The Shifting Realities of PK Dick

"Notes on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (1968)

The initial question: Who is the viewpoint character? It must be either the bounty hunter Rick Deckard or Jack Isidore. Since Isidore is younger, were he to be the viewpoint character we would perhaps have something on the order of The Graduate, in which everyone over thirty is corrupt and an instrument of the Establishment, and young, free, innocent love wins out -- an oddly corny theme for such a supposedly adult movie. In the novel, Isidore has a naive love directed toward the androids; Rick Deckard's view is that the androids are vicious machines that must be destroyed. These two different (and mutually exclusive) views, running parallel to each other in a twin-plot scheme, merge toward the end of the work, when Isidore is confronted by the cruelty of the androids as they cut the legs off the spider. Rick Deckard's view has won out, and the proof of this is that Isidore tells the bounty hunter where the androids are within the decayed apartment building. Since Deckard's view proves to be correct, perhaps he should be the viewpoint protagonist. We cannot come up with "love and innocence and faith conquer all," as was done -- and I think wrongly -- in the movie The Graduate.

But if Rick Deckard is the protagonist, then we are faced with a difficult problem (or perhaps I should say a problem that must be solved): the love that the bounty hunter feels toward animals, in contrast to his heartless murders of the androids. To love an animal more than a person is a deranged or cynical view -- or so it might seem. We must learn very soon why Rick holds this view, which means an early proof for his view contrasted with Isidore's. Or is not this the major theme, this struggle between the two views -- with proof only at the end that Rick Deckard's view was correct. In the novel we are told that androids lack human feeling, warmth, and empathic sensitivity, but we are not shown this in action until the meeting of Isidore and Deckard. But perhaps this is a good way to handle it; the contrast between Isidore and his views, in contrast to Deckard and his views, in some ways is the primary story. Notice I say "story" and not theme. The theme of the book tends to cluster around the religion of Mercerism and its emphasis on shared pain and mutual compassion, a rebirth of the primordial Christian view. Or is the basic theme the broad background, the total world in which they live, with their collective and general worship of animals, the decaying huge apartment buildings, and the "specials," like Jack Isidore -- plus the running thread of their mutual empathy?

Casting is a vital question. Rick Deckard could, for example, be played by Gregory Peck (which makes him powerful and sensitive and wise), in contrast to Richard Widmark (which makes him a psychotic killer), with several lesser possibilities, such as Martin Balsam (which makes him virtually into an archetypal father figure), or someone like Ben Gazzara (which makes him bold, and a man of action). As to Isidore. He could be played, for example, by Dean Stockwell (which makes him sensitive and an introvert, living in a lonely world of his own making), or possibly Wally Cox, which makes him into Wally Cox. My theory (supra) calls for Deckard to be the protagonist, with views that the audience may not quite at first share but that at the end win out morally, psychologically, dramatically, and in all other ways. Hence I would favor someone like Gregory Peck to play Rick Deckard, and then Dean Stockwell to play Isidore. It seems to me that with each casting change -- or decision -- you have a whole new ball of wax. Think, for example, of the strong factor introduced if Rachael were played by a vibrant, hard girl such as Grace Slick (a bit of casting I would really plug for).

Of course, there is also the question of the tone of the picture; is this a touching story (Isidore protecting the androids and then, at the end, seeing what they are really like -- his soap bubble world suddenly collapsing), or Isidore as funny (via Wally Cox, etc.), or gunplay action, as Deckard shoots one android after another, or as a broad general picture of a whole and entire world that is ethnic fundamentally, with many quaint and odd customs practiced with great solemnity by the natives, customs that include murder on a legal basis: "people" (i.e. the androids) without any legal rights of any sort. Also, the film could be procop or anticop, which reverts as a question to the deeper, earlier question of what age group is the protagonist going to be?

