Introduction
Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 Blade Runner 2049 explores the classic theme of the cyberpunk genre: What is humanity in a world where the boundaries between the natural and the artificial are increasingly blurred? The film’s protagonist, Officer K, serves as a conduit for this philosophical discussion, representing a pivotal point between a soulless machine and a fully developed human being.
K expresses essential characteristics of humanity, such as compassion, empathy, pain, and self-awareness. The film’s central conflict lies in the opposition between K’s belief in his humanity and the reality that he is merely a deviant replicant. From this conflict, K’s self-consciousness ultimately emerges, revealing how the concepts of humanity, soul, and life can transcend natural and artificial limits.
A System of Cells
When Officer K first appears on the screen, we observe a man who does not view the natural world through pink glasses and who appears to have accepted artificiality both outside and inside himself. He is aware that he was created, that his memories are false, and that his partner is a commodity. K has no issue with “retiring” old replicants, believing they do not possess a soul. The existence of a soul, in K’s opinion, is what distinguishes humans from replicants, who are merely an element of the new nature of the XXI century.
The baseline test reminds K that he is also an artificial entity, lacking supportively distinct human sympathy, and that he is supposed to possess and is thus a subject rather than an object. The film focuses on eyes, windows to the soul, with Freysa lacking an eye and NianderWallace replacing his vision with machine “eyes.” K does not hesitate to rip an eye out of Sapper Morton’s skull as if denying him the very right to possess a soul and underlying his artificial nature (see Figure 1). However, Sue Zemka highlights hands in symbolizing the ability to “feel into” another being — a hologram, a replicant, or a human (Omry 108; Zemka 46). It is not surprising, then, that the updated baseline test focuses on hands more than on eyes, on sympathy rather than empathy: “What’s it like to hold the hand of someone you love?” (Bladerunner 2049, 00:14:31–00:14:34). And so it is the glimpses of sympathy that first reveal K’s emerging humanity.
Social Exercise of Affect
Ironically, the first signs of K’s emotions are seen in his interactions with another artificial being. Officer K works and lives alone, and Joi is the closest person he has — despite being merely a “very realistic” hologram, as he himself acknowledges (Bladerunner 2049, 00:33:12–00:33:16). And yet, K’s deep desire for closeness, for being recognized as a living human being, moves him to treat his Joi as something more than an expensive toy. As he observes her glee at being transferred into an emanator, K displays some semblance of a weary delight — though it is still unclear whether it is still an act or a genuine sympathy (see Figure 2).
However, a very different and much more emotional interaction is observed in the following roof scene. The first instance of K’s longing for intimacy is present here, with Joi “caressing” K’s palm and K obediently following the hologram’s movements, trying to believe in the simulated sympathy (see Figure 3). Here, the emphasis on humanness shifts away from a “solitary exercise of consciousness” to a “social exercise of affect,” signifying a qualitative evolution of the original film’s underlying theme (Zemka 46). As the following analysis will demonstrate, it is K’s relationships with Joi in her many forms — perceived and actual — that drive his character’s evolution and the development of the previously mentioned human qualities.
The First Lie
However, Officer K’s first real disobedience happens later, after he discovers a horse figurine similar to that in his supposedly artificial memory. What was once nothing more than a comforting image to maintain a replicant’s stability now becomes a wedge in a crack within Officer K’s reality. But instead of fulfilling his function as an object and reporting the findings to his superior, Officer K exercises authentic subjectivity for the first time in his life.
Because this is the point at which K learns something about himself that he is not supposed to know, realizes that he is not the person he is supposed to be, and decides to keep it a secret — his first secret. However, K is not the only or the first replicant to learn to separate their inner self from their public exterior, with Love masking her envy from Wallace’s artificial eyes (see Figure 4). However, while Love seeks to maintain the illusion of its own lack of agency, K immediately revolts against what he believes is the vilest possible lie — denying a human the right to have a soul.
This first lie is invigorating; it represents the staking out of K’s claim for having a distinct personality, hidden from the prying gaze of others. However, this distinction inevitably leads to an inability to express one’s inner self through language or articulation fully. As a result, the aspects of oneself that are most prized — dreams, aspirations, and genuine emotions — become the least possible to express. This mismatch gives rise to the fundamental need for connection — a longing for interconnection — not within a system, but as individual humans.
