BLOG #4

Hugo Avila

Dr. Luke Vasileiou

ENG 101/0768

ESSAY #1

Gattaca Imperfection under Perfection

Is it Gattaca the perfect place where everybody dream to live or is it just an imperfect nightmare place of living? According to the Film “Gattaca” by Andrew Niccol, in this not-too-distant future, the mechanisms and the technological advantages are improvements supposed to make a perfect world with happiness and joy. A place where exists genetic engineered, no diseases or illness, environmental advantages and no distinctions or discriminations because of race, gender, nationality. A place where everybody would like to live, It’s still the most awful place of living, because there is not matter of effort or attainment, it’s just a matter of genes. The film is about Vincent, the main character that was born as a natural or traditional birth, which means no genetic engineered. At the time that he was born, the doctors diagnosed him several sickness just because he was born naturally. He always dreamed to fly out-space but his genes were the principal obstacle to reach his goals. There was no possibilities for him to achieve his dreams, just because his blood. So with this said, can we really talk about Gattaca as a Utopia place? I would say definitively NO. Gattaca is not the place that the society dreams to live. I would not like a place like this because though there is not discrimination for external factors, there is discrimination because of genes. Therefore, I believe that Gattaca is the imperfect place under this umbrella of perfection, convincingly a Dystopia.

The genetic engineered was always the problem with Gattaca, there were people with this kind of technology and at the same time there were people with no genetic engineered at all. So this means that within Gattaca there were a lot of discrimination but because of genes. People with this technology were called “the Valids” for the society; people without it were called “the Invalids”, so this is telling us that there was inequity in Gattaca. Genes were all the matter if you wanted to grow up in a perfect world, or if you just had it to live the imperfection with the “valids” scraps. So that’s why I think that Gattaca is a Dystopia. For example, the film tells us specifically about “Gattaca the space agency” that just the people with a higher DNA would be able to work within it, but for the rest of the people (the “invalids”) they just could work inside Gattaca as cleaners. Thus it’s very unfair that genes would speak for your physical and intellectual capacities. I believe that what matters in our actual society is the effort and sacrifice that you do daily to reach your dreams and that is how it has to be.

So everybody would love to be in a Utopia society, with no discriminations, the technologies to have perfect humans, no crime, equality, perfect laws and environmental advantages which happen in Gattaca but not for everybody. We can see that when the Director of the space agency, murdered brutally a man with a keyboard. That means that actually this guy believed in his own interests to kill an innocent man, just because of his intentions. Also Irene that was genetic engineer she has heart problems, which mean that this technology wasn’t perfect at all. Through Gattaca we can see a lot of dysfunctions and imperfections that lead us to think in the actual world that we live but with more technologies and less people suffering, still not a Utopia because it doesn’t work for the totality.

Overall I believe that perfection doesn’t exist in reality, just in science fiction. Still science fiction would have to make struggling lives, just to make it more interest. Utopia places will not exist in this world and that’s how life is so fascinating. No society and nobody is perfect, and that’s really cool because we can enjoy the variety of our world. I can imagine a place that is perfect in its totality; it will be a horrible place to live, without the knowledge of imperfection and the effort while you get problems in your life.

In conclusion I can say that Gattaca is a Dystopia because if it were a Utopia, it will be equally the same for the hole. All the situations created a Dystopia place, no a Utopia. I believe that in the struggle of our lives we will find imperfection under perfection, still the most amazing place to live, because it gives you hope and ambition to set your goals and reach them. As Vincent did on the movie Gattaca where he fought for overcoming all his obstacles to obtain his dreams, no matter what. That has showed and helped me to understand that life is really hard, perfection is impossible but still the Dystopia place where I live it’s perfect contradictory.