I personally feel that the bizarre, the odd, the eerie should be played up, the pataphysical quiddities of this world in which they live. One finds this, for example, of the whole element about fake live animals, and the new animal dealers who have replaced the new car dealers of our own time. The strange, the dreamlike (as in the time-lapse and space-lapse camerawork in The Graduate). It is a sort of pretend world... up to a point. And then the murders of the androids begin, and suddenly it is all real, all for keeps, and very much grim and unfunny.

One additional oddity: the fact that there are two Rachaels, the one whom Rick meets, and then the one Isidore meets. These are the same android, and some kind of imaginative camerawork -- superimpositions or few-frame blinks back and forth between the two androids -- is much needed, and could be a major attraction of the film. What must be made clear to the audience, however, [is] that these two Rachaels, each with its human colleague, are functioning at the same time; these are not a flashback but a simultaneous double life. For example, the android talking to Rick Deckard could say a phrase, and then when we pick the other Rachael up with Isidore, she could repeat the exact words -- an audiotrack superimposition, with the voice echoing itself as in a sort of electronic echo chamber, much improved on our own. I think that (1) it is going to be hard to get across the desired effect, but (2) it will be worth the effort. The small plot-element of the Other Police Station could be eliminated entirely.

I am not sure that the Mood Organ material should, as in the novel, begin the piece. Perhaps instead we could have Jack Isidore driving his electric-animal-repair truck setting out at dawn. Technically, I think there should be a weapon, used in particular by the bounty hunters, that isn't merely another laser tube, such as one sees in Star Trek and The Invaders. Here again, something of imagination rather than cliche is needed. This includes the sound made by the weapon; it must be new and unusual, too. A sound, for example, that a champagne bottle makes when it pops its cork.

It seems to me that one strong point of the novel is the fact that it provides space for many moods and tones: There is the dramatic search and destruction of the androids, the tenderness felt toward live animals, the weird, deserted apartment building in which Jack Isidore lives -- opportunities for humor, the peculiar, the very frightening, and, of course, the awe felt when Mercer is encountered. We can have a many-sided film... or, I would think, some of the moods (and plot, etc.) can be eliminated entirely, however important they are to the novel... and then remaining elements, such as Isidore and the Mercer theme, can be retained and built up more. But I do think that both the search and destroy androids theme must be retained (because of its connection -- contrast -- to Isidore's view), and because it all throughout the novel adds the quality of violence, of the chase... although, in regarding this, I wonder if the empathy test that Deckard gives prospective androids is adequate in the visual medium. Perhaps an entirely new type of test should be made up for this, or perhaps no test that is a question-and-answer test, but perhaps a measuring of brain-wave rhythms. This, too, is a vital area to be there with imagination, as with the kind of weapons used.

There could be room for more sex. E.g. Rick Deckard making love to Rachael and then dissolve to Isidore, trying same on his Rachael android, and fouling it all up, a la Peter Sellers. The possibilities here are enormous... to cite one reason, there is the exact duplication of sentences uttered by the two identical androids. Sentences to which Rick Deckard gives one kind of reply. Jack Isidore another. The Isidore romance could be a chilling travesty of the successful Rick Deckard makeout with the girl.

And this brings up the whole underlying subject: sexual relations between humans and androids. What is it like? What does it mean? Is it, for instance, like going to bed with a real woman? Or is it an awful, nighmarish, bad trip, where what is dead and inert seems alive and warm and capable of the most acute intimacy known to living creatures? Isn't this, this sexual union between Rick Deckard and Rachael Rosen -- isn't it the summa of falsity and mechanical motions carried out minus any real feeling, as we understand the word? Feeling on each of their parts. Does in fact her mental -- and physical -- coldness numb the male, the human man, into an echo of it?

In the novel it is treated on page 165 [of the 1968 Doubleday first edition] in its most acute form, when, as Rachael and Rick prepare to go to bed, Rachael says to him, "Androids can't bear children... is that a loss? I really don't know; I have no way to tell. How does it feel to have a child? How does it feel to be born, for that matter? We're not born; we don't grow up; instead of dying from illness or old age, we wear out like ants. Ants again; that's what we are... chitinous reflex machines who aren't really alive. I'm not really alive! You're not going to bed with a woman.

