Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really get the love for Idiocracy. You know the amusement ride with the really obviously bad history? The whole movie is basically that. They know their audience doesn't know much history so they need to make mistakes dumb enough so everyone will get it. It's a cynical movie that knows its audience isn't so smart, so they need to make sure the idiots watching know who the real idiots are. That way the audienc…
>You know the amusement ride with the really obviously bad history? It feels like everyone is expected to know this but what are you referencing?
Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
231–240 of 388 posts
Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
#232Eugenism is inevitable. You can't stop parents trying to get the best life for their children, that's pretty much their top priority. We don't like to frame it that way but we are already there with pre-natal tests. Even the selection of mating partner is a form of eugenics. College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect.
One of the major problems with eugenics highlighted in Gattaca is that it was used to artificially pre-select who was allowed to compete and who wasn't. > "Even the selection of mating partner is a form of eugenics." Only when the selection is done by those who aren't the two partners (e.g. arranged marriages, theoretically rape in the absence of abortion). Otherwise it's natural selection between partners - there's…
> there's no guarantee the aspects two people find attractive in each other are genetically heritable.
Evolution naturally tends in that direction.
> Assortative mating per se isn't necessarily eugenics. It takes an instruction from the outside on what mating partners should consider attractive in a potential mate. Without this instruction people will find a variety of differing, and even mutually exclusive, traits attractive, and will assort on these variety of traits, not on a hierarchy of traits.
Up to a point. There's still a pretty strong correlation between what different people find attractive, and there are certainly things that almost everyone agrees are unattractive.
Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
#233Gattaca is one of my favorite movies, mainly because of how believable the concept is. Lets say tomorrow they create a commercially available means of ensuring a child is physically and intellectually superior. Once people start availing themselves of this service anyone with the means almost has to do it as well simply as a kindness to their unborn child to ensure they don't end up as a subspecies to the new genetic…
Problem is genetics is messy as the article states, and we have a long way to go to unentangle the role the environment plays, plus there are always unpredictable environmental factors. There’s also the possibility of negative side effects to certain genetic advantages. You might predispose your child to being a genius and mentally ill. I don’t think the movie’s caste system is realistic, because the role of genes is…
While I don't disagree with you based on today's genetic mastery I think things could look very different in 25 years.
Also all of human history is essentially different castes deciding they are better and society adapting to it.
Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad you relate to it because it is amazing but if there is one criticism I could level, it is that the only female character seems like she is ~drugged~ for most of the movie. Uma Thurman is a good actress so I have to assume it was the direction/script. Edit. Sorry, I was getting hyperbolic. There just isn't much development of her character so it is hard to see what the relationship between her and Ethan Hawke…
She was written that way to show what effects their cultural expectations would have on somebody's emotional expressiveness.
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Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one I didn't really understand was "It's too late for that. We're closer to the other side."
I thought it was a large lake or inlet, and it would take less effort to keep swimming to the land at the other side than it would to turn around and swim back to the start.
I like this explanation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/yuekuu/comment/iw9z...
Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the reason is because I am an actual mintority who is doing the same thing. It's exactly why I relate to the movie despite being a woman.
I'm glad you relate to it because it is amazing but if there is one criticism I could level, it is that the only female character seems like she is ~drugged~ for most of the movie. Uma Thurman is a good actress so I have to assume it was the direction/script. Edit. Sorry, I was getting hyperbolic. There just isn't much development of her character so it is hard to see what the relationship between her and Ethan Hawke…
It's not just her who acts that way. It's every valid portrayed in the movie.
> "it is hard to see what the relationship between her and Ethan Hawke's character is even based on."
As implied in the movie he sees in her a person who, despite being a valid, is limited by the fact that she has a disability. The same kind of disability he has. Only she buys in to it and allows cultural expectations to limit her. He wants to "fix her". To show her that she may not be so limited if she has the fortitude to push past her limitation.
Also they probably find each other physically attractive too.
Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
#237Gattaca is hands down my favorite movie of all time.
From a dystopian future, where a determination ("not saving anything for the way back") can still make a difference against all odds. A love story, a friendship, and finally an unexpected act of goodwill and an ending that is both relieving and sad.
And all this on top of the great acting and cinematography!
Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
#238There is a bit of survivorship bias. Sci-fi has imagined every possible universe, some of the predictions feel very close to what is transpiring. And if we focus entirely on the human stories behind technological facades or other cultural variability, some people claim that all possible stories have been written already.
As someone who saw it when it came out, no it was clear at the time that the movie was a classic and also something we would be wrestling with for a long time to come. The genetic temptations were clear, as was thousands of years of wealth and ethnic inequality. Gattaca did a great job of portraying something yet to come. And we are still just at the beginning of our genocratic journey.
Like all great SciFi, Gattaca also portrayed the culture at the time. And this is a culture that is still with us.
Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
#239Death by thesaurus: switching “relevant” to “pertinent” is incoherent in this context. If you are going to use a cliche or idiom, then use it without modification .
Not everyone has idioms memorized by word. Some of us have them memorized by gist, and our misunderstanding of words can cause us to get it gist wrong.
Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
#240I though about this movie a lot going through IVF with my wife. Particularly when selecting the embryo to implant. For those that don’t know: With IVF, the doctor harvests as many eggs from the woman as possible. Then after taking the make sample and cleaning, selecting the semen with best modality , fertilize each embryo. Then let the embryo grow for a couple of days then freeze the embryo until it’s ready to be imp…
Did you find a very skewed sex ratio in your embryos?
My dad has a sister, but has only two sons. My brother has 3 sons and one daughter, all natural pregnancies. My wife and I have 1 son via IVF, and the other 4 embryos we had checked for chromosomal abnormalities happened to all be male.
I am aware that some IVF processes can inadvertently introduce a sex bias by exacerbating the tiny speed advantage the lighter Y chromosome gives sperm.
I'm curious (and will never know) how much of the skewed sex ratio of my embryos is due to randomness, how much is due to IVF processes, and how much might be due to some familial abnormality.