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The plot of the film Gattaca explores this, the idea of what society looks like when there's a class of genetically engineered, "superior" people, vs. the naturally born, "inferior" class.
Is that the movie where (sorry for the bad synopsis) the guy vacuums his work desk because he wants to go to space?
That is correct
Thank you. I just wanted to make sure I remembered the right movie.
I now challenge anyone who haven't seen it to deduce the rest of the plot, based only on my description.
Washing yourself in the shower, difficulty level "going to space"
Jude Law, something something treadmill
Gigolo Joe?
Tbh, I think GATTACA barely touched the topic. It focussed so much on the brothers' rivalry that you could strip out the genetic engineering part and it'd barely change the movie
Yeah it’s a cool movie but the message of systemic disadvantages don’t matter if you try hard enough is a little questionable at best.
I think it's trying to show we are more than just our genetics, there's a lot of nurture/environment/action that affects outcomes. The protagonist had drive, determination, exercised and worked for the dream. Most eugenic people didn't have the same drive and took life for granted, so he could outperform them.
Its complicated in its portrayal, for sure. It comes off at a glance like "just signam grindset bro," but really the protagonist had to lie, cheat and steal his way to his dream, while also being an absolute fatalist while pushing his body near to death. Even then, he still needed to convince a doctor to fake his results at the end. That's not a pro "grindset" or "you can overcome" message really. It shows how absolutely fucked you are if you aren't born into advantage, how weighted everything is against you.
The movie would have hit harder if he got to the end and got caught and denied his dream. Just end with him in prison, staring out a window up at the stars.
Agree but people only want to watch happy endings.
... did you watch Gattaca? Also it was kind of a flop so... you are in large company.
Spoilers for a movie that is almost 30 years old I guess
spoiler
Vincent's brother is more or less mentally broken and likely to face career problems if people ever investigate what actually happened with the investigation... possibly because the astronaut died en route to Jupiter or whatever. Vincent himself is likely on a suicide trip. Jude Law's character ACTUALLY commits suicide.Gattaca's ending is not a happy one. It is exactly what was said during the swimming scene. It is about putting your everything into an endeavor with no care for self preservation or "the swim back". Which... very questionable understanding of genetics aside (very clear they were on the same sauce that Kojima was...), kind of is the "bootstraps" mentality distilled to a suicide run. Some people can succeed just by virtue of their birth and upbringing. Others more or less need to kill themselves to even have a chance. And... a lot of those people never even make it to the chance, let alone have a way to appreciate it.
The issue wasn't "try hard enough". It was how systematic disenfranchisement hobbles people far more than their genetics.
Once you brand someone as "lesser", their actual capacity is irrelevant. They won't be given the opportunity to succeed (much less to fail and try again) while the presumed-superior cohort is offered advantage after advantage in order to prove they are better.
I mean... It was showing the extreme lengths he had to go through, the risks he has to take, just to compete for the same opportunities.
At the end it came down to him going for the launch despite knowing he'd likely get caught and the doctor letting him through despite knowing who he is, because his son was also not engineered, I think the message was people of the under class coming together to fight the system rather than just working hard
For the kinds of class based gene editing we are likely to see, it kinda isn't. More attractive, bigger boobs, better predisposition to fitness, etc. That is all surmountable.
Where it falls apart are "goofy" looking people likely Michael Phelps who are straight up genetic freaks. But those aren't the kinds of genes the rich want... For themselves.
I don't think that was the message at all.
The end message is that the doctor knew all along, and was helping him from the beginning. It didn't matter how much work he put in, how hard he tried. How much he lied or cheated or "overcame his limitation", at the end of the day he would have never succeeded without help from a fellow human.
Doing it all himself had started to make him prideful to some degree. And realizing that, in the background, he didn't do it all himself was a last kick of humility to (ironically) ground the character before he leaves the ground forever.
Whaaat? You mean you can't overcome a heart defect with a bit more grit?
I really can't imagine what China is doing..
Trump is directly undermining national safety by abandoning higher education, college visas for foreigners, scientific studies etc.
15 years ago we knew exactly what China was doing. Now? Good luck
That movie is 9/10. The ending is absolutely beautiful.
Okay, but the moral of the story was that "superior" people weren't actually superior. They were just racist.
The protagonist outwits and outperforms them all.
In some cases there were absolute superior though. Like the pianist with 12 fingers.
The actual moral of the story was that it's not worth it. Being a bit better at some random shit like swimming, playing piano or piloting a rocket is not good enough to sacrifice the rest.
Having twelve fingers isn't what makes you good at playing the piano.
There's an underlying question in the story that amounts to "if you've made Earth such a great place, why is everyone trying to leave?"
The plan to colonize Titan is, at its root, a eugenics fantasy.
The movie literally says that the piece cannot be played without 12 fingers.
the movie doesn't say anything about "colonizing titan", in fact the mission doesn't even state what's the purpose other than to get to titan which has never been done before - it symbolizes ultimate frontier that in the eyes of eugenicists would require a perfect human to be achieved and yet the guy that ends up outcompeting everyone is a not genetically modified and achieves this through sheer skill and determination.
You're misinterpreting the ending. Vincent always felt rejected by the world for being a natural but ends up feeling bittersweet for leaving as he found Irene and Jerome who proved to him that earth is very much capable of loving him. Not "everyone is trying to leave earth", just Vincent really and even then he heavily diminishes his desire.
I love Gattaca and really don't understand your beef with it. It's a beautiful story but awfully insightful too that aged perfectly even to this day! In fact, I'll watch it again tonight :)
Not seen Gattaca, but a multi-tier, genetically structured society is the basis of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which is well worth a read.
Worth noting, it's a pretty short book so don't sleep on it.
Same for H. G. Wells- The Time Machine book in the part where the traveler meets the Morlocks and the Eloi.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
EDIT: Got my authors mixed up, it wasn't Jules Verne.
H. G. Wells wrote The Time Machine, not Verne.
My bad, dunno how I could confuse my authors
Both are very early science fiction pioneers, I can see how they could get mixed up. 🤷♂️
The Beggars Trilogy by Nancy Kress touches on this as well, but is more focused on the issues with superintelligence rather than just gene alteration, although, because people are vain, the preference for things like hair, skin and symmetry also exist in the story's world. Oh yeah, and the coolest concept from this trilogy is a thing called "sleeplessness", where people can alter there genes to remove the biological need to sleep, allowing people to be able to be productive for as many hours as they desire.
came to say this is basically the premise of gattaca.