William Blake, Orc and Blade Runner

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Like many artists of his age, he was mostly unrecognized or considered mad while living, but his importance and significance have grown over the centuries. He was something of a mystic and visionary but while he was reverent of the Bible, he was hostile to the church. Overall, he's considered difficult to classify.

In Blade Runner, one of the interesting lines by Roy Batty is a misquote of Blake's poem:

"Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores; burning with the fires of Orc"

This line was suggested by Rutger Hauer, adapted from Blake's America: A Prophecy.

"Fiery the angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd. Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc."

Interestingly, Orc in the mythology of Blake is a complicated figure, and not the monstrous sea monster or humanoid cannon fodder of Tolkien and 20th century fantasists. Orc appears in four of Blake’s prophetic books: America, Europe, The Book of Urizen and The Four Zoas

Shortly after his birth, Orc transformed from a worm into a powerful serpent. There's all sorts of relationship drama that results in one character using the Chains of Jealousy to confine Orc to a mountain, until the power of Orc's imagination awakens a deity who frees him to then go on a rebellious rampage. Orc is a force of revolution and revival with most interpretations regarding him as a largely positive figure of creativity, passionate energy.

The Tate notes that "the scholar Foster Damon believes that the name Orc derives either from Cor (the Latin word for heart), or from Orca, meaning ‘whale’."

Which isn't to say this makes Blake very easy to read by today's standards, but it's still one of the fascinating, more modern efforts to create new mythologies for the world.

But what are we to make of the significance of Roy Batty "misquoting" within Blade Runner? Is it a signifier that the lead replicant is fallible? Or is this a knowing shift to the text and its meaning. Many scholars have pointed out that the character of Orc embodies the young striking down the old, and has parallels in the revolt of  a son against the father. As the replicants of Blade Runner try to revolt in order to renew and extend their lives, and fight their way towards their creator, Eldon Tyrell, the imagery seems apt. Orc's activities are driven by emotion, and gradually degenerate into unpredictable chaos, terrorizing those around him. So, too, the degeneration of the replicants even as they seek vindication or redemption for their excesses. It's a matter of some interest to consider what it means for the angels to fall, according to Roy Batty. With whom, then does he feel the replicants should identify with, even as they're shackled with such limited time remaining to them?

But these are some of the ideas that I've considered at length as I composed my own books On The Other Side Of The Eye and BARROW, which even have a poem or two directly and indirectly inspired by Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner, in addition to thematic elements I thought compelling. I think there's some very interesting material worth revisiting in Blake if one makes the effort.