Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What Does It Mean To Be Human?: Racing Monsters, Clones And Replicants, Robyn L. Morris

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

In her first novel When Fox is a Thousand (1995), Calgary-based author Larissa Lai incorporated into her narrative selected scenes from the movie Blade Runner (Director’s Cut 1992) to interrogate a contemporary filmic definition of humanness that is premised on racialised, sexualised and gendered hierarchies. Lai’s intertextual engagement with Blade Runner articulates an awareness of the power of the Hollywood viewing apparatus to colour the look (white) and perpetuate dichotomies of racial difference. In the opening pages of Fox, however, the protagonist Artemis Wong watches and contemplates pivotal scenes from the movie in a way that suggests the novel’s vision(w)ary …