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J.F. Sebastian & Friends. A new point of view.

posted 2 years ago by whynotwriteme (7157)
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I was always saddened by Roy Batty's offscreen murder of J.F. Sebastian. J.F. seemed like such a harmless, childlike lonely little guy, with his accelerated aging and his little storybook replicant friends. I hated that he was killed.

Then while watching Blade Runner today, I noticed the scene where Pris & J.F. are sitting a the table just before Roy shows up. We see J.F.'s little toy Prussian soldier friend and he seems to be in some kind of bondage, and he has a look of extreme terror on his face. I don't know how I missed this before.

https://scifiagenda.com/img/articles/blade-runner-puppet-nose.gif

Kind of made me think of old J.F. in a different light. WTF was he doing to the little soldier just before Roy arrived?

[–] Ismailov (139) 2 years ago

I always interpreted the soldier's behavior as indicating it's aware the replicants are a danger, something Sebastian himself realizes more slowly than his own "toys" (which themselves seem to be very simplistic replicants.)

I also think the fact Sebastian makes these "toys" is meant to show the viewer how he treats replicants as less than human. Similar to how Chew remarks about making Roy's eyes, leading Roy to reply "if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes." In other words, Chew seemingly doesn't care about the plight the replicants are in, a plight he helped make possible.

Given that Sebastian ages abnormally fast, his personality appears to be a lot more naive and oblivious, to the extent he can proudly state how "there's some of me [i.e. the Methuselah Syndrome leading to early death] in you." But in the eyes of Roy and his friends, there's no real difference between Chew and Sebastian. Both are pretty much equivalent to slave breeders.

[–] Annkat (190) 3 months ago

I don't feel bad for Sebastian.

He knows he is involved in torture and twisting of human nature. The "toys" around his apartment are tortured human beings the same as Pris, Roy and the others. He chooses to believe lies in order to ignore the criminality.