask themselves "is a replicant really any different to a human, really?". The clearly have feelings and are defined by both those and their memories (implanted or real) in the same way "real" humans are, even if replicants were constructed. I can't help but feel that Joi, and AI in general, is the logical progression of that line of thinking - if an AI is bringing up memories, emulating feelings, etc, then should you treat them any differently to a human? And does the influence the AI has on humans' (or replicants', which I think we already established to essentially be the same as humans) feelings not mean that AI can have just as much value to humans?
I think Joi being not just treated as an object in the story but objectified is kind of key to having people consider that. The first Blade Runner very much did the same thing but with replicants, and we've seen other media do similar with gender/race/sexuality/etc. It can be much more powerful to belittle/objectify/discriminate against a character and then tear that down and ask the audience to consider why it was wrong, than to just never bring it up in the first place.
I also just think the dystopia is kind of the point and objectifying women is a part of that dystopia. The film doesn't revel in objectifying women but rather women being objectified is yet another thing about the film that highlights how dystopian it is. The film doesn't try to normalise it in real life or make you feel comfortable with it; it just presents it to you as something that's normal in the setting, similar to the huge amount of garbage, similar to the capitalist hellscape, similar to Las Vegas being an irradiated wasteland, similar to replicants being hunted down, similar to Joe being a replicant... Very little about the film is meant to be aspirational or comfortable - the opposite, in fact - and singling out the objectification and portrayal of women just feels a little odd to me.
While I generally agree with all of that, and it is basically what I more or less said at the time, it’s still a film full of women being objectified and in some cases pretty senselessly murdered.
If patriarchy and violence against women weren’t a problem or if the film were about those issues, then all good. But we’re in a world where male v bear is an actual debate and the above are actual issues.
So I don’t hold anything at all against a woman saying that they think there’s a problem there in the film and that they don’t like it solely for those reasons. And in end, I’m not sure the film’s dystopian or AI-humanity themes really justify or necessitate the portrayal and plot points. It feels like other options were available and, TBH, using female objectification/ownership/subordination/violence as a vehicle and marker for dystopia is perhaps lazy and trope-ish. For instance, the woman who told me they didn’t like the film for these reasons was telling me shortly before the film’s release how tired they were of the sad prostitute and destitute brothel trope for signifying dystopia in sci-fi.
First(/second) season of west world strikes me as a relevant comparison here, where the agency and subjugation and control was less gendered without hiding at all the reality of what a female AI would go through.
In the end I think two things can (edit: both) be true here. 1) the film itself isn’t misogynistic and the portrayal of women in it is part of a bigger dystopian theme, and 2) the use of female characters for that kind of story just doesn’t cut it for some/enough women anymore who, without demanding “girl boss” characters, would prefer either direct stories about female oppression or portrayals the lean into more fruitful or interesting ideas and themes.
For me, as much as I like the film, I don’t think its story and point quite get to the point of making what happens to women in it feel justified in our current era. I think it’s totally fair for women to feel alienated from the film, that it wasn’t made for them. The majority of women aren’t prostitutes or locked down house wives with zero agency (or animals to be slaughtered).
Whatever dystopia resonates with women today is likely more interesting, frankly. Perhaps a bit more like the story of the protagonist in BR 2049 (who’s of course male).
I think it's a film where most people are being objectified and in some cases pretty senselessly murdered! Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista's character) is senselessly murdered. Joe/K attempts to senselessly murder Deckard. Joe/K is left to die on the steps at the end of the film. Ultimately, I think it's less about any kind of gender divide and more that almost everyone is just a victim of extreme capitalism. Everyone is dehumanised in the name of profits. Everyone is made to compete with everyone else for what scarce resources remain. And that's especially true for the "secondary citizens" the film largely spends its time with - replicants, women, orphans, poor people. Slaves.
I'd go so far as to say that patriarchy, violence against women and fertility are major themes of the film. With replicants existing, we see a world where women aren't needed to create life. With overpopulation and resource scarcity, we see a world where having children is less desirable anyway. The film's larger narrative focuses on Wallace, who is very much patriarchal himself and also representative of the patriarchal ruling class in the setting, wanting to discover how to make replicants reproduce because breeding replicants would be cheaper, quicker and easier for him than building them from scratch.
Wallace is cruel, power-hungry, sadistic, and dreams of electric wombs - of a world where women aren't necessary (because he only sees them in terms of their "function") and he can play god. He's very much painted as the villain - one gory scene shows him quite literally see him cutting into where the wombs of female replicants would be because he sees their infertility as a failure and something that makes them worthless to him.
Blade Runner 2049 goes far beyond using the sad prostitute and the destitute brothel to signify dystopia; it fully integrates them into its plot and takes a deeply anti-patriarchal stance.
I don't feel like it leans into them so much that they become tropes, personally, and I don't think men fare much better either. But while women's sex appeal is commodified - quite literally with pleasure models, the most clinical, corporate name possible for sex robots - we also see combat models and blade runners commodifying violence. Some of these roles are filled by humans doing what they can to survive in a capitalist system trying to crush them; others are replicants or AI literally designed and manufactured for those roles. I don't think any of them were used as markers for a dystopia so much as being part of the fabric of the world, the story and the themes.
I really don't think what happens to men in the film is much better. The film is miserable for everyone in it - it's an equal-opportunity dystopia. The only person not being crushed by the world and the system is Wallace, and not only is he the oppressor (so, y'know, not much sympathy there...) but he also doesn't come across as too happy either.
Joe/K might be the main character of the film but he's not special, and that's the point. His entire character arc is that he starts off feeling like any other replicant - ie, not feeling much at all because of all the emotional suppression - before daring to hope that he might be special and becoming more and more in touch with his humanity as a result. As the story progresses, he becomes convinced that he is indeed special. And then it turns out he's not, and he decides to give up his life to help someone - a woman - and that is when he really becomes special.
