Predatory Romance in Blade Runner (1986)

To all the people who know that Blade Runner is my favourite movie of all time.

I was 19 when I saw this movie, and I was mindbound (like footbinding, see Mary Daly). The patriarchal narrative enveloped/s me. Even after 30 years of my own feminism. The patriarchy is insidious and systemic, and I have to work daily to find the nooks and crannies it lurks in.

I was so in love with Harrison Ford. He was an embodiment of the men in the Mills & Boon I was reading. Craggy, bad-tempered, masculine. Ooh. And scifi was new to me. New on film to everyone. It was shiny, it was intellectual, it was engaging, it was Mills & Boon antidote.

From when I was five (or that’s when I remember), I have been protesting the advances of men. I still did not see Sean Young protest. When I started to feel horny when I was young, I saw that women were NEVER allowed to want sex, NEVER ask for fingers in your vagina, NEVER ask for hands to touch your breasts, NEVER ask for a kiss, NEVER go to a man’s room. Everyone was scared (rightly) that men don’t stop, that women always have sex before they are ready. Asking is asking. And everything is asking. Wear makeup – asking. Wear dresses – asking. Walk on the street alone or in groups – asking. Ride the bus – asking. Get a lift from an uncle – asking. Read a book – asking. Everything is asking.

Society actually wants you to not do anything as a woman. Doing anything while being a woman is asking. It’s a social burqa. You and I know that the women in burqas are some of the most-raped women in the world, whether the burqas are social or physical.

Which brings me to what I feel the fabulous Pop Culture Detective left out… that Sean Young goes to Harrison Ford’s apartment. It’s irrelevant the reason. NEVER go to the man’s apartment. Shit men claim consent when you go to their apartment (see #MeToo for going to men’s offices also). Such an easy plot device to Blame the Victim.

Not because I think women should be in social burqas, I don’t think that. Not even close. (I don’t believe you should go to the shit man’s apartment. Men put themselves in the not-shit category in all the instances Pop Culture Detective speaks about. But we women should be putting men in the not-shit category if they deserve to be there. We get to say who is shit. This is key. Feminists don’t hate men, feminists hate shit men.)

However, Sean Young went to Harrison Ford’s apartment to have a conversation, a not-sexual one, an information one. By saying she shouldn’t have gone to his apartment, the shit men are saying NEVER go to a man’s apartment. This social burqa prevents us from participating in the world, from being journalists, from being writers, from being researchers, from being people who operate in the world. Shit men find our being-in-the-world problematic.

So many women I have spoken to have left their chosen work fields because they can’t ride in cars alone, go to troubled and violent sites, do house-to-house research, be on campus, be in their office on campus. Their bosses want to protect them. They want to protect themselves. And adjusting our work and social behaviour legitimises the bosses and the shit men’s behaviour.

It’s a vicious circle.

Nonetheless, this video about the predatory romances is fucking fantastic. Watch Predatory Romance by Pop Culture Detective!

All these years later I still love Blade Runner. I refuse to be reductive and not love Blade Runner for all the many things it taught me just to boycott it for being a part of the patriarchy. Now, thirty years later, it taught me about social burqas. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.