From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Sat Jun 15 2002 - 10:14:04 MDT
The Sci-Fi Channel will be showing Gattaca tomorrow at 11:00 AM and
again at 3:00 AM the next morning. These are times for the Pacific feed;
I think they have another feed that is 3 hours different.
Gattaca depicts a future society where prejudice and bigotry flourish,
but based on quality of genome rather than traditional racial or ethnic
differences. Most people are genetically engineered (or at least
selected), but a few still get conceived and born the old-fashioned
way. That is the lot of Vincent, who although extremely talented and
determined, is a genetic "invalid". He wears glasses, giving public
testimony to his imperfect genome. The only jobs open to him are menial
positions and he ends up being a janitor at the Gattaca corporation,
which is involved with space travel. Vincent dreams of going into
space but it appears impossible. Finally he gains access to another
man's genome, and works his way through society as a fraud, using this
"borrowed ladder" (a reference to the ladder shape of the DNA molecule?).
Everything is going OK until his boss is murdered...
The society in Gattaca is not completely convincing; I think the
movie is meant to be more an allegory about current prejudice than a
cautionary tale about the possible social effects of genetic engineering.
But given that these technologies are moving along so quickly, with
embryo screening already being used for high risk births and (according
to rumor) sex selection, it might not be long before we do have a world
where there is a divide between those who are born naturally and those
who have been screened. The widespread use of instant genetic tests for
identification is another technology which could appear in another ten
years or so. I think this movie may be more prophetic than it seemed
when it first came out.
Hal
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