Discrimination And Prejudice In The Movie Gattaca

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Recommended: Genetic engineering in popular media

The movie Gattaca, takes place in a world of discrimination and prejudice, although different from what most people might first imagine, the principals remain the same. Instead of racism because of someone’s physical appearance, it is racism because of someone’s genetic code. Society has never looked at physical appearance less in history. The resources are abundant in this world and genes can be very easily viewed at genetic code booths, much like a ticket booth. This movie contains several important characters, a protagonist who is overcomes discrimination to make his dream come true, and presents a unique possible future of society that humans may have to decide on.
The main character in this movie is Vincent Anton Freeman. In a world …show more content…

Although he is impaired in everything aspect seen as valuable in that day, he himself is happy, especially compared to his friend Jerome. He has a dream of going into space amongst the stars and the way to make it there is by working at Gattaca, a space mission company, that only accepts valids while he is an in-valid. Jerome Morrow is a genetically engineered man that stepped in front of a car and became paralyzed from the waist down. He was a swimmer at one point, and with the best genes possible, he was expected to be the best. But at the race, he only earned a silver medal, taking second place. Jerome is depressed and angry most of the time, drinking, and tried to kill himself with the car incident but only crippled himself instead. He signs a deal with Vincent to give him his DNA samples to earn a job at Gattaca and after helping Vincent and becoming friends, he appears to be more humorous and happy with himself. At the end of the movie, we see the deal fulfilled, Jerome lent Vincent his body, and Vincent lent Jerome his dream, to reach the stars. Jerome climbs into the incinerator shower and puts on his medal. He ignites the flames and ironically reaches the stars before Vincent …show more content…

Is it good to have? I believe that humans will eventually have to cross this bridge of interfering with nature or not. I see the positives and negatives on boths sides of the argument. However, collectively, I believe that genetically engineering children to the extent of that in the movie is a bad. I believe this for several reasons, one being that there, as seen in the movie, would be very little excitement about anything and everything would lack passion. Everyone who works at Gattaca is very bleak and shows no emotion for fear of being judged by other people. Another reason is that no one would really succeed at anything, and it would not be impressive if they did because they were only fulfilling their potential predicted at birth. If someone were to be faster than others, it would be expected because of their genes, and have nothing to do with personal training or effort. The only thing one could do is fail. Jerome had one of the best possible genetic codes and he only managed to win second place after being guaranteed first. If they do not live up to what has been decided about them, they only see themselves as failure. The biggest reason though, not to engineer your children, is the same as we see in the movie, discrimination because they lack a preferred genotype. Vincent was looked down upon, and was only ever expected to mop the floors superior people worked on. Not everyone

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