Blog #5: Underneath the Utopian Mask of Gattaca (Final Draft)

Amy Guan
ENGL 101-0768
Dr.Vasileiou
Essay #1 (Final Draft)
October 15, 2012

Underneath the Utopian Mask of Gattaca

           Imagine a world where humans are genetically engineered to be perfectly built; tall enough, slim enough, highly intelligent, and free of diseases. Welcome to Gattaca, a movie directed by Andrew Niccol in 1997. Gattaca is a futuristic society highly populated with genetically engineered people. The increasing population of genetically engineered people helped built Gattaca under a utopian mask due to great advancements in sciences. When Gattaca is compared with today’s society, Gattaca seems to fit even more tightly with its utopian mask. But under this mask lays the solid and naked truth. Gattaca is no utopia because there is discrimination in the society which causes people to become suicidal. In general, utopia does not exist in Gattaca since it never existed in the past before.

The improvements of quality of life in the society of Gattaca gave it a utopian image. Most newborns in Gattaca are genetically engineered to be the best possible combination of their parents’ genes. The success of genetic engineering was to bring humans to a utopia. The generation of Valids are engineered to live long lives and to be highly intelligent to form a more efficient and successful society. If we were to compare today’s society to the society of Gattaca, Gattaca may seem to be more ideal. Society today are characterized by many world  issues such as global warming problems in which people are unable to come together to successfully prevent or slow down. Other reasons would be deaths from diseases and human conflicts such as the collapse of the Twin Towers which lead to war in Iraq. With a future like Gattaca, many people in the societies of the past may not see that Gattaca is an illusion of a utopia and overlook the flaw of Gattaca; which have with its small populations of In-Valids genetically discriminated. Genetically engineered human beings were able to advance sciences to such a level that it provided society with environmental-friendly technologies and transportations. The lives of Gattaca's population in general increased and diseases are terminated when in compared with today's society. Therefore, this is how Gattaca society received its utopian mask by being able to solve many problems that previous long lines of naturally-born generations could not.

Instead of a utopia, Gattaca is actually a dystopia. One reason that makes Gattaca a dystopia is that the In-Valids, are genetically discriminated. The first few seconds of a newborn’s life, the doctors would have his DNA tested to determine the newborn’s social status in the society. No matter how hard In-Valids such as the main character Vincent Anton Freeman works for, his identity will only get him so far as menial jobs like being a janitor because his DNA test say he will live up to only 30.2 years and have 99 percent probability of have a mal-heart condition. When he was agreed to receive an interview at the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation, he did not receive an actual interview, but a blood test to determine his genetic quality which was labeled as an In-Valid. The discrimination of the In-Valids makes Gattaca not a utopia. A utopia has to be an ideal and perfect place for all people within a society. In-Valids are part of the society of Gattaca, but it was not an ideal nor perfect place for Vincent that he was willing to fraud his identity by becoming a “borrowed-ladder” to escape Earth to the moon of Saturn. Even for Valids such as Jerome Eugene Morrow, Gattaca was neither an ideal nor a perfect place for him. Jerome was born with such “gifted” genes that he was expected to always win first place in national swimming races, not second place. Gattaca is no utopia because of the existence of genetic discrimination in the society.

Another reason why Gattaca is actually a dystopia is that both superiors and inferiors of the society are suicidal. Vincent has a younger brother Anton who is genetically engineered. The parents only felt the younger brother Anton was most fit for the father’s name because the younger brother was more superior since he was genetically engineered. During the last “Chicken” swimming race Vincent had with Anton; Anton asked how Vincent managed to win the last two races. Vincent told him that the only reason why he managed to win was because he “never saved anything for the swim-back.” Vincent became suicidal even before and after he successfully becomes the most elite in the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation because he didn’t plan to head back to Earth after the traveling to Saturn’s moon. On the other hand, Jerome was also suicidal; he threw himself in front of a car becoming paralyzed from waist-down and later suicided by burning himself after Vincent left to space travel to the moon. Gattaca society made both an In-Valid and Valid suicidal. This indicates that Gattaca is not a utopia for In-Valids or Valids since both Vincent and Jerome had become suicidal due to the pressure of genetic discrimination.

In general, utopia does not and cannot exist. From George J. Annas’ essay The Man on the Moon concludes that one thing that characterizes humanity is that humans are always at war with each other. Humans put themselves in groups and label other groups as the “others.” They tend to “justify killing the ‘other’ in the name of God or country a defining human trait throughout” holy wars such as the Crusades in which Christians believed it was right to kill the Muslims, the nonbelievers to recapture Jerusalem. And even throughout unholy wars such as the World War II where Germany discriminated Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs as “subhumans” to be put in concentration camps under cruel hospitality and unjust experiments. They say history repeats itself, and that’s what happened and will happen; all the different wars in different millennium centers around conflicts between groups that label one another as superiors or inferiors. There will always be conflicts between groups since humans discriminate one another and forget entirely that humans rights applies to all humans, not just people within its groups, religions, or countries. This is why any societies even Gattaca will never meet the utopian standard of life because what makes people humans is not perfection in which genetic engineering can give us, but the imperfections of who we naturally are.

Gattaca may seem like a utopia compared with today's society. But it is not a utopia because it does not live up with the definition that utopia is an ideal and perfect place. Both main characters Vincent and Jerome attempted several times of suicide due to genetic discrimination in their society. The past have been symbolized with wars as George J. Annas sees it in his essay, The Man on the Moon. The Cold War was the transition from holy wars to unholy wars in which people began to “worship science as society’s new religion.” The Cold War was a race to the Moon just like Gattaca Aerospace Corporation was a race to Titan, Saturn’s moon. But for Vincent and Jerome, the race to Saturn’s moon was a race out of a dystopia, Gattaca.