The film Gattaca does an exemplary job of showing how minority rights in society are extremely important. Minority rights refers to the policy where the smaller group of people still get to keep their rights, even though they are outnumbered by the majority. The “faith” people or the people who are conceived naturally have definitely become the minority in the “Gattaca” society. The majority are the genetically engineered people who take up most of society and have the most opportunities. The people who are genetically engineered are seen to have superior genes to the “faith” people. This difference cause the genetically engineered people to have more privileges, whereas the “faith” people are highly discriminated against. The massive amounts of discrimination against these people cause them to be only given boring meaningless work. The minority in this case by law have rights, but in society they have almost none. This is why enforcing minority rights is very important so that minorities in society are not discriminated against and have all of the privileges of the majority.
The main character in “Gattaca” is a faith born man named Vincent. Vincent has a dream of going to space since he was very little, but because he is a “faith” child he would never get to go. This causes him to assume the identity of a genetically engineered athlete named Jerome who has become paraplegic. In this society discrimination is technically not allowed but businesses find their way around this law to make sure they only hire the genetically engineered people with “better” genes. Vincent has to take extraordinary measures [along with Jerome] in order to ensure they don’t get caught. Both of these men are highly intelligent scientists who are clever and cunning. In this case the minority [Vincent] has to pretend to be the majority [Jerome], this is yet another example from the movie about why minority rights are needed. If everyone was accepted and equal Vincent would not have had to break the law to get what he wanted. The genetically engineered people are seen to be almost perfect in society’s eyes, while the “faith” people are seen to be epitome of imperfection. Jerome does show some qualities of being a “perfect” human but his mental and physical state show differently. Vincent and Jerome can be argued to be equally intelligent even though Jerome’s genes say otherwise. Jerome, being genetically engineered is assumed to be almost completely perfect mentally but the way he acts tells us a different story. He gives us many hints to the fact that he is mentally ill throughout the movie such as when he tells us how he got to be paraplegic. When he comes home from drinking with Vincent he tells him that he jumped in front of a car, we can only assume he was trying to commit suicide. He then goes on to say “If at first you don’t succeed try try again.” telling us that he is still suicidal. Finally, at the end of the movie he commits suicide. If the genetically engineered people are supposed to be so perfect then why is Jerome so mentally ill. Vincent may not be so physically sound with his eyesight and heart but he does not display signs of being mentally ill throughout the movie. From these instances we can take away that even if you are genetically engineered to be “perfect” it does not mean that you are. Nobody is perfect and still the “faith” children are being discriminated against. This is why minority rights are so important, without them minorities would have their rights stolen daily just because they are seen as different or flawed. On a different note, I strongly disagree with genetically engineering our children because we are playing god too much. I understand if a couple is having a hard time getting pregnant we should help them out, but ordering what gender and how tall we want our children to be is leaving nothing up to chance. If everyone could genetically engineer their kids to be the exact way they wanted them nothing would be different anymore, all of these people would be almost like carbon copies of each other. I think that we will be dehumanizing our society by genetically engineering our babies to be the exact way we want them to be. |