Adapting Literature

Strategies

Anticipation

I will begin with a short online survey (see Appendix B) as a pre-reading strategy, engaging students in a critical examination of their beliefs about technology. This will prepare them to make personal connections to, and larger generalizations about, ideas in the novel and film, particularly the man-made replication of humans. Because there are no right or wrong answers, this is a potent place to begin an open-ended discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of technology. Students will be required to defend and question their beliefs. The survey and the conversation it promotes will also allow us to consider some essential vocabulary like android, artificial intelligence, cyborg, cyberspace, robot, and virtual reality.

From here we will move to a brief background discussion on the work of Philip K. Dick and his influence on SF and popular culture. While Dick's sensational life story as an agoraphobic, paranoid, amphetamine addict is interesting, I will focus not on his biography but on some of the basic "Dickian" concepts developed in his fiction. I will show two short clips from the films Total Recall and Minority Report, asking students what issues are being raised and the possibility of experiencing something similar in their lifetimes. In Total Recall, adapted from the short story "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale," Dick focuses on implanted memories and the question of reality. In Minority Report, adapted from the short story of the same name, Dick focuses on pre-cognition and free will. A brief discussion about these issues will allow students to become more familiar with Dick's sci-fi oeuvre.

Reading the Novel

One of the challenges English teachers face is finding texts that students will actually read. Given the appropriate introduction, students will read DADES, attracted by the strange, action-packed adventure and socially relevant issue of humanity's relationship with technology. DADES asks readers to imagine a dystopian future where nuclear war and its deadly effects have lead to mass emigration to "off-world" colonies like Mars. Those who are left on Earth are insignificant, genetically inferior, or poisoned by nuclear fallout. The protagonist, Rick Deckard, is a bounty hunter assigned to "retire" rebel androids, who have escaped their servitude off-world and illegally returned to Earth. These androids are created for the convenience of humans and corporate profit. They are organic machines—the latest generation Nexus 6 model—essentially identical to humans, differentiated only by their supposed lack of empathy—a term that will be discussed in detail, beginning with a basic dictionary definition.

While as readers we are trained to sympathize with the point of view of our protagonist, can we not empathize and celebrate the androids' quest for freedom? The analogous quest of African Americans and other marginalized groups who have been dehumanized is clear. Ironically, the few remaining animals—and even artificial ones—have a higher status than the life-like androids, since to own and care for an animal is a means of demonstrating empathy. The confused social hierarchies lead Dick and students to larger questions like, What does it mean to be human? What is real? and How do we know? These are ancient philosophical questions that deserve our students' attention. Certainly in this digital age, students must consider not just how we are shaping technology but how technology is shaping us.

Students tend to read DADES and focus on the humanity of the androids rather than the lack of humanity of the protagonist, but the latter focus is crucial to a satirical reading of the novel. In a 1972 essay entitled "The Android and the Human," Dick argues that humans "become instruments, means, rather than ends, and analogous of machines in the bad sense. . .." He describes this reduction to "mere use" as "the greatest evil imaginable,"³ and I agree, imagining our world of cubicles and corporate drones, devoid of creativity or purpose. In this way, DADES addresses current issues with regard to economics and education. Huxley explores a similar idea in Brave New World where genetically engineered clones are created in conditioned castes for the purpose of maintaining economic and social stability, retaining the biology but not the "spirit" of humanity. In this world, homogenization and creative sterility abound and intellectual curiosity is absent. Huxley and Dick forecast the concerns of many educators who fear that standards-driven, one-size-fits-all curricula may result in compliant workers who do not think for themselves and do not know the joys of learning.

Similarly, Dick's novel encourages readers to question the mechanized life. DADES asks students to imagine what happens when we begin to resemble our technology? Can we separate ourselves from our technological creations? Has our quest for scientific rationality killed our appreciation for emotional intelligence, creativity, and the arts—elements that give us our humanity? With the proliferation of iPods, cell phones, gaming, and virtual environments like MySpace and Second Life, it is critical to include students in a discussion about the technology they use, how they use it, and how it mediates and shapes their reality.

Reality itself is an idea that is continually questioned in Dick's fiction, foreshadowing the ideas of cyberpunk writers exploring virtual environments in cyberspace. In DADES, Dick creates a future world with programmed moods, artificial memories, powerful celebrities, and a religious cult requiring a machine to access. It is not difficult to see the similarities in contemporary society with our liberal use of pharmacology, our fascination with "reality" TV, our commercial "programming", and the rise of the media-driven mega-church. Recently, scientists studying post-traumatic stress disorder announced work on a new pill to "erase" painful memories by disassociating the memory from the emotional response reminiscent of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). And new fMRI technology—which can peer inside and quantify our minds—may force us to consider cognitive freedom and issues of privacy that would surely have Orwell burrowing deeper into his grave.⁴

Dick's world is also a world where consumerism is king. As Eldon Rosen, the manufacturer of the Nexus 6 androids proudly declares, "We produced what the colonists wanted. . .. We followed the time-honored principle underlying every commercial venture."⁵ Like Victor Frankenstein, he does not anticipate the ethical consequences of his android creation. For Rosen, profit trumps ethics, and this same scenario clearly presents a serious problem for America in the 21st century.

