From Voight-Kampff to Baseline Test: By Way of an Introduction

Research Output

Focusing the differences between the famous Voight-Kampff test of the original Blade Runner film and the apparently more straightforward Baseline test of Blade Runner 2049, this essay seeks to draw out some key conceptual shifts in emphasis between the two films and thus paves the way for the various essays to follow. Where the Voight-Kampff test might be understood to foreground memory and the replicants’ gap in personal experience and connection, it also rests on a logic of anticipation which is absent from the more clinical Baseline test. This absence points to an absence of hope, a lack which then motivates a potentially revolutionary dimension in the second film, in contrast to the romantically impotent revolt of the first film.

Date:

19 December 2020
Publication Status:

Published
DOI:

10.1007/978-3-030-56754-5_1
Cross Ref:

10.1007/978-3-030-56754-5_1
Funders:

Edinburgh Napier Funded

http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/output/2807909 <p>Neill, C. (2021). From Voight-Kampff to Baseline Test: By Way of an Introduction. In C. Neill (Ed.), <i>Lacanian Perspectives on Blade Runner 2049</i> (1-11). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56754-5_1</p>

Citation

Neill, C. (2021). From Voight-Kampff to Baseline Test: By Way of an Introduction. In C. Neill (Ed.), Lacanian Perspectives on Blade Runner 2049 (1-11). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56754-5_1