THE POLITICS AND ETHICS OF BIG FIRMS: THE DYSTOPIC UNIVERSE OF BLADE RUNNER 2019 AND 2049

Abstract

Many SF classics show a future in which executives of big firms rule over human societies.
There are various kinds of representations of firms that threaten humanity, like the BNL of the
film Wall-E and the multinational companies that control the UN in the Mars Trilogy by Kim
Stanley Robinson. Acknowledging that SF works tell us more about the time in which they are
conceived than about a future yet to come, what do these work tell us about our societies?
About our fears and ethical dilemmas? Lysa Rivera (2012) states that SF, above all, asks the
key question of “what have we as a society done to get here?”. With this approach, SF can
be viewed through the lens of its potential for emancipation that is based on current data and
projected into the future based on societal factors chosen by its creators. For this purpose,
the Blade Runner saga – Blade Runner 2019 adapted for the screen in 1982 and Blade Runner
2049 adapted in 2017 – presents interesting ethical and political considerations. The main
message of this saga is a future in which there is a high concentration of power in the hands
of technological firms. In the 2049 firm, Niander Wallance literally seeks to create a new race
of androids that will be “more human than humans” and he believes that all societies develop
by relying on a “disposable workforce”. Elaborating on a comparative approach developed in
2016 and inspired by Jean-Pierre Béland and Georges Legault (2012), we analyze the evolution
of the representation of the power of technological enterprises between the two opuses of
the Blade Runner saga. Content analysis is conducted of both representations and they are
compared, keeping in mind the sociopolitical contexts of the periods during which each one
was developed.