More on Gattaca

After yesterday’s class I thought a little more about the way Gattaca selected their candidates. I think that it is very similar to today’s requirements. Almost all places require a urine sample. This tests for drug use, obviously. I agree that this is probable cause to base a hire decision on. Not many reliable workplaces want an employee who does recreational drugs. I know I wouldn’t. In some cases if you have medically disabilities, such as recurrent seizures, you cannot hold positions in the army. I understand that they do not want someone firing a gun that is prone to seizures. If perhaps one day there would be someone who wants a child who can be a superior in the army, they could take advantage of what Gattaca has to offer and make sure they would have a child who is perfect in medical and physical backgrounds. I think that we have people that feel a lot of pressure to be perfect already, and if we keep putting labels of negativity on people due to their differences, then we are heading down a dark path. I work in a restaurant where the boss is so shallow, that when people come in to get a job as a waitress she first makes sure that they are ‘pretty’ enough and that they are ‘able to fit around all the tables’. Her motto is that if she is going to have a waitress that is out front for all customers to see, then that person will be attractive, with hair that is perfectly set and that they will be thin. She has even told people they cannot get a job out front because they don’t have ‘the look’, so she will offer them a job in the kitchen. It’s ridiculous. Meanwhile she would not be allowed to work as a waitress herself. Yes, these people they are hiring are an extension of someone’s business, but I think that some things should be left alone and ignored. I definitely think that we are living this version of Gattaca to the extent that we can. I know that if technology allowed it, people would jump at the idea to test all parts of a person before hire in any workplace.

Creepy Feelings

After watching Gattaca, I kind of have the creeps. The whole genetic engineering seems like a fate that is all too possible. For years we have been doing invitro fertilizations and have made clones. What is next?

Genetic engineering has the possibility to improve society in some ways but it is so unnatural and creepy to think of. Are the people being born really individuals if things down to personality traits can be picked out? 

If our world does come to genetic engineering, it may start off harmless: people wanting blue-eyed instead of brown-eyed babies with straight hair instead of curly. But, like with many things in  American culture, it will be taken too many steps too far. What would it be like to be discriminated against solely because of your genetic markup due to your parents wanting a love child? 

It is kind of like racism, being totally against someone because of factors beyond their control, but with this "Geneism" the people are being discriminated against for things not even noticeable to the naked eye. 

Back to the movie, I really enjoyed it. Instantly I recognized it as a movie that I watched in high school but now I got so much more out of it from paying full attention to what was happening. 

Enjoy this pic of Jude Law, everyone. You're welcome.

First of all, I have so much pity for the real Jerome Morrow. How disappointing it must be to really only have the option left of selling your identity? I loved the sense of camaraderie that Jerome and Vincent developed and thought it was so noble of Jerome to support Vincent and encourage him to keep going when he was down. After all, what would Jerome get out of it? Nothing, really. 

(I am really confusing myself here, writing about Jerome when two characters take on that name) 

Until Jerome showed Vincent his medal did I feel sorry for the genetically engineered population. I never thought of the pressure of having such a high standard held to yourself at all times. I know for me it is hard enough to have high expectations for myself and sometimes from my parents, but having those high expectations imposed on my by society would be exhausting. 

Unlike Brave New World and 1984, the lower class people are not brainwashed to be happy in their place and grateful that they do not have all the work and responsibility of the higher caste. In Gattaca, the lower people are openly discriminated against and looked down upon. 

This movie really made me think about our society and planted the fear in my mind that someday our world could potentially turn out like that in the film, which is something that I hope I never live to see come to light.

