From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Dec 26 2000 - 17:40:47 MST
At 08:37 AM 26/12/00 -0800, Brian D Williams wrote:
>>I can be more flexible on a creator's use of
>>questionable scientific or technological projections in the latter
>>case.
>GATTACA
I refuse to be flexible in this case. The damned movie was stupidly
wrong-headed to the core, as far as I could make out. The notion it argued
seemed to be (1) in the near future genomic engineering *really does work*,
you actually can optimize your offspring to produce phenotypically superior
beings, but (2) if a non-optimized human (limitations emblematized by poor
vision) is sufficiently motivated, s/he can best one of those damned brave
new world horrors *by sheer grit*. Yeah, right. Just like a house cat can
beat a cheetah in a race *given the right spiritual attitude*.
It was a feel-good crock, despite its nice production values and decent
acting. It set back the whole public discussion precisely because people
thought it was saying something sensible and humane rather than indulging
in Frankensteinian overkill or Huxleyan satire - although that's pretty
much just what it was doing, drat it.
Damien Broderick
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