Blade Runner: Rachel & Her 3 Questions
This essay assumes that the reader, like the author, has seen the movie Blade Runner too many times; thus, the essay disposes with spoiler warnings and detailed background of plot and character.
In the movie Blade Runner, the way to establish, demonstrably and with certainty, that an individual is a Replicant (other than cutting them open) is the administration of the Voight-Kampff Test (VKT).
Of the five Replicants, however, that Deckard is assigned to “retire” (Roy, Leon, Pris, Zhora, and Rachel), he has the opportunity to administer the VKT to only one: Rachel.
And yet, when Rachel and Deckard first meet, it is she who asks the first question.
Question 1
“Do you like our owl?”
Note that Rachel doesn’t ask Deckard if he’s impressed with the owl: that is, with Tyrell’s ability to build a robotic animal indistinguishable from the biological original. Rachel also does not ask, “What do you think of our owl?”
No: Rachel asks Deckard if he likes the owl, even though Deckard shows no sign of liking it, such at smiling at it or even chuckling at how realistic it appears.
Implicit in Rachel’s question is an interest in seeing if Deckard has an emotional response to an animal.
This could very well have been a question in the VKT, since an emotional response to animals appears to be key in gauging the subject’s empathy. Remember that Leon almost panics at the question about a tortoise, and the final question to Rachel in her VKT— a question she does not answer — has to do with a feast of boiled dog.
Deckard, for his part, doesn’t answer Rachel’s question about the owl. “It’s artificial?” he asks. (Deckard later puts the same question to Zhora, in reference to her snake.)
“Of course it is,” Rachel replies. So is Rachel using the owl to make small talk, or is she up to something else?
Question 2
Rachel clearly knows what Deckard does for a living. After exchanged introductions, she puts Deckard on the spot with a “personal” question: Have you ever retired a human by mistake?
It’s natural to assume that what Rachel means is: “Have you ever killed a human, thinking it was a Replicant?”
But that’s not what she asks. Deckard could easily interpret her question, as stated, to mean: “As a police officer, have you ever mistakenly killed the wrong person?” or “Have you ever killed someone, having mistaken that person for your suspect?”
And Deckard might have replied exactly as he does: “No.”
Implicit in Rachel’s question, however, is: “Have you ever been so fooled into thinking that a Replicant was human that you killed a human, thinking it was a Replicant?”
Later, Tyrell tells Deckard that Rachel “is beginning to suspect” that she herself is a Replicant. Naturally, then, she would be curious to ask a professional whose job it is to identify and retire Replicants if it’s possible to mistake a Replicant for a human being.
If Deckard had answered “Yes,” Rachel might have taken this to mean Yes, it’s conceivable to mistake a Replicant for a human, and thus it may follow that it’s conceivable to be a Replicant and mistake yourself for human.
However Rachel means the question, it would surely elicit an emotional response from the subject. Rachel, therefore, may be administering her own version of the VKT to Deckard, without him realizing it.
Question 3
In Rachel’s VKT, Deckard asks her more than 100 questions, but the only questions the movie lets us hear have to do with animals: someone gives you a calfskin wallet; your son shows you his butterfly “killing jar”; there’s a wasp on your arm; and you see a banquet in a stage play featuring raw oysters and boiled dog.
The one non-animal question has to do with Rachel happening upon a magazine picture of a nude woman and her husband wanting to put it on their bedroom wall.
Rachel deflects: “Is this testing whether I’m a Replicant or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?”
Deckard doesn’t answer. “Just answer the questions, please,” he says, channeling Jack Webb.
Strictly speaking, we don’t know if the magazine photo question is indeed one of the questions in the VKT or whether Deckard has inserted it himself, either to take the subject off guard or truly to gauge her sexual attitudes.
Rachel answers: “I wouldn’t let him [put the photo on the wall]. I should be enough for him.”
We do not hear Rachel answering any of the VKT questions by talking about her feelings. She states matter-of-factly (one might even say robotically) that she wouldn’t accept the calfskin wallet and would call the police, that she would take her son to the doctor, and that she would kill the wasp.
That flatness of affect alone may tip Deckard off that he is dealing with a Replicant (or a sociopath). Or perhaps the mere fact that someone would refer to people as “humans” — Have you ever retired a human by mistake? — would awaken his honed Blade Runner instincts.
Regardless, it’s an ingeniously crafted scene in the film, with dialogue of subtlety, ambiguity, and wit.
Of course, the $64,000 question is one that Rachel poses later, when she and Deckard are alone: “You know that Voigt-Kampff Test of yours? Did you ever take that test yourself?”
Deckard doesn’t answer.
Hmm.