Define utopia, Gattaca

Beware: This blog is long…

After watching Gattaca, I do not think that this is anything like I would define as a utopia. I only make my own definition based on what I have seen and read about in this class. When I think of a utopia I think of a world in which a group of people live as a community, which is isolated from another community in itself. I think that these people can either be chosen/forced to be a part of this utopia or they can go to this utopia willingly. It depends on the type of utopia that it is. I also think that these people live in the utopia and stay there, obeying the rules and laws that are enforced by a leader. The people who are living in the utopia are told they have capabilities to live freely, but they are always closely monitored by the authority. In some cases the community sees the authority, and in other cases they do not. The people who are a part of the utopia community work together to produce products that benefit themselves and keep them living in their utopia.

 My personal definition of utopia is much different. I think that anyone can imagine a perfect place where needs are met, comforts are prioritized, and luxuries are abundant. I think that utopia is a place where peace remains constant. There are always endless pits to every indulgence or necessity an individual could ever imagine. I also think that even within this place of satisfaction that there will inevitably become a desire for more. This is a common thread in all of the novels, excerpts, and films we have tried to understand so far. Even when a utopia is created and people are thriving, there will be a natural desire, perhaps even a natural need, to want more. This is something the human race cannot escape. If we look at those who have won the lottery for example, there is so many that win millions of dollars only to lose it a few years later. We think “oh how could they be so greedy?” or “how could they lose track of all the money they were spending?” but the thing is; they just wanted more. At what point can you have enough of anything? At what point do you think to yourself, “I’ve had enough of this life, now I want more of this kind of life?” People in their forties and fifties do it too. We have all heard of a mid-life crisis. These are the people that look at their life and think, “I don’t like where I am at. I like this other lifestyle better. I want more. I want change.” Even looking at the community of Twin Oaks, there were people who left the community. These people could not stay in their utopia forever. Maybe they didn’t agree with the rules or beliefs any longer, or maybe they needed to feel more independent.  So, with that I think that even though I have a definition of what a utopia would be like, I know that my definition of utopia cannot exist. This is because of the natural desire for humans to want more to life, even when they have anything they could want, need, or desire. We are creatures of habit, but we also are creatures that like to develop new ideas and make life easier for ourselves.

Now that I have rambled on about my ideas of utopia, I will get back to Gattaca and why I do not think that this is a utopian film. To me this movie showed a situation that could happen. I do not think a utopia is a possible place to live in and be a part of forever, if at all. This is a place that is advanced from where we are now. They are selecting gender of embryos, and hair color, as well as health conditions. This is not too far from where we are headed. People can already pick what eggs are placed with what sperm, and in some cases, I think they can try to pick gender. People go undercover all the time and pretend to be people they are not. I do not think they go to extremes that Jerome went to, both real Jerome and pretending Jerome. However, I do not know this for a fact. They could rub their skin off and use the blood of the person they are posing as. Anyway, I think that there are workplaces where someone would need a fingerprint identification to go into. People could come and go from Gattaca. There were rules here, but it wasn’t where they lived it was where they worked. There were also rules outside of Gattaca in the community. I think that Gattaca seems like a normal way of life to me. People get up, go to work, work hard every day to succeed at work, try to fulfill their dreams,  go home, go out with friends, sometimes break the rules, and eventually look for better opportunities. I guess I have a firm belief of what utopia means to me. When I think of it all I can think of is a place where people are given limitations and rules under careful surveillance. It is a place where people have no free will and appear to be stupid. In Gattaca, Jerome the pretender as I’ll call him was very smart. He did what he had to do to reach his dream. He was the one who was fooling the rest of society. Even though it appeared that he followed the rules, he did not. He was breaking the rules the moment he went in for the interview as Jerome and continued that way as he launched into space. He was a higher part of society because of who he was pretending to be and the job qualifications he had. The question is… if to some this is considered a utopia, then when will Jerome ever feel the desire that this place is not giving him enough? When he returns to earth after having fulfilled his dream, will he still pretend to be Jerome? I think he will continue to be Jerome because he has become Jerome, he loves Jerome. He has the supplies in order to live as Jerome for a while. What happens when that runs out? This perfect life that he was living will be gone. Then he will have to search for more. If there was such a thing as a utopia then it will be gone.