All these contemporary social issues provide fertile ground for substantive student discourse.

Reading Strategies

Because a number of my students struggle with reading, I generally begin a novel by reading aloud. I model my reading as a thinking process, encouraging students to pause, ask questions, visualize, and clarify possible meanings. My larger goal is to help students see every reading assignment as an opportunity to apply reading strategies. I am especially interested in having students annotate their texts as a regular practice. This becomes difficult when I provide the class texts. So in this case, I keep post-it notes readily available and encourage students to take notes as they read. They may ask questions, make connections, define unknown vocabulary words, identify patterns, or comment on characters or plot.

Along with reading aloud and annotation, I have students read together in pairs or in groups. Here they are instructed to read whole pages, sections, or paragraphs. The key to this strategy is that the students determine how much they want to read and when they want to stop. Regular interruption of the reading is critical, allowing listeners to clarify and ponder what they have heard. This interactive practice also helps alleviate the pressure that so many students feel when asked to read aloud in front of a large class. At the same time, it demands that they develop their oral language skills, with a special focus on pacing, articulation, and using punctuation as a guide.

To further strengthen students' fluency, they will be asked to read independently and maintain a Journal. (See Appendix C.) This will be useful for the classroom Blog (see Appendix D), which will be used multiple times during our reading of the novel. Students will be able to identify and question characterization, overarching themes, and the use of allusions in an open-ended discussion with their peers.

Characterization in the Novel

The primary conflict in the novel centers on Deckard's feelings of empathy for the androids he is assigned to kill. His machine-like response to "retiring" the androids begins to trouble him to the point where he begins to question his own humanity. Perhaps he is himself an android. His identity struggle is at the heart of the novel, and as Patricia Warrick argues, the novel is "best read as the inner journey of a divided, restless mind seeking wholeness."⁶ I want students to explore Dick's use of the character John R. Isidore as a foil or second self for Deckard. Isidore, the simple "chickenhead" and victim of nuclear fallout, demonstrates the compassion that Deckard—the rational killing machine—lacks. Deckard hopes to kill an android so he can afford to replace his electric sheep with the real thing, assuring himself of his humanity. This desire could be a sign of his empathetic nature or merely his programmed awareness of the social status associated with owning a real animal. Isidore, working for an electric animal veterinarian, seems to care little about the distinctions between real and artificial, falling in love with the android Pris—identical in appearance to the android Rachael. Deckard finds himself in love with Rachael, but it is his unemotional wife, Iran, who may reveal the final, confused truth about what it means to be human.

These contradictions, oppositions, and tensions run throughout Dick's fiction. In terms of characterization, the doppelgänger or "doubling" effect of the machine-human metaphor can best be explored with students in a graphic format as in Figure 1.⁷

Figure 1

This format helps me makes sense of the narrative and will likely help students appreciate the precision with which writers compose their work.

While guiding students through Dick's characterization during classroom discussion and through facilitation of the Blog, I will gradually recreate this diagram on large chart paper so we can trace how Dick uses characters to transmit particular ideas. What I want students to explore is Dick's suggestion that there is a continuum between Human and Machine. Deckard and Isidore, while both human, represent two different aspects of humanity, with Deckard closer to a Machine and Isidore closer to a Human. The androids they encounter also exhibit different qualities along this same spectrum. The characters marked with a "+" have more life-affirming qualities, like Isidore. The characters marked with a "-" have more destructive qualities, like Deckard. Some characters, like Rachael and Pris, have both.

What becomes apparent is that over the course of a single day, Deckard and Isidore gradually change. Both characters are forced to confront the limits of human and artificial life. Through an encounter with his mirror image—the cold, machine-like, human bounty hunter Phil Resch—a confused Deckard questions his own identity and his ability to actually distinguish humans from androids. Eventually, Deckard rejects the violence of his profession for the compassion represented by Isidore, his alienated self.

In the end, both characters fuse with Mercer, the fraudulent religious figure that requires faith to "exist"—another way Dick is playing with our perception of reality. The martyr Mercer tells Deckard that, "It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe." ⁸ According to Warrick, this is classic Dickian philosophy—a recognition that life is difficult, even incomprehensible, yet we humans, like Sisyphus, keep on going.

