2. In City of Quartz, Mike Davis discusses “film noir” and
the what he calls the noir critique of the Los Angeles myth. What elements
of film
noir do you find here?
3. In his chapter on “Fortress L.A.,” Davis asserts that already “we
live in ‘fortress cities’ brutally divided between ‘fortified
cells’ of affluent society and ‘places of terror’ where the
police battle the criminalized poor.” He also observes that “Hollywood’s
pop apocalypses and pulp science fiction have been more realistic, and politically
perceptive” than contemporary urban theory at representing things like “the
militarization of city life so grimly visible at the street level” (Davis, City of Quartz,
223-224). How might “Blade Runner” be read as a
critique of the Los Angeles of the present?
4. How does the theme of race figure in the film?
5. At a certain point, the film turns its attention to memory as a crucial
theme. In Baudelaire’s poem “The Swan,” cities are places
of exile but the experience of exile can be countered by memory (and perhaps
overcome, or perhaps not). What has happened to the theme of memory in the
city here?