A
Dystopian life in an Utopian world
I like to think about the world.
Especially about human behaviours and societies. How we can or we can
not live with each other. The factors that influences who we will
become. How the world will look like. I recently watched a very
thought-provoking movie, Gattaca which paints a picture about how the
future could be; a life in an almost perfect dystopian world.
In the
last century technology was advanced very rapidly. This has had
certainly positive and negative effects on societies. We, humans want
to "catch up" with that evolution as well. We want to be
better in everything. We want to be taller, smarter, quicker then
others. It's a constant competition. Take a look at the sport world.
How the numbers in the world records had been changed. The desire to
be the best pushing the sportsman to their limits. Another example is
the competition in a professional world. They teach us from our
childhood, how to think, how to make more money, to be better then
others, to have a better life. Lately, it doesn't matter how you get
there. Stepping through your fellow humans, restrain your feelings,
lies!
That's how Gattaca starts. With a lie, an identification scam. We
don't know who is this man or why he's doing what he does, but we
know it is wrong. Lies never work out in a long term. Lies have
consequences. Is it necessary sometimes? Maybe you think it is, if
your life depends on it?!
In the beginning of the movie
the main character, Jerome starts his regular day. Having a shower
meanwhile getting rid off all of his body hair, cleaning
himself to perfection. We also see him putting on fake fingertip
skins, attaching a bag with urine to his tights. We know already he's
hiding something, he's obviously a person who can not be himself.
Then he arrives to his work place, which looks almost like a
hospital, a modern, space like building. Everything is clean and
looks perfect. Just like the humans working there. Men and women's
dresses alike, just like their expressions. Perfection is the only
acceptable option, we find out soon from a conversation. Here we
learn that everything - humans and machines - are under perfect
control. People are being tested, watched and reported constantly.
Proof of identity is necessary to the extremes. We have a very good
example of this kind of world. Let's think about the Nazi Germany or
the Communism, a system followed later. Nazis believed of the chosen,
Aryan type, which - they think - was better above all human race. If
you obeyed them, they made you believe that, you belong to a superior
race who is capable of everything. But if you were different, less
then the chosen race - for example the Jews or Slavs - or you had
different opinion you were to be destroyed. Fear was controlling
everything. There were people who realised that, what was happening
wasn't right but they had no choice, just to be quiet if they wanted
to survive. We can see an example of this in the character of
Vincent. He desperately tries to adopt to this perfect world and he
makes it happen every day with constant lies; but what he really
wants is to leave everything behind and find another, better, utopian
place, which is not controlled by fear. That's for him is the space.
It is very symbolic in my opinion. Going up to the space is like
going up to "Heaven" where supposedly everyone who
enters the gate is accepted, everyone has a place, where happiness
is granted. As Vincent questions it at the end of the movie when he's
about to go up. Leaving or going home? Where you are always supposed
to be! Space also symbolises the desire to go up somewhere, to be
looked up. Vincent was pushed down, people looked down on him - as he
was less then them - in his whole life.
The movie takes us to the prospect of
human genetic engineering. In the very beginning of the movie the
doctor – who's testing people every day – has a comment about
Jerome's
“equipment”.
He says: “I don't know why my folks didn't order one like that for
me?” Let's talk about this sentence! However it sounds funny, it is
rather scary! So in the near future, is it possible that our parents
or our society or our governments will decide what kind of children
(human beings) should born? Scientist, organisations and people who
has interest in it, see genetic research as finding a way to end the
existence of preventable diseases, so they say, humans can leave
longer or maybe one day become immortal. In George J. Annas' essay:
The Man on the Moon , the writer bringing up two scientist who
suggested that we can make this happen. One was the embryologist Ian
Wilmut who in 1997 announced that he had cloned a sheep, creating a
genetic twin of an adult animal. However the scientist argued that
his technique shouldn't be applied to humans for reproduction, it
raised international debate. But replication didn't get as much
attention as the other experiment. People don't want to be cloned,
they want their children to be better, to have a better chance to
life. And that's what makes the other scientific experiment more
significant. Joe Tsien from Prinston had used genetic engineering to
create smarter mice, who had better memories and learned faster.
Imagine if they make that genetic engineering techniques possible to
apply to human beings?! Lots of parents would like their kids to be
smarter but only a few of them would realise the consequences it
would bring.
We learn in
the movie, that Jerome is not really Jerome he just took someone
else's identity, he lives in another person's skin. His name is
Vincent and he was born in a natural way, at least he called it that
way. The movie suggest that in the new world, the natural way is
actually genetically engineered. Jerome said in the movie: “Before
the time I was born, people believed that, the child conceived in
happiness has a better chance in life. 10 fingers, 10 toes, that all
that used to matter. But not now. 10 seconds after I was born it has
been said the time when I'll be dead.” 99 % of a heart failure at
the age of 30! That segment of the movie is another scary reminder
of Nazism! People become numbers and data. No individualism was
allowed in the Nazi concentration camps. The Jews even had to wear a
yellow star on their jackets so the others were able to see who they
were or who they weren't. From the early age, Vincent was thinking
about himself as others have been looking at him: as a sick person.
