Listen, if I've managed to get this far without discounting the movie despite the blatant and jarring non-consensual sex scene presented as a love scene, I'm not about to let some mild xenophobia stop me.
Some of my favorite pieces of art are deeply flawed. What's important is understanding what ideas they contain, so you don't just uncritically and subconsciously believe those ideas. The xenophobia in cyberpunk idea is jarring to me because I wasn't really aware of it, and if it is there, it means I have some unexamined biases that hid it from me.
Do you also have moral dilemmas about the violent shootings, murder and other nasty things the fictional characters get up to? Or is it just the kiss that rattled you?
When a movie is presenting coercive behavior as good, yes it does bother me. Yes within the story his behavior is validated - it was what she needed blah blah blah. That’s fine. But how many people were assaulted by men thinking they were deckard? It’s not zero
> how many people were assaulted by men thinking they were deckard? It’s not zero
It's zero.
Why aren't you getting your moral radar in a spin about the numerous violent and aggressive scenes in this or any movie? The real world has a huge problem with violence and guns after all.
I presume you eat popcorn as people or replicants are shot and killed on screen, or when poetic, philosophical replicants crush the skulls of their maker humans.... but draw the line at a coercive kiss? That's when you put the popcorn down?
Fiction movies are not real-life benchmarks or instruction manuals for life. Characters are flawed, scenes shocking, stories twisted. Deckard is not Dr Richard Kimble. Deckard is a "killing machine" in a dark sci-fi movie. His pre-kiss tantrum was him as Mr Nice Guy relative to his other actions.
You cannot separate art from the time when it was created. It's why you see a lot of countercultural themes in 1960s movies, for example.