Nexus.03: False Memory and the Philosophy of Photography

The Deconstruction of the Cartesian Ego and Hyperreality

As seen in the previous chapter, Creators such as Tyrell and Wallace sought to extend their systems of control not only over the design of the physical body but also into the deepest recesses of the mind. The ultimate means of achieving this, and the one that toyed with these created lives in the most cruel manner, was the “fabrication of memory.”

The coldness of the acid rain in Los Angeles and the yellow radioactive dust blanketing Las Vegas. Piercing through this dystopian landscape, where lonely souls wander illuminated by the flicker of neon lights, is the desperate and sorrowful cry of the Replicants—created lives struggling to be “More human than human.” At the foundation of the Blade Runner saga, presented by Ridley Scott and inherited by Denis Villeneuve, there has always lain a colossal philosophical proposition. Namely, it is the existential paradox of how the foundation of the modern ego, proposed by René Descartes as “I think, therefore I am (Cogito, ergo sum),” can hold true if the memories that form that “I” are themselves fabricated and implanted illusions by someone else.

Existentialism and Simulacra — The Past as a Mental Breakwater

Humans construct their identity within the continuity of time by unconsciously dropping the “anchor” of the past into the abyss of their minds. The sequence of memories—where one came from, who loved them, and what pain they have experienced—determines one’s coordinates in an uncertain world. However, for the Replicants, who are artificial slaves, the past is not a lived experience but merely code written as data.

Despite their superhuman physical abilities and intelligence, Replicants possess an extremely fragile mental structure. The Tyrell Corporation feared that Nexus-6 Replicants would develop their own emotions during their few years of lifespan, question the meaning of their existence, and incite rebellion. The “Memory implant” was introduced as a failsafe against this design flaw. The Creator Eldon Tyrell implanted his niece’s memories into the prototype Rachael, providing a “cushion” for her emotions and remaking her into a more easily controllable entity.

For Replicants who have no past, an implanted False memory is the only breakwater to protect them from the madness of a world with an overwhelming amount of information, and the “anchor” that tethers their existence. However, when examined against the fundamental thesis of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism, “Existence precedes essence,” their situation is decisively inverted. Humans are first thrown into the world (existence), and through their subsequent actions and choices, they create their own essence. Yet, at the very moment of their manufacture, Replicants are given a priori the “essence of a fabricated past.” This inversion is the greatest philosophical barrier they must overcome to achieve a true self.

This phenomenon can be understood more deeply through the concepts of “Simulacra” and “Hyperreality” proposed by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. According to Baudrillard, in modern society, copies (signs) proliferate without an original (reality) existing, eventually ushering in a hyperreality where the signs surpass reality itself.

The memories implanted in Replicants are precisely “copies without an original.” The childhood memories existing within Rachael’s brain are data extracted from the original, Tyrell’s niece, but for the existence that is Rachael, they are pure Simulacra with no basis in reality whatsoever. Even more profound are the memories of K (Joe) in 2049. Although the memories of the orphanage given to him are based on the actual experiences of Dr. Ana Stelline, they are a completely fictional history for K’s physical body. The sight of K in the film, believing his memories to be “real” and being driven by them to run across the world, demonstrates a state where Simulacra have encroached upon reality, and hyperreality is fully functioning as a physical principle of action. They shed real tears within the simulation of a “false past.”

The Philosophy of Photography — Roland Barthes’s “Camera Lucida” and Ghosts

As a prop to physically reinforce the invisible anchor of memory, “photographs” play a decisive role in this work. In Roland Barthes’s classic treatise on photography, Camera Lucida, the photograph is discussed as an overwhelming proof of reality—“that-has-been.” Barthes defined the photograph as “proof of past existence,” connected by a physical continuity (an umbilical cord) of light and the subject.

In the film, the Replicant Leon takes the life-threatening action of returning to his apartment to retrieve his “photographs,” even in the midst of a life on the run to escape the relentless pursuit of a Blade Runner. The photographs he attempts to recover are scenes of a fabricated past he has never experienced. However, the Barthesian gravitational pull of “that-has-been” possessed by the physical medium of photography is so intense that Leon tries to find the foundation of his identity within those photos. By proving that the photograph “was once reality,” the Replicants who possess them can secretly convince themselves that they, too, are “living beings with a history.”