And then a bit later Rachael says,

"I understand -- they tell me -- it's convincing if you don't think too much about it. But if you think too much, if you reflect on what you're doing -- then you can't go on. For, ahem, physiological reasons."

Rick then bends and kisses her bare shoulder.

Now, this is about the extent of this subject as handled in the novel, but there are more possibilities, which might come out vividly in a film version. For example (to name the first that comes to my mind): Is this a way he can cheat vis-a-vis his wife Iran -- in other words, is it all right to sleep with an android? It doesn't count, etc. In any case, the key question comes up on page 168, where Rachael asks, "Would you ever go to bed with an android again?" His answer to this is gracious, very politic, and yet somehow evasive. "If it was a girl," Rick says. "If she resembled you." But Rachael has already made the point that she is not a person; she is a type, a subform of androids in general. His relationship, by having intercourse with her, has melded him to -- not an individual, human or android -- but to a whole type or model, of which, theoretically, there could be tens of thousands. To whom, then, has he really given his erotic libido to? An army of rachael rosens, a horde of them, all identical? This undermines the meaning of love -- at least sexual, erotic love -- because the basic parity is undermined, one man for one woman (or at least one at a time). But he has, in effect, made love to them all!

Here, I think, the crucial questions of What is reality? and What is illusion? come up strongly. The whole sexual scene with Rachael (and, if used, the one between Isidore and Pris) could be dreamlike, but not in the usual sense, not the wishful, daydreaming contemplations of infinite women, infinite prowess, and so forth. This could be -- not a vague dream -- but a horrifyingly mechanical episode of half dream, half reality, with Rachael melting superficially -- but by doing so, exposing a steel-and-solid-state electronic gear beneath. The more Rick strives to force her to become a woman -- or, more accurately, to play the role of a woman -- the more he encounters the core of unlife within her. In subtle ways (certainly not in gross ways) it should be shown that his attempt to make love to her as a woman for him is defeated by the tireless core of her electronic being. I don't mean that he opens a door in her chest, thus swinging her right breast away and exposing a maze of sensationally advanced selenoids and servo-assists and transistors. This is not the discovery he -- and the audience -- is making; this is already known. What is shown is just how far both the android woman and the human male can manage to force back the artificial and mechanical and smother it in their mutual yearnings. They are both pretending... but a good deal of ordinary, today and now sex is handled this way; during sex the faculty of judgment in many ways is suspended, by both partners. The question here is: How far can this go? Will that which both of them desire be successfully maintained, or will it, because of her makeup, recede farther and farther the deeper he goes -- much to the bitter disappointment of both of them?

It seems to me that after the soothing, endearing words, a very hateful conclusion -- or aftermath -- could spring up between them; their mutually arranged act has made each worse off than before, and this could be well expressed by the mutual hatred and disappointment each now feels for the other.

With this miserable outcome, perhaps the segue to Isidore and Pris, from time to time, could reveal a more optimistic scene than would be expected. Ironically, it might be Isidore who succeeds -- due to his worldly ignorance. And this would provide an augmented basis for his grief when the three andys die.

The failure of the sexual act between Rick and Rachael could, in the end, amount to a complete collapse of understanding between them, a theme on the order of A Passage to India [the E. M. Forster novel]. And if this deep and final estrangement aids Rick in his search-and-destroy mission against Pris Stratton -- makes it possible, in fact, for him to kill her -- then the sex theme will have served a vital purpose in terms of the book's plot (which up to now it really hasn't done; it was, in the printed form, sort of an interlude only). Yes, it could well be that Rick's recoiling from being close to Rachael -- or trying his damn best to be close -- may be vital in his determination -- and success -- in destroying the last three andys.

I will stop speculating at this point, and hopefully wait for a response, however slight it may well be, to what I've added here in the way of further analysis of the novel.