Reading Like A Replicant: Blade Runner 2049, Pale Fire, and the Archival Embodiment of Literature

Lee Campbell

doi:10.17742/IMAGE29695

Authors

Lee Campbell

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE29695

Abstract

If androids dream of electric sheep, do replicants read analog novels? In the dystopian sci-fi world of Blade Runner 2049 (2017), literature plays a complex role. In particular, the film engages in a multi-leveled way with Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pale Fire (1962). A hardcover copy of the book appears in one scene, and it is quoted and covertly referenced in others. These appearances are like metafictive keys to a pattern of possible meanings, through which the film both embodies and reflects upon its method of archival replication. Translating between codex, screen, and holographic media, the film reanimates its source materials, dramatises the affinity between literary texts and embodied life, and suggests that literature may be a vector of resistance to techno-capitalist archival control.

Author Biography

Lee Campbell

Lee Campbell is a Toronto-based writer and editor, and a PhD candidate at York University. He also holds an MA in Theory, Culture and Politics from Trent University. His doctoral research focuses on the intersections of literature, philosophy, and play studies. His first published article is “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing”: Jazz, Para-audible Cadence, and Deep Listening in and around Cortázar’s Rayuela. He is the Early Career Scholars representative of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association.

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