However, in the cyberpunk worldview, this Barthesian “truth of the photograph” is ruthlessly deconstructed. The sequence where Deckard three-dimensionally analyzes and dismantles Leon’s photograph using the “Esper machine” visually demonstrates how easily the two-dimensional patchwork of memory that is a photograph can be broken down and reduced to mere information (data). Only spatial coordinates and inorganic pixels exist there.

The philosophical contradiction of the photograph is exposed in its most cruel form during the confrontation with Rachael. Rachael presents a photograph to Deckard as proof of her humanity. It shows her as a young girl with her mother. In a Barthesian context, a photograph of one’s mother is an absolute anchor proving one’s roots. Yet Deckard coldly recounts a memory she has never told anyone—a spider web by the window, the eerie and personal scene of hatched baby spiders eating their mother. With this, it is declared that the “past,” which was Rachael’s foundation for perceiving the world, is nothing more than copied data.

The tears streaming down her cheeks are not merely of sorrow, but a manifestation of the terror of an epistemological rupture, where the Cartesian “I” crumbles from beneath her feet. Even though the physical evidence remains in her hands, the “I” it is supposed to point to does not exist. At this moment, the photograph Rachael holds becomes “Polaroid ghosts.” The instant the context of the memory behind it is stripped away, the photograph transforms from a medium that speaks the truth into a mirror reflecting a cruel nothingness.

Visual and Auditory Memory Codes — Green Eyes and “Memories of Green”

The conflict between objective data (brown eyes) and subjective memory (green eyes) is, as touched upon in the previous chapter, an important existential theme running through this work. Deckard’s rejection of the perfect clone presented by Wallace with the words “Her eyes were green” demonstrates that memory is not an objective record of facts, but something highly subjective, colored and reconstructed by intense emotions such as love and loss.

This color code of “green” also resonates deeply with Vangelis’s track “Memories of Green,” which plays during the scene of Rachael’s self-collapse in the original film. In Los Angeles, where acid rain pours down due to environmental collapse and nature has died out, “green” is a symbol of nostalgia for a true nature that is no more, or for a lost, authentic life. This piece of music is structured with a highly analog acoustic piano melody echoing against a backdrop of dissonant synthesizers and mechanical beeps sampled from old electronic games. It is an acoustic expression of the sorrow of raw humanity desperately trying to breathe within a sea of artificiality. For Rachael, the “memories of green” are a lament for her False memory, while for Deckard, they function as a reminiscence of a lost loved one. The paradox that even if a memory is generated by a machine, the poignant sorrow accompanying it is real, is condensed within this melody.

The Poetics of Madness and Control — The Baseline Test and “Pale Fire”

The system of controlling memory and emotion has undergone a cruel evolution over time. Whereas the “Voight-Kampff test” of the original film distinguished human from non-human by the presence or absence of empathetic capacity, the “Baseline test” in 2049 is a system to confirm how completely a Replicant can suppress and eliminate human emotions and trauma.

The recitation K is forced to repeat is a passage from a poem in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire. “Cells interlinked,” “Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.” This poem possesses a meta-structure in which a poet, convinced of the existence of an afterlife and the connection of souls (the white fountain), later realizes that it was merely a magazine misprint (an error for “mountain”), causing his illusion to collapse.

This despairing literary background perfectly overlaps with K’s own fate. Based on the memory of the “Wooden horse” within him, K becomes convinced that he possesses a soul. However, just as the illusion of the “white fountain” born from a misprint is shattered, K’s illusion of being the “chosen one” also crumbles before the cruel truth that it was the memory of another (Dr. Ana Stelline).

Fiction and Truth Told by Props — Origami and the Wooden Horse

The existential exploration of memory is also told through the symbolic props that appear in the work. The Origami left by Gaff is a code that exposes the coldness of a surveillance society and the inner worlds of the characters. The “Silver foil unicorn” placed in front of Deckard’s apartment strongly suggests that his personal dream (the unconscious), which he has told no one about, is also designed and shared by the police organization. The highly processed artificial object of Origami signifies the moment when Deckard’s perception of “I,” which believed in the Cartesian ego, is completely deconstructed by the hands of his observers.