Do we want that? To know when and how we will die. To grow up like
that. A constant fear in our parents' heart each time, we fell or
hurt ourself. Not to be able to go to kinder garden or school because
the insurance company wouldn't pay after us, knowing that we are high
risk for them, “damaged” already. Closing the school gate front
of Vincent is very symbolical as well. It's like separating, dividing
the human race in two. Just like it divided Vincent and his brother,
who was born perfect. Vincent was discriminated in his whole life. As
he mentions: “Now we had discrimination down to the science.” In
the other hand we see the other brother: Anton's struggle. Or I could
bring up Jerome's disappointment in this world. He was so upset by
not winning the sport competition what he supposed to, that he tried
to kill himself. There is a burden of perfection as well, because
there is no excuse to fail, as it gets mentioned in the film not
once. There is a very good example for that, when finally Vincent won
the swimming competition what took place the last time they swam
together. Anton never understood what happened. Till the end of the
movie when Vincent finally explain his determination. He wanted to
kill himself as well that day, when feelings about his burden took
over so much that was unbearable! He didn't save energy for the way
back, he didn't care if he would've died. I think throughout our
history, there was a lot of people or nations feeling the same way.
The Jews, the Indians, the indigenous people who get discriminated or
killed because they had a different view on life, or because they had
different colour or believed in a different God. If we could
engineer human brain, that would definitely bring major differences
between people. Because societies brainwashed us already in thousand
way, we believe that money and wealth is the most important factors
in having a happy life. That's why I'm sure lots of hospitals and
insurance companies would make money out of this kind of genetic
engineering. It would cost a lot of money – at least in the
beginning – what only rich people could afford. I think you get the
idea.
Genetic engineering also raises the question about who
is considered to be a human. This kind of science would make us to
become like a product. It would dehumanise us. I believe that we
already have a perfect system. Our body! The human body is amazing.
It doesn't need to be altered. We have to find the reasons of
sicknesses and diseases in our surroundings. We are slowly killing
ourself by poisoning our nature and our own body or by living in
constant stress. We have to get closer to nature again. That is
actually the only positive thing for me in the movie. The using of
solar energy, clean environment, clean waters, supposedly clean air.
It's like the director trying to add an utopian feeling to this very
dark future he painted.
There is one more lifting part in the movie. Love. Love
is possible even in impossible places. Where love is exist, there is
still hope for humans. Love, destiny or faith has no genes. They grow
from nowhere. They don't die, they are intangible. They just change
over time, they become the part of collective energy, what we all
share. Love changes everything for Vincent. He's not so sure
suddenly, that he wants to leave, despite he lived for that idea
before. Heart over mind. We discover this also toward the end of the
movie. When the doctor confesses that he always knew Vincent didn't
belong there. He just didn't want to reveal it, maybe because Vincent
reminded him of his son?! Who knows his real reasons? One thing is
sure; even in an evil world good exists somewhere.. I also believe
that: everything is possible. When you really want something the
universe is there for you, conspire to reach your destination. And
that destination is definitely not Gattaca.
Gattaca is a dystopian world,
where people divided by being valid or invalid. But do we want that
place to exist? When people are products of a genetic architecture,
when standards and numbers measure us, where we can't have an
individual personality, where we have to live in fear. Is genetic
engineering stepping on our basic human rights. Do we understand
that, by altering our brain or mind, our genetic information system
would change as well?! We, humans - thorough out our history - were
trying to change other nations religions, politics, or their way of
living by conquer them. But now we have changed. We are simply trying
to invade ourself, in our own human body, as George J. Annais put it
in his essay. The organ transplantation helped already a lot of
people to live longer , but where will it stop? Are we gonna arrive
in the age when our organs will be replaced with metal parts? Isn't
it already happening?! Think about a pacemaker or a metal joint
replacing a knee joint, and so on... A World where it doesn't matter
who you were but who you become, as Vincent says it toward the end of
the movie. We have to fight against that, to prevent its happening.
We have to leave in peace with each other, we have to extend our
responsibility for the entire world. Altering humans would threaten
the existence of human species itself, therefore we have to fight
against it! The movie starts and end with the doctor's figure,
because doctors and scientist has a very big responsibility in that
fight. As it says in the beginning of the movie: “Consider God's
handiwork; who can straighten what He hath made crooked?”
Ecclesiastes7:13 And the other quote by Willard Gaylin:”I not only
think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants
us to.”
No comments:
Post a Comment