Because most of my students are female, I will also encourage them to consider how gender functions in the novel. SF has long been dominated by male writers who have often presented women in the stereotypical role of angel or temptress. Beginning with Deckard's selection of 594 on the mood organ: "pleased acknowledgement of husband's superior wisdom in all matters,"⁹ students should be alert to narrative and/or authorial gender biases. After all, it is artificial females—the identical pleasure models Rachael and Pris—who lead Deckard and Isidore through a destructive, yet transformative experience. Revisiting "doubling" and a little feminist criticism, one might argue that Isidore actually represents connected "female" emotion, which must find balance with Deckard's detached "male" logic.

To promote critical thinking, I introduce various critical approaches to show students there can be multiple interpretations of the same text. Without delving deeply into psychoanalytic criticism, I will share one intriguing fact about Dick's biography: the death of a twin in infancy. Dick himself has said that, "If there can be said to be a tragic theme running through my life, it's the death of my twin sister." ¹⁰ Students might consider whether Dick's interest in doubling and reintegration originated from this event. With the advent of fertility drugs, twins are commonplace and involve a different kind of human replication that might be worth exploring further.

Themes in the Novel

Students will be prompted to consider at least four main ideas during class discussion, as they develop their Journal, and as they respond to each other on the classroom Blog. These ideas are 1) human identity; 2) dehumanization; 3) celebrity and religion; and 4) death and renewal. Clearly Dick wants his readers to contemplate these ideas, but it is not altogether clear what he wants us to think about them.

In order to develop critical thinking skills, students should be given the opportunity to determine how these ideas promote specific themes. It becomes their task to identify and defend a theme. Students should be reminded that a theme is an insight into human nature, rather than a single word, a moral, or a conflict. Themes should be declarative sentences such as "Empathy distinguishes humans from androids."

The following questions can be used to promote thinking about themes before, during and after reading of the novel:

1. What qualities distinguish human beings from animals and/or machines? What aspects of humanity have artificial substitutes and why? How did the ideas of Copernicus and Darwin shape and revise our understanding of humanity's place in the world? Will technology force a reassessment of how we see ourselves?
2. How and why are hierarchical systems of power used? Why might the rebellion of the androids be justified? When in history have people been dehumanized and why? How has this dehumanization been justified? Who has benefited and who has suffered?
3. What is the role of Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends? Does it matter that Buster is an android? What is being said about celebrity culture? What is the role of Mercerism? Does it matter that Mercer is a fraud? What is being said about religion? What is being said about belief, "programming," and reality itself?
4. What is entropy? How does this relate to "kipple" and the tomb world? What is Dick saying about the state of the universe? Do you agree or disagree with these ideas and why? How can you apply your knowledge of science? How is reality a relative human construction rather than a fixed concept?

When students finish the book they will brainstorm thematic statements on the board. They will then utilize the same method as the Technology Survey, answering each statement with "I agree" or "I disagree" and defending their answers with textual evidence.

Allusions in the Novel

Students need to develop their cultural literacy by identifying allusions and analyzing their relationship to larger themes in a novel. I remind students that writers use these cultural references to tap into the knowledge of the reader, giving emotional weight to an idea. The most frequent allusions come from classical mythology, Shakespeare, and the Bible, and while students often do not recognize such allusions, this reminder keeps them alert to the possibilities.

I will focus on two allusions in DADES. The first is an allusion to the mythical Sisyphus, a trickster condemned by Hades to suffer eternal punishment in the underworld. Sisyphus was forced to continually push a heavy bolder up a hill, but on reaching the summit, it would roll back down. This same toil is experienced by Mercer and those who fuse with him. Students will be asked to consider why Dick uses this allusion. The Greeks believed humanity was condemned to a life of hard labor, unlike the idle gods of Mount Olympus. What might Dick be suggesting about human nature? Is Deckard's job of retiring androids a "Sisyphean task"—one involving endless but ultimately futile labor? Is his larger quest—to attain an understanding of the human condition—a curse that keeps him (and all mankind) toiling for non-existent answers? How is Mercer a Christ-like figure, whose suffering encourages empathy (from the Greek pathos or "pain")? Does it matter that Mercer is revealed to be a fraud or is this revelation ultimately irrelevant to the experience of empathy? What if religions are just stories created by man? Would this matter?

The next allusion we will examine is the art of Edvard Munch. Known for delving into the psychological realm, Munch's appearance in the novel highlights the state of anxiety, alienation, and disillusionment felt by both Deckard and the androids. Before reading this section of the novel, I will show students "The Scream" and ask them how it might relate to the androids in the book. I will do the same with Munch's "Puberty," which represents a phase of life androids would never experience. Students will also be asked to brainstorm descriptive adjectives that the paintings bring to mind.

Dick associates Munch with the android Luba Luft, who is not only a museum patron but also an opera singer. She might be said to represent man's artistic impulse replicated in machine form. Deckard and Phil Resch follow her to the museum and are confronted with "The Scream." Resch says that an android must feel like the tormented creature on the bridge. His recognition may reveal his humanity but he still kills Luba without remorse. Deckard, on the other hand, is able to recognize the value of the artist, regardless of origin.

