Imagine a world in which every gene you have has to be carefully planned – otherwise you will be considered a castaway, someone who would have only a marginal place in society.

If you were someone born from the love of your mother and father and not from meticulous planning over your parent’s DNA, you would have the probability of imperfection raised and you could be considered as persona non grata – somebody to whom the world would refuse the least significant sign of recognition.

If I were in such position, I would eventually have to strive continuously to appear better than I really am, to look like a genetically perfect being. Aesthetics, here, is taken to its extreme expression, rather than Ethics: being genetically perfect, selected before being conceived, is something that eliminates completely the personal being as a whole: since I could be programmed from the start, theoretically speaking there would be no need for an individual manifestation of myself and any definition of individual would rely purely on external definitions and concepts which could not be questioned; those definitions would be, eventually, above law itself.

Then nazism, racism and any other form of social, political and economical discrimination would be transformed into sciences, and Science itself would depend on the viewpoint transmitted through this type of behavior.

Gattaca is an excellent metaphor for what is happening right now, at your neighborhood, in your city, in your school. At the same time that we are learning something, we also need to filter every knowledge that we are capable to obtain through our lives, not only from our innermost thoughts, but also from the outside. If we are going to look for something which is perfect, we would also have to understand which thing is that perfection for which we are striving: for aesthetic perfection is not always the same (in fact, it rarely is the same) as ethic perfection.

Before we can reach any true knowledge, we should first be able to understand if we are using knowledge to achieve welfare or we are being used by our own ignorance to show drastically to ourselves that losing the "big picture" of life will also lead us, ultimately, to lose our lives.

Being able to understand those things through a metaphor rich in symbolism which excels giving food for thought is always a good way to get to the basic meaning of simple things, like the individual value which is always above any possible genetic planning and like fate, luck or whatever you call it, which can take someone from a state of perfection to its opposite and vice-versa.

So this excellent movie is a major lesson on how much we should consider having a second opinion – actually thinking twice – on who we suppose to be good or bad from simple prejudice. Bias and impartiality, as the common dictation says, are both in the eye of the beholder.




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older