From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Dec 28 2000 - 19:17:39 MST
At 09:17 AM 28/12/00 -0800, Hal wrote:
>Right, I think the key to understanding the movie is that the "valids"
>are not actually intellectually superior. It is purely a social
>prejudice
This reading, probably supported by the script, alas, rather vitiates any
non-allegorical merit the movie might have had. It's as if the Alphas and
Deltas in BRAVE NEW WORLD really *weren't* drastically different, just
viciously labelled. That does happen in our world, of course, but the point
about sf is that we can dramatize worlds in which GM speciates humanity *in
fact*; as in, e.g., Frank Herbert's rather flawed but still interesting THE
EYES OF HEISENBERG.
Anyone interesting in testing such interpretations against the script can
find it at
http://www.screentalk.org/galleryG.htm#Gattaca
(I haven't yet had time to read it through. But here's a bit about the
stigmatized `invalids' or `genojunk':
`They are the "healthy ill". They don't actually have anything yet - they
may never. But since few of the pre-conditions can be cured or reversed, it
is easier to treat them as if they were already sick.'
On the other hand, Vincent's Genetic Quotient shows that he has a
`congenital heart condition' that had a 0.8 probability of killing him by
now. My impression is that such a disorder is a ticking time bomb; it's not
like an on/off switch where he might have had the good luck to fall into
the 20 percent who could suffer no ill effects at all.)
Damien Broderick
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