Almost everything that happens to Joe/K in the film is at the direction of women. His boss - the police chief - is a woman. The person who implanted his memories - and who is responsible for implanting all replicant memories - is a woman. The person who leads the replicant resistance is a woman. His direct antagonist in the film - Luv - is a woman. A lot of his emotional development comes from being prompted by Joi, a female AI. Almost everything that happens to Joe/K ultimately happens because of a woman, because they are the ones who are really playing the game around him.
I think Blade Runner 2049 is a deeply, deeply feminist film. It doesn't shy away from depictions of female objectification/ownership/subordination/violence - they are important for telling its story and getting across its themes - but it sure as hell doesn't endorse them either.
PS, @Blaze, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this, especially with the film being so fresh in your mind!
Thank you both for this great discussion! I'm a bit busy this week, but I'll save this comment for later and try to formulate my thoughts
Of course, take your time! I think Blade Runner 2049 is such a deep and complex film that you have to let all the ideas percolate anyway.
All good points!
Something I'd never really picked up on or forgotten was the fading value of natural female fertility in the film. Thanks! I'll look out for that more on re-watch.
Like I said, I don't disagree.
I'll reply with is the part of my previous comment you didn't quote (and rant from there I suppose):
IE, I think a woman (or anyone else sensitive to such to this issue) can see all of what you point out and fairly conclude that they don't need to like the film or feel like they're missing anything by forgetting about it. While there's dystopia all around, the focus and the depiction of the main characters is pretty gendered. I don't think you're really arguing otherwise. And I think it's fair for someone to conclude that they don't get anything out of that. That they already know all about the lack of agency of housewives or pleasure bots or the centrality of women's fertility to their social value ... because they live it, and are busy handling it IRL and this film isn't really helping anything.
It may very well be. Has Villeneuve or anyone else spoken about this??
But I think it's worth asking what makes a good feminist film. Simply having the suffering of women as a gender in the film as a theme or plot point etc arguably doesn't cut it. The general angle I'm pushing here (without having really thought about this question at all) is that today there arguably needs to be something useful for feminism today in the film, and that I'm not sure it's there in BR-2049.
You point out the various female characters around K driving his story. I noticed that too, but in the end, for me (long time since I've seen it) it didn't feel like women were playing the game. It felt like Wallace was powerful, Deckard was important and K was "us", the protagonist we relate to and see the world through. The woman were either bosses, attack dogs, agency-less loving partners (Joi), prostitutes, or indelibly special creatures in need of protection (Rachael/Deckard's daughter). The freedom movement and their leader is probably a notable exception but I'm not sure it really gets much screen time.
So it's dystopian but men are still at the center and women still suffering the usual things ... for what?
To compare, I'm thinking of the Earthsea series (by Le Guin ... if you haven't read it and like fantasy at all I recommend it). Its feminism famously gets on the nose toward the end (though it ends well IMO), but the second book,
Tombs of Atuanis a wonderful metaphor of womanhood told through the character of a young priestess that, IMO, does a good job at getting at how the roles people/women are forced to play traps them in labyrinths they don't or struggle to understand and that are darker than they can realise. I personally found it subtly haunting.Also, just randomly here, Ripley in Alien & Aliens. Many would say she's an early "girl boss" character (but done right/well), but something you forget about her time in the films is how much everyone basically flatly ignores her until shit goes bad and she has to save herself (and the cat or adopted daughter). Even if you're oblivious to feminist issues, you feel and see it in those films ... a woman who knows what she's talking about being ignored by men who think they know better with horrible results.
The Shining (Kubrick), where Wendy is totally keeping that family together (notice how she's the only one every doing maintenance work) and tolerating a child beater husband (in one release there's a scene that makes it clear that Jack had previously hit the child) and his career to the point of being trapped alone in the cold wilderness with a murderous husband because that's who he's always been (what a metaphor for domestic abuse). Again we get a depiction of something real today but elevated with horror in a way that highlights not what women suffer (Wendy and Danny survive in the end) but what trap they're in and how they don't see it coming or even understand it, but, you know, really should if they want to live.
With BR-2049, I feel like it's kinda just dystopia and the whole slaughtered women, prostitutes and hot loving-AI just have to be there to fill out the world. The video about Joi linked above was definitely interesting (like I said), but I don't think it reverses anything I'm saying here ... if anything its point was that even men are now living more like housewives than they used to (at least middle-class and lower millennial men) and so nothing really fruitful about feminism right?
All that being said ... great post! I like the film! I'm not sure it's deeply feminist though. I think it's got feminism in there within its dystopia, but I'm not sure that's a high bar and I think it bears the mark of being done by men (who probably think they're feminist).
Is it a good feminist film for men to digest? Maybe?!
Except, as your last sentence mentioned, it is good for men to see the issue portrayed, from both sides. That's not nothing.
Edit: those are some great examples like Ripley from Alien and the wife from the Shining who did similarly, but by a different means. The former shows the girl boss who while being a woman fills roles that historically were more thought of (even by women) to be held by men, whereas BR 2049 made it even more personal by having the main character be an actual man (sort of:-P), filling roles that historically perhaps women were more known to be in.
Ofc not every film is going to be enjoyable by everyone - some may not like it purely for the use of neon coloration, or for the sadness of it being dystopian. And the lack of agency is depressing to see.
Well, a counter argument would be that it’s taken a number of words for this to get pulled out in this conversation. So maybe it’s not that effective or impactful to most men?
I personally land, again, on not really worth it or at least a bit of a misfire.