Gattaca to Earth: We're Ahead of Our Time.

There is not a particular shortage of films that speak to a bevy of societal issues we deal with on the regular basis. In fact, there is not a particular shortage of films dealing, to some degree, with race. Gattaca approaches the issue in a unique, appealing fashion that brings our attention to the greater issue by effectively detaching us from the issue as it is presented to the today’s Americans. In fact, Gattaca does not deal with race in America at all. Gattaca deals with all of the characteristics of race relations in America and around the world. It showcases discrimination, prejudice, inequality and oppression in a raw, compelling form.

Gattaca is based some number of decades in the future, in a world in which people’s jobs, and essentially their futures, are based entirely on their genetics. Jerome Morrow is the first child of his parents, the one they chose not to genetically engineer based on their most favorable traits. Throughout the film, he attempts to pass (as an ambiguously ethnic person might pass as “not black” or “not hispanic”) as a “valid” (someone lacking a certain degree of genetic flaws). His goal is to become an astronaut. In this society, invalids are not allowed to work as astronauts. The closest he might get is a position as a janitor in a space exploration base. Despite his devotion, his effort and his intelligence he would never be considered fit for space travel, due to being near sighted.

The aforementioned workplace discrimination and its basis reminded me immediately of the glass ceiling in the American job market. We have mentioned in class and seen in readings that minorities disproportionately occupy the most prestigious positions. They also disproportionately lack the formal education necessary to even begin to pursue such opportunities. The most striking part of the similarities between the situation in this movie and American race relations is how deeply engrained into society prejudice and discrimination are in both contexts. In both, oppressive and marginalizing policy is supported by the governmental system, those controlling all of the wealth and thus the power support oppressive ideals, and the collective has come to accept it as the way life is, has been, and always will be.

In Gattaca, the systems mechanisms for oppression were a bit more robust than they are in modern America. It was, essentially, a police state in which invalids could be reprimanded for being in areas they shouldn’t be or with people they shouldn’t be. The social situation in this movie had more akin to the Jim Crow era of American race relations. It went deeper than laws underhandedly holding invalids under the foot of the nation’s dominant group, as is done with minorities in America. Similar to Jim Crow and the era leading to it, their society had laws that forbade people to attend certain places, attain certain educations or work certain jobs. The part that transfers to modern day from both Gattaca and Jim Crow is the culture of oppression. Too many people still carry racially degrading thoughts, believe in stereotypes and stand aside quietly as racial inequality runs rampant. 

www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gattaca-1997‎

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/02/04/poll-61-percent-of-african-americans-say-us-race-relations-getting-worse/