Paintings will also be examined during our study of Blade Runner, reinforcing the idea that a painting (like a novel or a film) functions as a text that can be "read" by viewers with a critical eye. This examination will also help students recognize the variety of forms creative expression can take. For adventurous teachers, a sample of The Magic Flute (performed by Luba) and a brief biography of Mozart's short life may also have resonance with some students.

Adapting the Novel into Film

Dudley Andrew, our seminar leader, suggests that where literature elaborates a world out of story, cinema carves a story out of a world.¹¹ This distinction is fascinating to consider (and the kind of conundrum that Dick might have appreciated). It is also a way to help students appreciate the distinct ways literature and film approach storytelling. With this in mind, students will be introduced to the concept of adaptation and asked to contemplate the artistic, ideological, and even economic issues that arise when works are adapted.

According to Andrew, there are three primary methods of film adaptation: borrowing, intersecting, and transforming. If we apply these terms to science fiction film, Star Wars can be a viewed as a film that "borrows" its basic narrative from the legend of King Arthur, relying on the mythic power of an original source. A sci-fi film like Solaris (1972) "intersects" with an original text, that is "the uniqueness of the original text is preserved to such an extent that it is intentionally left unassimilated in adaptation." ¹² The adaptation of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine on the other hand, "transforms" an original source into the medium of film, attempting to remain faithful to the literary experience.

Where does Blade Runner fit into this schema? The film is a loose adaptation of Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Ridley Scott was clearly not interested in fidelity to the original text. The screenplay—which had two screenwriters and went through multiple drafts—leaves out many of the important concepts found in the novel, like Mercerism and the status of animals. The bounty hunter Phil Resch is also absent, and Rachael's character is darker and less sympathetic.

The screenplay might be said to "borrow" from the cultural power of the Frankenstein myth and the biblical Fall of Man. At the same time, Blade Runner offers the viewer more than archetypal themes. This is especially true with regard to how Blade Runner exploits the medium of film. Robert Silverberg has argued that at its best, science fiction film offers rich texture and detail such that "the vision of tomorrow. . .will remain embedded forever in the imagination." He goes on to say that "The Los Angeles of Blade Runner is a unique invention, actually owing relatively little to the Dick novel. . .the city itself remains the essential imaginative achievement. . .."¹³

What this suggests is that while Blade Runner is indeed an adaptation of Dick's novel, it is worth studying not as a supplement to the novel but as a work of equal, yet radically different, power. Brooks Landon suggests thinking about the film as an adaptation that "frames" its antecedent, serving as "a lens for better understanding its source and as a mirror for better studying ourselves." ¹⁴

As a mirror, Blade Runner has inspired critics from a wide-range of disciplines to examine this imagined world because it looks so real. Using in-camera special effects, Ridley Scott creates verisimilitude—a realistic, detailed depiction of Los Angeles in 2019. Androids and flying cars exists alongside a decaying, overcrowded urban environment, lit by neon lights and video billboards the size of buildings. The mood is dark, reflecting the film noir tradition of the 1940s. Costumes and hairstyles are especially representative of the era. Even though produced in 1982, there is something timeless about the look, which modifies rather than replaces. The "layering"¹⁵ technique reveals a setting full of ambiguities. The culture of the past is recycled and coexists with the technologies of the future. Traditional boundaries between the past and the present seem to blur. This incongruous setting may leave some students disorientated, but this reaction may actually reflect the city of the near future, with endless urban sprawl, abject poverty, and mega-wealth. Because my students come from all over the city to a downtown campus, this is an ideal opportunity to compare our city and the cityscape depicted in the film.

The setting also shows that Blade Runner can be studied as a "quintessential example of postmodern cinema." ¹⁶ It is a hybridization of genres, stylistically incorporating the technological advancements of science fiction and the urban decay associated with detective fiction. The architecture is both ancient and modern. Power and technological advancement, in the form of the Tyrell Corporation, is invested in gigantic ziggurats, which evoke the ancient Aztec civilization and human sacrifice. The "little people," like J.R. Sebastian, live in empty, isolated, apartments that provide only sporadic shelter from the constant rain. Globalization—an aspect of postmodern society much more evident in 2007 than 1982—is also present in the multiethnic society that collides at the street level. The different mingling of races, languages, and styles on the street seems like a sign of things to come. And the film's vertical stratification of the classes ¹⁷ shows students a possible outcome of unrestrained capitalism. As a postmodern text, students can uncover the transformation of hierarchies. When once the Great Chain of Being described a world where a benevolent God looked down to man and man to animals, in Blade Runner, the corporation looks down to cops, who look down to "little people," and at the bottom are the replicants. Students should be prompted to consider what other warnings might be embedded in the film's visual design.