From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Dec 27 2000 - 17:53:08 MST
>I though it was a good movie, I like most movies with Uma Thurman.
I disagreed profoundly with the scientific and political subtext--except in
so far as it was an allegory of the evils of racist discrimination (and
then it misfired because by hypothesis the gene-engineered *were*
physically and intellectual superior)--but then, of course, I don't much
like most movies with Uma Thurman.
>It wasn't
>necessarily plausible. For example, the swimming competitions and where the
>invalid brother saves his valid brother from drowning are symbolic.
Symbolic of *what*? At the end, this goose does the equivalent of Homer
Simpson plagiarizing his way into a job running a nuclear reactor. The
clear implication to me is that the space mission will be dangerously
compromised by his actions, just as badly as if someone with a major heart
condition joined a polar expedition, but hey, why should *he* be left out
of the fun?
The explanation offered in the swimming scene was that the unmodified bro
was able to match and even beat the phenotypically enhanced bro *because he
held nothing in reserve*. That is, he could swim farther out to sea in one
direction because his brother rather wimpishly planned to get back alive.
This stupid plan turned out to work because his superior brother
*unaccountably in terms of the agreed conditions* ran out of puff on the
extended outward journey (even though he still had nearly enough reserves
to get back to shore), and godhelpus was then towed in, coughing and
gasping and drowning, by the feeble brother, who presumably Used the Force.
Give me a break. A symbol has to be commensurate with the claim it's
allegorizing. GATTACA just denied without a blush the very claims it
established.
Now this is a worthy tactic if all such claims really are bogus. Fritz
Leiber published a very famous short story in the 1950s, `Poor Superman',
which took the piss nicely out of L. Ron Hubbard's absurd claims; Leiber's
sarcastic equivalent of a `clear' is palpably self-deceiving, like the
dupes who feed the Scientology coffers. But real gene engineering of the
GATTACA kind *won't* be bogus, even if Uma Thurman and Jeremy Rifkin tell
us otherwise. Its drastic improvements *won't* be amenable to being bested
by grit on the past of the old fashioned unmodified, any more than a guy
with a megaphone and all the determination in the world can better be heard
at cross-continental distances than one with a radio transmitter.
Damien Broderick
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