Living in Noir Times: Blade Runner and Near Future Dystopia Are Here to Stay

"We're not computers, Sebastian, we're physical." - Rutger Hauer, Blade Rutger


I write this blog every Sunday night.

As I transition out of the weekend and prepare for the week ahead, seems like whatever time of day I sit down to write this, the news hits. And this entire season the news has been hitting hard.

We all know what happened today. And regarding that, I don't have any words.

I've been thinking a lot about what's happening right now and I've come to the conclusion that, once again, we are living in Noir Times.

In The Film Experience, the authors point out, "Like the ending in Chinatown, many of the variations in these crime film formulas may be the product of changing times. With the Great Depression, Prohibition and urban crowding and unrest, the crime film of the 1930s acted out social instabilities through the marginal success of a marginal detective, like Sam Spade and others. In the 1970s, after the government corruption of Watergate, the moral ambiguities of the Vietnam War, and the confused sexual legacy of the 1960s, the genre returned with a new relevancy. In Chinatown, hared-boiled detectives are less confident than before, femmes fetales are more neurotic and corruption is more sickly and widespread."

I say we're back in season of changing times.
  • From to 2008 till the present, an economy that never fully recovered for the American worker
  • From Hollywood to Washington DC, tales of sexual to physical to emotional abuse, ending our blind trust in the patriarchy
  • From Alexa to Siri to Amazon wanting key access to our addresses to self-divulging information on social media, to devices recording our behavior, technology has infiltrated our homes, our pockets and our wallets and even our minds
  • From retailers offering up daily fresh inventory of disposable furniture and disposable clothes to endless dating apps offering fresh and disposable men and women, ready for whatever action you may have in mind
  • From minimal wage increases to the erosion of full time jobs, we're now glorifying the unstable Gig Economy
In a nutshell, we're all trying the nail jello to the wall.

Today, in 2017, no one knows anything. Nothing is certain.

Yet technology? It finally knows everything about us.

We're at that place in history where the original Blade Runner, released back in 1982 and taking place in 2019, has finally caught up with us. Or we with it. We're at a point in history where Noir meets Dystopia.

I can't think of a better time to write my script.

And while the story takes place in the past, kicking off events back in 2007, on the eve of The Great Recession, the backstory will take us all the way back to the early 70s, when Chinatown was produced, the last time we lived with extreme ambiguity.

My protagonist Esti became a mother in the early 70s. She's witnessed more backroom deals than a Chicago politician. She's been dismissed as a woman born into wealth, with no ideas of her own. And she's paid an enormous price for keeping her dignity. All in a city full of long shadows, dark alleys and big secrets, Esti walks tall. but for how long?

One last thing. this week I decided to rename my script from Cleveland to Cleveland City. It feels more noir to me. Just like our times.



The Film Experience: An Introduction, by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White. Bedford / St. Martin's Press. 2012.
Blade Runner image: IMDb.com

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