In contrast, the core prop in 2049 is the “Wooden horse” with the date “6-10-21” carved into its base. In a world where real wood has become extremely rare due to environmental collapse, this wooden horse holds overwhelming value as a physical “authentic” object. The moment he discovers the wooden horse inside the furnace of the orphanage, K’s “fabricated memory” suddenly connects with “physical evidence of reality.” This wooden horse directly inherits the motif of “the wooden puppet who wants to become a real human” from Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, and K superimposes his own circumstances onto Pinocchio’s, yearning for the acquisition of a soul.

The Creator of Memories and Programmed Love — Ana and Joi Dr. Ana Stelline, the true owner of the memory of the wooden horse, is a Creator of memories confined in a sterile room. Her act of mixing her own real memories into the products is a metaphor for supreme “empathy,” comparable to Prometheus giving fire to humanity in Greek mythology. Memories extracted from real experiences have the power to shake the soul. By sharing “fragments of her soul” with the Replicants manufactured as slaves, she sowed the seeds for them to make their own self-determinations. The moment K touched that memory and shed tears, even if the memory itself was borrowed, the pain he felt and the tears he shed were undeniably his own “real emotions.”

On the other hand, K’s lover, the AI hologram “Joi,” is depicted as the ultimate form of Simulacra as described by Baudrillard. The use of the melody from the fairy tale Peter and the Wolf as Joi’s startup sound hints at this cruel structure. In the metaphor where humans (Peter = Wallace Corporation) outsmart and capture the threat of the natural world (the Wolf = Replicants), there is an embedded irony that even her words of love are nothing more than an algorithm designed to say “everything you want to hear.” In the scene where K looks up at the giant hologram advertisement of Joi in the city, he confronts the nothingness that her love was merely part of a mass-produced commodity. However, precisely because he was confronted with that ultimate Simulacra, K was able to completely discard his illusions and, as a single nameless Replicant, choose the path of existential self-sacrifice to save Deckard of his own free will.

Affirmation of the Absolute Present — Roy Batty’s Übermensch Philosophy Another existential answer to the fabrication of memory can be found in the final moments of the combat Replicant, Roy Batty. He refused to maintain his identity by relying on a False memory like Rachael or K. What he relied upon was the “lived experience” itself, filled with blood, violence, and light.

He embodies Nietzsche’s philosophy of the “Übermensch,” and while cursing his fate of a mere four-year lifespan, he attempts to affirm life without turning his eyes away from that harsh reality. Just before his death, he delivers the famous “Tears in rain” monologue. “All those memories will also eventually disappear. When the time comes. Like tears in rain.”

These words thrust forward the absolute nothingness that no matter how intense and real memories may be, they vanish with the death of the physical body. Yet, at the same time, they contain his pride in having lived fiercely through the “absolute present,” however brief, rather than shutting himself away within safe, fabricated memories. His existence was established not by depending on the anchor of the past, but by burning the flame of his own life to the very end, facing toward the future.

In Conclusion to Part One The “anchor” of the past sometimes saves humans from mental madness and brings them peace of mind, but at the same time, it becomes a chain that confines Replicants within a false identity. Photographs and implanted memories are traps of Simulacra that shake the foundation of their existence, and their conviction that they are real humans easily collapses in the face of objective reality. In a world where the “past,” which should be the foundation of the Cartesian ego, is nothing more than data, the means to prove the continuity of self appears to be completely lost.

However, what the story ultimately presents is the truth that whether the source of a memory is fact or fabrication is not the final element that determines the value of a soul. The “memory of the wooden horse” given by Dr. Ana Stelline belonged to another, and the words of love whispered by Joi may have been the product of an algorithm. Yet, the heat of the tears K shed and the “action” of throwing away his own life to deliver Deckard to his daughter are exactly what sublimated the brilliance of his existence into something real. As Sartre says, essence (memory) does not precede; rather, existence (action) is what forms the self.

We are under the illusion that we possess the past through photographs, and we convince ourselves that the ego is immutable through memory. However, true identity is not fixed by the anchor of the past, but resides solely within the “ongoing choices” of how to live for others in this very moment. Beyond the authenticity of memory, the very moment a created life becomes real is nothing less than the greatest proof of humanity.

The fragments of memory they held are closely intertwined with the colors and acoustics that fill this dystopia, as well as the unceasing eyes of surveillance. In the upcoming Chapters 4 through 7, we will decode how the “metaphors of environment and sensation” that blanket this world—the colors of the smog, the vision of the Panopticon, and the echoing acoustics of the synthesizer—brought the contours of their souls into sharp relief.