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In Blade Runner, The Future Is Asian
The Blade Runner future that we haven't quite reached.
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Courtesy Warner Bros.
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The biggest puzzler of Blade Runner is perhaps not whether Harrison Ford's character is a replicant, but what's up with all the Asian people wearing rice hats?
Asians heavily populate this cyberpunk version of L.A., their cultural and economic clout obvious in the graffiti and neon signs in Chinese and Japanese that crowd every streetscape. Building-size digital ads with a geisha flashes repeatedly throughout the film, her beatific smile increasingly at odds with the rising body count.
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