Connections Bladerunner 2049 & Klara And The Sun

 Our task today in English is to answer these questions about Bladerunner 2049 (BR2049) & Klara And The Sun (KATS) in a paragraph.
What connections can you draw so far between Klara and the Sun and Blade Runner 2049? For example themes/ideas, characters, relationships, style, etc?
Has your understanding of what it means to be human/have personhood changed since studying these texts? How so?

A connection that I can make between the two texts is that they both talk about discrimination. In KATS, it is between the 'lifted' and 'unlifted' kids. A lifted kid is a kid who has been genetically modified to be 'better', smarter, stronger, etc. In BR2049, it is between the replicants and the humans. The replicants are bioengineered humanoid robots who are smarter, stronger etc. Another connection that I can make is the fact of the main characters are robots/humanoid AI. Klara is an AF (Artificial Friend) and K is a Replicant (Robot police kinda). Another connection I can make is the theme of what is love. Klara worked out that, even if she was to copy Josie, it wouldn't be the same, even if Klara perfected how Josie acted, because of the people who loved her, it wouldn't be the same. And in BR2049 K loved Joi, an AI hologram, and learning about things that way.  Both texts also cover the idea of Personhood, with both main characters being humanoid robots who are trying to fit into the human world. 

I've not finished the other paragraph but I want to answer this question before I ran out of time again.

 My understanding of what it means to be human/have personhood hasn't really changed after studying these texts. My thoughts on personhood are, that if it looks like a person, sounds like a person and acts like a person, it probably is a person. Looking like a person would probably be looking like a human like K and Klara do. They, in my eyes, look like people. Sounding like a person would mean being able to communicate with others. This could be in a spoken or written language. I know that some pet owners are teaching their pets to 'speak' with special buttons, but since the pets don't follow the other two requirements so it doesn't count as a person. Both K and Klara communicate with humans/others, therefore, they both sound like a person. Acting like a person would be walking upright, following the human laws that have been set, doing things that others do, like reading, playing sports etc. Again both Klara and K do this. Nothing in the texts changed that for me. 

Klara and the Sun

 Hi, I'm not dead!

We have been reading Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro in English. We just finished it and here are some things we have to do. 

1. Read the Guardians article (This one)

2. Read the New York Times article (That didn't work, so no link sorry) 

3. Locate 3-5 new vocabulary words in the articles and define them.
- I don't like these tasks as I already have a large vocabulary and very rarely come across a word I don't know. And if I don't I can work it out by the context clues around the word. That being said. have some interesting words and their definitions. 

        -ludicrous: so foolish, unreasonable, or out of place as to be amusing.
        -scientism: thought or expression regarded as characteristic of scientists.
        - beguiling: charming or enchanting, often in a deceptive way.

4. According to the articles, what important themes/ideas do 'Klara and the Sun' raise? Answer in complete sentences, with accompanying explanations as necessary (think of who your audience is)
    -Honestly, I have no idea. I have read the article multiple times and don't know. I know we are looking at what it means to be human/have personhood, and that's kinda the theme, but apart from that, I don't know. 

        -Class ideas 

                - Identity - who are you really? 

                - Faith - Praise to a deity (The Sun) 

                - Loneliness - Lockdown

                - Mortality - you will die

                - Relationships 

                - Discrimination - rich vs poor - Haves vs Have-not - "Lifted vs Not Lifted" 

                - Ethics

                - Enviroment - "Big bad guy" = Polution 

                - AI - Replacing us

                - Personhood

5. Locate another article about Klara and the Sun and record something new that you learned after reading it. Link the article in your post.

        - Didn't have time to do this one sorry. 

BR2049

 In English, we are doing the Close Viewing internal Practice paragraphs on the movie Blade runner 2049. I worked with Thomas on my paragraph. The scene we are looking at for the practice is the scene where K comes home from retiring Spinner (I don't remember his name, so let's just pretend that's his name) Here it is. 

Denis Villeneuve used the film techniques of dialogue combined with setting to show the aggressive relationships between man and replicant. We see this when K is verbally abused while coming home from his job when a Hungarian lady yells at him; “What’s up, you beautiful tinplate soldier? So you choose to come home now, you prick. Who’s waiting for you in there? I’ll kick your leg out, you bastard”. The dark grimy stairwell, crowded with people, shows that none of the actual people cleans it since they believe it should be left to the ‘slaves’. This dialogue is used in a way that gets more and more aggressive as K ignores it. This was done to help to explain the relationship between replicants and humans. It shows that replicants aren’t well thought of and that they are seen as useless no matter what they do. It invokes a feeling of sympathy from the viewer because it makes the viewer realize that the lady is blaming K for the dark living space. This also helps us to better understand the background character’s feelings. This is important because it helps us to empathize with K because he is the main character and is intended to have a similarity to the viewer. This is comparable to peaceful protest, no matter what happens to the replicants they don’t retaliate. They take the verbal abuse and deal with it.

If anything is wrong, we're blaming Thomas, ok?