Blade Runner & Jacque Lacan

*Blade Runner 2049*’s blurring of the line between humanity and robot allows the audience to understand the connection between authenticity, meaning and how these feelings ultimately culminate into the want to not exist.

**The dichotomy of K’s relationship with Joi** - a untouchable, corporate-made hologram program designed to look like a human - **despite being explicitly told by Joi that what he really wants is ‘[to be] Wanted. Loved.’ highlights K’s cognitive dissonance** - he’d rather believe she was real and keep on living his ‘reality’ than understand that he’s using Joi to fulfill his own needs - to be wanted. **However, K’s later interaction with the Joi advertisement - where he’s called the name given to him by Joi, “Good Joe” - forces K to understand the connection between Joi and himself is meaningless.** He’s already lost Joi at this point, however **this complete loss of meaning to his ‘reality’ with Joi** - due to the implicit realisation that she was programmed to say what we wanted to hear, that his name given to him was just another line of code programmed into her software - **unearths the complicated reality he had been rejecting to the subconscious; K is forced to come to terms with his life’s empty hole of meaning.**

**K’s belief and loss of the proprietor of meaning in his life - Joi - explores the philosophies of *Jacques Lacan and Schopenhauer*.** *Jacques Lacan* famously believed in the idea of ‘the big other’ - that everything we do, our actions, beliefs and desires, all stem from what we believe ‘the big other’ wants. ‘The big other’ is neither a person nor a living thing, merely a symbol, or category that’s imaginary presence in our mind controls our every action. **K’s life being controlled by Joi - alluded to through his constant awareness of where she is - highlights K’s version of ‘the big other’ - in the form of Joi.** What K thinks Joi wants, becomes what K wants. **K’s reaction to loss of Joi -** becoming completely uncaring for his own self worth **- reflects a combinations of Lacan & Schopenhauer’s philosophy of desire.** *Schopenhauer* believed boredom is the root of all evil. He believed that once the novelty of gratification from accomplishing our desires wore off, we’d be left with the dreadful burden of boredom - with no desires to keep us in the state of striving, we are stripped of the belief of happiness awaiting us, and succumb to anxiety and despair. **In a reflection of both Lacan & Schopenhauer's philosophy, K’s loss of his ‘big other’ - and thus the loss of his desire - leaves K in a state of non-living; He’s lost all desire in his life, explaining his, otherwise avoidable, death at the end of the movie.**

*Lacan* famously stated that it is because of our difference from others that we can find meaning; it is the idea that we can have something that someone else wants, despises, be entertained by. Specifically, Lacan proposes the idea of ‘the big other’ - a entity or category that is ever-present in the mind, surveilling, enforcing prohibitions unconsciously on the subject. Lacan states that our minds best-guess at what the ‘big other’ lacks presupposes all desires - and therefore all our desires stem from ‘the big other’. **K’s, obsession over Joi - going so far as to work in order to improve Joi’s ‘life’ - reflects Lacan's philosophy of ‘the big other’ - he believes that he needs Joi in order to be desired.** following the realisation of his governing ‘big other’ - Joi - K’s life subsequently becomes meaningless - highlighted by his lack of care for his own health**.**. **K’s rash, suicidal mission to save Rick Deckard - frivolously allowing his body to be attacked, without care - furthers the idea of K’s depression - he doesn’t believe his life matters anymore, he’s just existing.** He’s merely finishing off the last thing expected of him - fulfilling the last desire of others onto himself.