Gattaca reminded me of one of my favorite new shows, Revenge. This is a story about a girl who trades identities with a friend in order to get revenge on the people who led to her father being killed. When I watch this show, I also do not think it is a utopian setting that I would have used to define utopia. It was just about a person who does everything they can to get their one desire in life accomplished. Just when you think she has gotten revenge, she targets another person. If you were to say this is her utopia, then you could also realize that she constantly finds the desire to want more. This place of utopia is constantly revised, and to me that is not what a utopia is.

Although we have seen in our readings that there is commonly one person who has a desire to want more in a utopia, I think that a true utopian community never has that option. Like I said earlier, my definition of utopia is a place where all needs and wants are met, and there is peace. However, because there is commonly a desire to want more, utopia can never be achieved based on my definition.

Words:1310

The Genetic Burden

Gattaca has a particularly strong resonance for me than for most. There are many things to be hated in this film- a whole new form of discrimination for one. We see people judged by their potential instead of their drive or their actual ability. Discrimination is detestable of course, and I believe the greatest failing of humanity as a whole. I don't want to talk about that today, though. What about the premise of this movie as a whole? The pursuit of genetic perfection?

On its surface, conceiving a child in this manner seems cold, doesn't it. Creating a few perfect zygote candidates in a vial and asking you to pick your kid. Down to the skin, hair and eye color. Edit them like a doctored photograph. But, this doesn't fill me with the dislike that it seems it should.

This may be too much information about me, more than you might really need to know... but I have five genetic disorders. At fourteen, I was an honors and AP student, a competitive athlete in two sports, and a recreational athlete in many others- a soccer goalie, a show jumper, a black diamond skiing adrenaline junkie. When I was fifteen, I couldn't get out of bed without help. They told me that I would never graduate high school, and that college was laughable. Participating in sports again was as far off a dream as going to the stars.

But I wouldn't take no for an answer. I graduated from high school writing papers in bed- I got into college with excellent SAT scores even though I could barely walk to the testing room. I worked hard, fighting an uphill battle against everyone's expectations improving my mind and my body over time. I can't have everything back. I don't compete anymore, but I play soccer for fun, and this spring, for the first time in five years, I will get back on the horse- literally.

That journey was unbelievably hard - but I don't regret it. My body is my own, and the journey I had to take made me who I am. It taught me the value of so many things, how to find joy everywhere and take nothing for granted. It taught me humility, and stubborn determination where it would have been easier to give in. But it is nothing I would wish on anyone, ever.

If I could create my children in a vial, to guarantee that the burden ends with me, I would feel happier and more secure about bringing a life into this world. And that shouldn't be just me. If we could be certain that every child born will have no down syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, seizure disorders, attention deficit disorders, or in fact any disorders of the mind or body wouldn't that be a better world? How much suffering could be spared by such an advancement?

And then the hazier problem - what if we could take violent dispositions out of people? Wouldn't that too be for the best? We see suffering everywhere these days. People found murdered in their homes, muggings and rapes, bombings, wars.... on and on. What if we only had children who turned from anger and violence and desired peace and prosperity instead? Could we at last achieve a global peace by fixing ourselves? Gattaca's genetic tampering obviously didn't completely succeed  the director was as modified as anyone else but he had a motive strong enough to over come his peaceful nature for ill. And yet, how many crimes could be prevented by people simply not wanting to commit them?

I'm not saying I want a world precisely like the one shown in Gattaca. I think a person's performance and 'inclination' should stand for itself. But what would be so bad about a world rid of genetic illnesses and predispositions for health problems? Wouldn't that world look better than this one now?

