Gattaca Genetic Engineering
The film's title is based on the letters G, A, T, and C, which stand for guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine, the four nucleobases of DNA. Vincent Anton Freeman is the protagonist of Gattaca. He, unlike most of his generation, was conceived without genetic selection, and is therefore at risk for many disorders and has a shortened life expectancy. Vincent dreams of becoming an astronaut, but knows his genetic inferiority makes this dream almost unattainable. He therefore does the only thing he can think of that will help him attain this dream: posing as a different individual with a better genotype. Vincent buys DNA from someone who is genetically superior and passes himself off as a "valid." He is ultimately granted his chance to live his dream when the doctor in charge of genetic screenings fakes his genetic validity because he wants to see if Vincent can go beyond his physical limitations.
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For a while, the film offers a critique of "genoism" that parallels the concerns of many disabled people about the frightening possibilities of genetic engineering. The visually stunning film shows a world of uniformity: people work in vast rooms at glistening, undifferentiated computer workstations; hushed electronically generated voices shepherd them about. Every fingernail, every bit of skin, every strand of hair has the potential to reveal one's innermost genetic secrets, as the opening credits underscore, where enormously magnified hairs and flakes of skin loom threateningly. Jerome was the perfect genetic specimen to work for Gattaca. Yet he had no desire to do so. In this regard his genetic perfection was an enormous burden because he was not regarded as able to perform any other type of job, which he might otherwise have
For a while, the film offers a critique of "genoism" that parallels the concerns of many disabled people about the frightening possibilities of genetic engineering. The visually stunning film shows a world of uniformity: people work in vast rooms at glistening, undifferentiated computer workstations; hushed electronically generated voices shepherd them about. Every fingernail, every bit of skin, every strand of hair has the potential to reveal one's innermost genetic secrets, as the opening credits underscore, where enormously magnified hairs and flakes of skin loom threateningly. Jerome was the perfect genetic specimen to work for Gattaca. Yet he had no desire to do so. In this regard his genetic perfection was an enormous burden because he was not regarded as able to perform any other type of job, which he might otherwise have