CHAPTER SIX 

The Virtual Worlds beneath Blade Runner 2049

in which I define two theological visions—necrophilia and natality— and show how these inform weak and strong versions of virtual reality

 From any point within Blade Runner 2049, a number of different potential narrative outcomes remain active possibilities. The introduction of Deckard in the final act of the movie provides an option that had not been available to K. during the first half of the movie, when his options were limited to Joshi and Luv. At the same time, Deckard’s inclusion was far from random—2049 was so self-consciously styled and aligned to Blade Runner that the turn of events, while contingent and unpredictable, nonetheless felt satisfying. At a deeper level, the incorporation of the unforeseeable element that becomes an option for action that avoids less desirable, mutually exclusive elements, focuses audiences on a vision of the world as a space where hope is possible. Deckard clearly signals hope rather than wish, not only because his presence was unexpected in the world of the movie (and thus unable to be wished for as a possible), but also because Deckard’s presence fulfills an element that had been virtually present in the film from its beginning. A wish is merely a contingent desire for something other—it lacks the sense of structural cohesion that develops through hope. Hope’s sense of fit, as though the unpredictable, contingent factors were nonetheless at home based on a larger (virtual) logic, keeps hope anchored in a different worldview than mere wish.

The distinction separating hope and wish participate in deeper structures that orient us, as well as rival visions for potentialities the world would open to us. In discussing Gibson’s innovations in science-fiction, Hayles discusses the importance of point of view relative to the virtual. It begins with a supposition: “subjectivity and computer programs have a common arena in which to interact. Historically, that arena was first defined in cybernetics by the creation of a conceptual framework that constituted humans, animals, and machines as information-processing devices receiving and transmitting signals to effect goal-directed behavior” (37). This abstracted pattern board then allowed Gibson to highlight the importance of point of view: “pov is a substantive noun that constitutes the character's subjectivity by serving as a positional marker substituting for his absent body” (37). This, in turn, opens up a sense of narrative: “Narrative becomes possible when this spatiality is given a temporal dimension by the pov's movement through it. The pov is located in space, but it exists in time.”

Two considerations from Hayles’ analysis are important. First, in order to achieve narrative coherence, all entities need to share this “common arena” for interactions. Characters not located within the arena—those that are not information-processing devices or who do not exhibit goal-directed behaviors—are unable to “fit” within the narrative. This would potentially exclude (or at least incompletely include) entities whose primary reality exceeded our time/space perception.[1] Secondly, Sedgwick’s understanding of positions provides an alternative possibility for narrative: a position is located in time (from a specific, contingent, historically informed outlook), but it exists in space (in a real body, with objects surrounding it). The flexibility of position allows its location to change (including how you feel about something, the nature of your disposition) in time, within an embodied reality. This corresponds with lived human experiences of cycling through a flood of thoughts and feelings in a matter of moments (when you receive a first kiss, for example, or are told you are loved).

Following Sedgwick and Hayles, it appears that our shared reality is comprised of at least two intersecting virtual implications. The first is the “shared informational arena” that gathers computer systems, information fields, human actors, and non-human life forms. Within this arena, the virtual field is experienced by “povs,” disembodied attempts to grasp the pattern from a paranoid exterior in which all entities are accounted for and determined. This provides the protective power of prediction and the assurance of safety. The virtual becomes a projection of the essence of a place in an infinitely reduplicable format, often appearing as simultaneously “less real” (because immaterial) but also “more real” because essential. The primary movement in this virtual world depends on thinking rationally and mastering informational patterns. The most potent form of wish comes through projecting a likely potential future sequence given what can be known or determined from a present perspective facing the future.

The other experience with the virtual is a living, dynamic set of potentialities that ignites wonder and excites curiosity. Its willingness to engage in curiosity makes it open to experiences of hope (which could not be wished for, given lack of information), rather than just wish. This realm is populated by embodied, intelligent actors that hold positions that shift in time and sift through virtual possibilities as latent influences in a malleable, abundant sense of presence. The virtual, here is a sphere of embodied power in which interpretations of possibilities donate potential to the material and allow it to evolve toward flourishing. It is a space of interdependence and collaborations. A virtual existence is a plenum whose material bodies are interfaces to an unripened not-yet of potentiality, innate and inextricable. The primary movement in this virtual world depends on feeling corporeally and investing in desired potentialities that contingently and often unexpectedly reveal themselves.

These virtual experiences of the virtual world co-exist within Blade Runner 2049. Wallace, Joshi, Luv, and Freysa command power and control through the mastery of informational systems and patterns. These are conjoined with physical force and manipulation of the material world to effect a certain kind of “salvation” for parties deemed worthy of it. On the other hand, Joi inhabits a virtual world in which embodied life has a richness that she finds desirable—but to borrow, not to possess. Joi interacts with K. to enrich his reality with everything that he wants to see, everything that he wants to hear. She enhances his experience of himself within the world, rather than providing an escape from his world. Her value to him is as a virtual reality—a sense of his unexpressed self—rather than as a holographic escape.

These two possibilities—pov and position—correlate with two theological modalities that Grace Jantzen identified in Becoming divine. According to Jantzen, most contemporary Anglo-American theology is predicated on a model of salvation tied to a necrophilic imaginary—continually referencing death. Salvation is of the “soul,” which (relative to the terminology of this essay) can be seen as a disembodied virtual essence of the self. The place of privilege is that of “God,” a disembodied external perspective and master of information systems and the corresponding power structures (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence). Desire takes the form of a paranoid protection from the possibility of death (which infects, as a virtual reality, the corporeal self). Salvation arises for individuals who obtain the proper pov and thus remain undetermined relative to other intelligent actors whose patterns render them predictable. Hope is reduced to a series of markers along a path that aligns you toward a disembodied, undetermined, controlled future.

The other alternative that Jantzen discusses is that of natality. This position appreciates our shared heritage as born from women, rather than an individual destiny in death as one’s ownmost existential potential. Rather than “salvation” from a world of life/death (replaying the binary of presence/absence read through pattern/randomness), Jantzen emphasizes the importance of flourishing. Flourishing occurs in a rich, abundant context in which, far from depriving me, your betterment improves my chances in life. Because surprises are just as often welcome and life-enhancing as not, and because there’s a rich pleasure that accompanies an unexpected good, my attention goes to ensuring the enrichment of all life around me. I do not look forward to a “future” that is radically transformed or otherworldly, but instead—grounded in a position located in time, existing in space—I attempt to influence the development of virtual potentials in a direction that will be good for everyone, universal flourishing.

As an intelligent actor in the world of Blade Runner 2049, K.’s choice to bring Deckard to the child, rather than to bring the child to Wallace, indicates a position that gravitates toward what Jantzen would call flourishing. He chooses this even though, stabbed, he is bleeding (in Kafka’s words) “like a dog” from his battle with Luv. His actions influence the shared environment around him without his attempting to have control. Having understood the importance of the parent-child relationship as an observable non-reality, K. changes who he is (a programmed entity without autonomy to an entity whose character builds from a determined past into an unknowable future) by virtue of what he does. The movie in this way discloses a way out of the kind of violence caused by the anxiety about death that both caused the need to create Replicants and was echoed in the desire to destroy (“retire”) them.

[1] An excellent example of this is Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life,” which was the basis of the movie Arrival (also directed by Villenueve), and features entities whose language and temporality differ from ours. Their intrusion into the narrative ultimately transforms traditional plot possibilities. In most narratives (books or movies), the temporal reality of the audience is excluded relative to the story line of characters.