The Borrowed Ladder and Our Society's Climb

The opening screen of Gattaca offers this Bible verse from Ecclesiastes: “Consider God’s handiwork, who can straighten what He hath made crooked?”  This line deepens in meaning as the movie progresses. First of all, in this world of the “not too-distant future,” God rarely gets the chance to make anything “crooked.” When a married couple decides that they want to conceive a child they do so in a way that ensures that the child will have the best “parts” of both of the parents. The geneticist wipes out any markers for potential shortcomings in the child’s future. Luckily, the viewers are given the opportunity to follow Vincent who will “never know what possessed [his] mother to put her fate in God’s hands rather than that of the local geneticist.” [Insert mixed feelings rant about the reality of our own current scientific ability to control the genetic make-up of babies in-utero. The pros and cons and the scary possibility of what the future may hold and the difficult decisions forced upon expecting parents.] Vincent’s perspective allows us to see the hardship of this position in their society as well as the possibility of success that can be realized when someone decides to fight for his/her self. 

                                                                               OR 

As we watch Vincent who refuses to abide by the genetic caste system that is put into place by his society, we cannot help but take a good look around our own society and evaluate the state that we are in. How different does our own world appear? I’m not shouting from one side or the other, but is it really that different to offer jobs based on college pedigree? When Vincent goes to his “interview” they take a blood sample and thus the interview process is concluded and he is hired. Isn’t that similar to what happens when someone applies to a job who has graduated from Harvard, Yale or Brown? And isn’t it a perpetual cycle? Typically Harvard attendees are not students who were raised without a wealth of resources. In real life it is the exception to pull yourself up by “your boot straps” and climb from the gutter of poverty into the seat at an Ivy League school. This one simple similarity causes us to search for and point out many other similarities between Vincent’s world and our own. Then we are left to question our comfort level with the similarities and our urge to be active in taking a stand against them. 

Things change for Vincent when he and his brother Anton play “chicken” in the ocean and Vincent wins. Realizing that it was not genetically predetermined for Anton to always win helped Vincent to realize that he could rebel against the system and prove everyone wrong (even if they wouldn’t be aware of it). Vincent realizes that HE is in control of his destiny, not his DNA! This is a lesson that many people, myself included, could benefit from learning. Maybe it isn’t your DNA that is holding you back, but in general we could all use the reminder that we are in control of our everyday lives and choices. Yes, some of us may believe that there is someone Greater that is inevitably in control, but we must make a conscious effort to ensure that we are even living up to the potential that He has placed in us. 

We may be frighteningly close to this “not too-distant future,” but we have not entirely landed there yet. So while we still have the fighting chance, let’s not “save anything for the swim back!” 

Image #1: http://grumpyelder.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/baby-gift-from-God.jpg

Image #2: http://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/80d33999-091d-461d-a269-c0ddec8ee887.png

Image #3: http://huttshead.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/rags-to-riches.png

Image #4:  http://s3.amazonaws.com/win-forever-blog/2012/08/DESTINY.png

Image #5: http://xc2.xanga.com/ca9e1bf0c2635279112399/z222339924.jpg

Is an Utopia a Reality?

      George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is possibly my favorite piece of dystopian literature. Sure, the regime lacks the seemingly well-placed love and cleverness of the one in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, but I think that's why I enjoy Oceania's governmental system. These people aren't in it to create a better world or help the people who need it; they're in it for the power, plain and simple.

      But, I've always enjoyed reading about villains who are power-hungry and evil simply for the sake of being evil.

      I also really liked reading the philosophical debate at the end of this book. I've always kind of enjoyed philosophy, so this kind of battle of wits excites me.

Here is my favorite quote from this book: “ 'We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull' ” (274).

      In a way, O'Brien, the speaker here, is wrong; however, in a way he's right. Someone once asked me how many realities there are. I immediately just wanted to say “one,” but once I thought about it I realized the answer is sort of “infinitely many.” (Actually, they're not infinite, but the number is so high they may as well be infinite.)

 It's not quite as fancy as a "multiple earths" theory.

