The Voight-Kampff Test

The year 2022 is the 40th anniversary of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, perhaps the most influential vision of the future cinema has presented in this generation. Moreover, we may say we have been living in the Blade Runner future for a while now, since the movie is set in 2019. It’s worth asking ourselves, given Blade Runner’s profound influence over movies, TV, and computer games, what is it that we learn about ourselves from such a shocking, unwelcome story of tyranny overwhelming everything we treasure about America?