Ryota's Old Daybook: Language Arts & Basic English
2005/04/06
  Bladerunner: A New Basic Word

Mr. Ohyama is writing about his love of motion pictures and music of Vangelis. So I will put something more about moving pictures, Vangelis music, and Basic English.

Vangelis, who had been noted among some lovers of new music, got attention from all over the earth in 1981 when he made music for the motion picture Chariots of Fire: a story of two British young runners taking part in the Olympics at Paris.

<bau2.uibk.ac.at/perki/films/chariots/chariots.html>

He made, in 1982, music for Bladerunner, a motion picture made under the direction of Ridley Scott. It got small attention from lovers of motion pictures and didn't make much money first. And the recorded music by Vangelis wasn't put on the market then.

Bladerunner, however, got attention from young persons with a taste for something new and strange, slowly took heat year by year, and now it's a very noted picture.

The story is about an unhappy man, living in a near and dark future, who has to do the work of putting runaway man-made persons to death. Because the man-made persons are produces of very new working science, it is necessary for the man to make use of the top-level, cutting-edge, power of the science to have a kill. He has, in other words, a run of the blade, so he is a bladerunner. Do you see that this word was made by joining two Basic words?

The best part of the motion picture, probably, is near the end, where the strongest man-made man, played by the actor Rutger Hauer, gives a talk, while fighting with the bladerunner, about his experience of hard work and journey in the outer space. If you are a learner of English, please give attention, when you see the moving picture, to this talk. The picture of Hauer is from Yahoo!Movies.

Those man-made persons, or replicants, are very good copies of persons with brains, bones, muscles, and skins. They have warm blood and feelings. They have hard times, being forced to do the work as servants or like machines in places full of danger. The most cruel thing is that some of them, made as servant workers, are not conscious of the fact that they are man-made. You will see more of interesting facts at <www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/trivia>.


The story is based on a science fiction, by Philip K. Dick, named Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [That is "Do man-made persons have a hope for electric sheep?"] You may have a good time of reading it in the form of a book, made shorter and put into 1800-word level English, in print from Oxford University Press <oup-readers.jp>.

The word "blade-runner" was taken, however, by Scott from a book of a completely different story: The Blade Runner, a science fiction by a writer and medical expert named Alan Nourse. The old book was put into a play, to be produced as a motion picture, by William S. Burroughs. W. S. Borroughs was an American writer noted for his knowledge and experience of chemical/medical substances which gives strange effects to the mind.

I have no experience of reading the old Blade Runner by Nourse or by Burroughs. Reading some online pages has given me some outline of the story. It is another science fiction of a near and dark future, in which some outlaw medical experts do their work for the good, helped by the blade runner, who secretly does trade in medical substances and instruments, some of which are knives used for medical operation.
<www.faqs.org/faqs/movies/bladerunner-faq>
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기초 영어 or Baza Angla. If you have knowledge of 850 English words, you may have a good time reading this daybook, Ryota's day-to-day notes, in Basic English, for college-level learners of English as a second or overseas language. Notes are generally on English or other languages, American or other writers or writings, and music or motion pictures based on those writings.

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