     Now, stay with me here as I describe my wonky theory. There is one reality in which all things actually happen as they are. This reality is called “Truth.” All of our perceptions and personal takes on “Truth” are the other numerous realities. (I call them “the Infinities.”) Here's an example:

I'm sitting in the dining hall at a table by myself. At the table next to me is a group of three people chatting. Now, in the prime, true reality (“Truth”), they're making fun of my haircut; however, I think (from what little I eavesdrop) that they're talking about basketball. My perception is one of the “Infinities.” While my thoughts aren't true to what actually happens, they're true to me, and therefore realistic. So, in consequence, there are infinitely many realities based upon our daily perceptions.

Get it?

"Welcome to Coblentz Dining Hall: where the recipes don't make sense and your perception of reality doesn't matter."

      So, with so many realities, is it even possible to have an utopia? Sure, one may exist in “Truth,” but what if everyone perceives it differently? It may be perfect, but it won't be utopian to some people because it won't line up with their expectations and perceptions of perfection. If they don't want to go along with it, how can the society be perfect/better? How, then, can it be utopian?

(Multiple earths picture taken from 123rf.com. Image of Coblentz taken from youvisit.com.)

Historical Destruction - Rupturing from the Past

My previous blog post was about our utopian novels’ ideas of the future. Now let’s talk about the past!

One of the more striking comparisons between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four is both worlds’ abhorrence towards history.

In Brave New World, the world is completely ignorant of all things historical. “History is bunk,” says Mustapha Mond, quoting an actual saying from the real-life Henry Ford (Brave New World, 40).

The following is one of my favorite passages from Huxley’s novel, due to its bluntness, take-no-prisoners approach, and its excellent summary of Brave New World’s historiography:

Mond “waved his hand, and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk – and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk – and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome. Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom – all were gone. Whisk – the place where Italy had been war empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk. King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony…” (Brave New World 41).

The way the narrator shrugs away all major movements, empires, and people that shaped the entire world is chilling. Huxley’s universe would think the same for all things history. Not only does it not matter, it is absolutely repugnant.

Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four is no better, despite a different approach.

As you know, Oceania’s view of history is to completely revise it. To take one example (you can find many, many more within the entire book), political international alliances were altered to reflect the current treaties: “The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago” (Nineteen Eighty-Four 35).

So why does history frighten them?  Why would one want to irreparably rupture from the past?

Orwell’s work is easier to figure out, since it explicitly tells us. The Party’s slogan (“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” (Nineteen Eighty-Four 35-36)). It is purely about control of the populous, brain washing for perpetual political gain.

For Brave New World, it can essentially be summarized as the following: suppressing history can control intellectual freedom. By learning historical events, one will realize how life was like in the past. Even if they see the past as horrible compared to the “utopian” World State, one still learning something they shouldn’t. What will simply be a look at a history book will become an obsession of the past, which will eventually lead to intellectual independence.

yahoo.com

 This is an actual response on Yahoo! Answers 

to the question "Why is history not important?"

As a medieval historian, I am absolutely horrified by people’s dismissal of this time period. I’m sure Dr. Mitchell-Buck will agree with me here, that medieval history is not the most important area of interest in the field of study (and that multiple misconceptions about the era still exist today). And I’m also more than certain that Sam will agree that history (in general) is much more than just learning facts and dates about dead people.

How much of our culture do we owe to medieval history? Answer: a whole lot. For example, did you know that the university system was designed during the medieval period, following cathedral schools (which themselves followed monastic communities)? That’s right – thank those “old” medieval intellectuals for giving us a solid education!

Okay…impromptu rant over. Needless to say, I could easily go on. History is essential to society; forget the whole adage “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” It’s more than that: it is society’s identity. What would the world be like if it weren’t for certain movements in history? Why would we possibly wish to demonize or revise it? If we do such things, then our identity in society is substantially lost.

This is what terrifies me the most about these two works: they lose their identity; instead of being on a continuum, they are forever isolated in time.