This lack of connection is exemplified by K’s artificial girlfriend, whose personality, as the movie frequently implies, is just an intricate illusion. And so, her efforts to support K on his journey of self-discovery are simply a well-programmed response to K’s desires. However, instead of highlighting the issue of Joi’s subjectivity, it underlines the difficulty associated with truly connecting with another — and how easy it is to be fooled by a lack of interiority.
Interlinked
The scene where Joi hires Mariette to temporarily serve as the physical representation of Joi herself, with her and K’s insides and outsides melting, again emphasizes hands and touch (see Figure 5). This act signifies the physical and emotional overcoming of separateness, the exercise of both empathy and sympathy, underlining K’s — now Joe’s — humanity.
Does this mean he has a soul? Does this mean he was born, not artificially created? The penultimate sign ofJoe’s humanity appears just later, when Love destroys the emanator, essentially killing his Joi. At this point, Joe’s world breaks, with Joi finally becoming someone rather than something and waking in him genuine grief, arguably the ultimate form of love (see Figure 6).
Real Human Being
However, the dream soon shatters when it is revealed that K is indeed a replicant, not a real human. This collapse is reminiscent of a similar moment in Nabokov’s Pale Fire, where a simple misunderstanding led the hero to a belief that shaped his actions throughout the story (Omry 111). Yet, this crisis does not undo Officer K’s journey — quite the opposite, in Bladerunner 2049‘s world, where nature and animals are absent, and only the self-constructed remains, there is an issue of defining humanity without a distinct other (Greenberg 11).
And so, other means of constructing a soul emerge from this crisis, allowing artificial to become synonymous with natural — or rather, for the distinction itself to vanish. Mariette’s paraphrasing of Wallace’s motto, “More human than humans,” signifies this subversion, thus fulfilling the ultimate idea of posthumanism: consciousness as an amalgam arising from complex interactions of processes and components (Bladerunner 2049 02:05:44–02:05:46; O’Connor 51-52). And so, it is the revelation that completes K’s transformation.
Complete realization dawns on K as he approaches a gigantic hologram of Joi — with black, soulless eyes (see Figure 7). K realizes that it is only at that moment that he is given trustworthy agency through the first truly impactful choice: to kill or rescue Deckard. It is here that K overcomes “the mode of determination and “non-choice, the blind obedience programmed into the Nexus-9 models or the freedom fighter” (Omry 111). Instead, he embraces his moral obligation as an empathetic and sympathetic entity — a real human being.
Conclusion
Officer K’s story demonstrates that humanity is not something inherent but rather something that emerges from an intricate interplay of thoughts, choices, and emotions. Whatever the original motivation behind K’s journey, it is the gradual development of his character that ultimately emerges from his agency and individuality. Similar to Nabokov’s tall white fountain, the soul is nothing on its own, neither a physical thing nor a mark of exception. Instead, it is only meaningful after it has been given meaning. This continuous process defines the essence of human existence and K’s humanity — the result of combining feelings, dreams, and experiences into something sufficiently believable to be real.
Works Cited
Bladerunner 2049. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Warner Bros.Pictures, Sony Pictures Releasing International, 2017.
Greenberg, Harvey Roy. “Blade Runner 2049: Tears in Rain.” Psychiatric Times, vol. 35, no. 2, 2018, pp. 10–14.
O’Connor, Robert. “More Human Than Humans.” Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy: This Breaks the World,edited by Robin Bunce and Trip McCrossin. Open Court Publishing, 2019, pp. 51-59.
Omry, Keren. “‘Cells. Interlinked’: Sympathy and Obligation in Blade Runner 2049.” Science Fiction Film and Television, vol. 13, no. 1, 2020, pp. 107–112.
Zemka, Sue. “You Don’t Need to Be a Human to Have a Human Hand.” Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy: This Breaks the World, edited by Robin Bunce and Trip McCrossin. Open Court Publishing, 2019, pp. 45-50.