July 9: Persons on Paper
On July 9, 1868, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing equal protection under the law, was ratified. Tonight's film: Blade Runner (1982).
Last night I landed on the news again. You know how it goes. You switch on the phone for a second, and the next war is already on screen, the next economic collapse that is “once again” at the door. I sat on the couch and remembered that humanity has been here before, in a moment when something broke badly, and afterward people tried to put it on paper so next time would be different.
On July 9, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution took effect. Three years after the Civil War. Congress had already passed it on June 13, 1866, but it took two more years for three quarters of the states to ratify it. The text is short, and its first sentence is the one that still counts: every person born or naturalized in the United States is a citizen, and no state may deny them the equal protection of the laws. Equal protection.
That sentence was written after the Dred Scott decision, which held that enslaved people were not persons but property. And after the Black Codes, the laws the Southern states used to push freed people into second-class citizenship. So this was not a pretty thought. It was an answer to a specific evil.
I grew up in a former Soviet republic, and if there is one thing you learn early there, it is that paper alone is not enough. The law on the table is one thing, the law on the street is another. But it still matters. It matters that someone even writes down: you are not property, you are a person. Because until that is on paper, everything else is just talk.
Then I thought for a moment. What sci-fi would I watch tonight for this? And the answer came right away. Blade Runner, 1982. Ridley Scott’s film, with Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer.
The film opens with four Nexus-6 replicants who have escaped back to Earth, each one running down a built-in, four-year lifespan. Roy Batty, the combat model, goes to the Tyrell Corporation and asks for one thing: more life. More time. The thing that, by rights, should mean he counts as a person. And here is where the 14th Amendment walks in, whether the film knows it or not. Because the real question is: who counts as a person? The replicants speak, feel, fear death, remember. And still they are the property of a corporation, stamped with a four-year expiration date.
Let me be honest. Blade Runner was not kind to audiences in 1982. It cost 28 million dollars and grossed only about 33.8 million worldwide. It opened against E.T. and Poltergeist, the critics went at it, and the studio forced on it a happy ending and a narration that everyone later regretted. I watched the director’s cut. The one where the question stays open: is Deckard human, and does it even matter?
What works for me is not the action. It is the slowness. The rain. The neon. That kind of melancholy when someone realizes their life is running out, and nobody calls them a person. Roy Batty’s last speech, tears in rain, is hard to forget. In four years he lived more than many do in seventy.
Paper and equal protection. More life. Tonight, press play.
What else could have been tonight
Starfish Prime, 1962: The Terminator (1984)
On the same day in 1962, July 9, the United States military detonated a 1.4-megaton thermonuclear bomb 400 kilometers above the Pacific, near Johnston Atoll. They called it Starfish Prime, part of Operation Fishbowl. The blast knocked out streetlights 1,400 kilometers away in Hawaii and ruined at least seven satellites. That same Cold War atomic fear produced The Terminator in 1984: Skynet, the machines, Judgment Day on August 29, 1997. James Cameron shot it for about 6.5 million dollars, and it brought in 78 million. Schwarzenegger spoke barely a dozen lines and still walked off with everyone.
Argentina’s independence, 1816: Independence Day (1996)
Also on July 9, only 154 years earlier: after nine hours of debate, the Congress of Tucuman declared Argentina’s independence from Spain. A colonial people brings down its ruler. Out of that same shape grew Independence Day in 1996: Will Smith, alien occupiers, and an American president who takes the planet back. Roland Emmerich’s film grossed 817 million dollars worldwide, and back then nobody had invented streaming yet. Fine escapism for an independence day.
Sources
The main event, the 14th Amendment:
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment (ratified July 9, 1868)
https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/senate-and-constitution/14th-amendment.htm (Senate passed it June 8, 1866)
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xiv (equal protection, citizenship)
The film, Blade Runner (1982):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/ (budget 28 million dollars, worldwide gross 41.8 million)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner (Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicant (Nexus-6, four-year lifespan)
Side events:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime (1.4 megatons, 400 km altitude, July 9, 1962)
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150910-the-nuke-that-fried-satellites-with-terrifying-results (satellites and Hawaiian streetlights)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247 (The Terminator, 1984)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Congress-of-Tucuman (Argentine independence, July 9, 1816)
https://www.casarosada.gob.ar/international/latest-news/50572-9-july-argentine-independence-day (nine hours of debate)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629 (Independence Day, 1996)