An essay for the catalogue of Put on Your Blue Genes:
BioTech-Kunst und die Verheissungen der Biotechnologie
Neue Gesellschaft f?dende Kunst (NGBK), Berlin (24th September - 23rd October 2005)
English version (In German translation in the catalogue: Berlin: NGBK, ISBN 3-926796-97-9)
Genetically Modified Cinema
Representations of genetic engineering, cloning and advanced biotechnology are numerous in recent popular movies. Genetics is a relatively young science compared to the history of cinema, but it has have been effortlessly incorporated into existing genres and plot scenarios. Film-makers have used genetics to revitalise well-worn story lines, while exploiting anxieties about biotechnology and interest in cutting-edge science.
Mad Scientists
Genetics most commonly features in science fiction and horror films, where it typically occurs in variations on the mad scientist scenario. Mad scientists predate the cinema, having their origins in ancient myths and legends of men who assume the power of gods. A more immediate influence on cinema, however, has been the nineteenth century novel; in particular Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and H.G. Well's The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896).
Frankenstein was first filmed in 1910, and hundreds of films have since adopted its basic story. The version directed by James Whale (Frankenstein, 1931) was a key film in establishing the mad scientist scenario in movies. In this scenario, scientists meddle with nature and unleash forces beyond their control. They create monsters using 'unnatural' methods, which escape and threaten the wider population. Monsters often confront or kill their creator. Lightning, electricity and operating tables were the devices for animating Frankenstein's monster in films of the 1930s. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, however, the monster (Robert De Niro) has a much more organic birth, emerging from a vat of artificial amniotic fluid. A modern emphasis is placed on the characteristics inherited from criminal body parts, while the Doctor's shunning of his wife to create an adult progeny by himself is a plot development also seen in recent cloning movies.
The science that plays a central role in mad scientist scenarios reflects the technological concerns of the day. In the early days of cinema, devices such as light ray or X-ray generators were involved in the creation of the monster. In the 1950s atomic energy was harnessed, while vivisection and surgery have until recently been popular techniques. However, today's mad scientists tend to splice genes.
Three films of H.G. Well's The Island of Dr. Moreau illustrate the changing priorities of the mad scientist. The 1932 film Island of Lost Souls follows the book, with vivisection being the means to create man-animal hybrids. In The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), surgery is complemented with serums that contain a "new set of instructions for modifying nature". The film of 1996 explicitly uses genetic engineering as a device to make novel chimeras with "animal genes fused to human genes". Body parts need no longer be stitched together, because genes can be manipulated.
In mad scientist scenarios, scientists may be crazed, deluded or merely naive. In the past, mad scientists have often been isolated individuals who are motivated by evil. However, the modern movie geneticist often manipulates genes with the best of intentions, although the mad scientist scenario dictates that things must go wrong. If evil is present, it is often associated with a faceless organization or a sinister "military-industrial" complex.
Jurassic Park (1993) was the first blockbuster movie to put a genetic theme centre stage. Directed by Steven Spielberg from a Michael Crichton novel, it has been described as Jaws (1975) meets Westworld (1973). Dinosaurs are predatory animals, like the sharks in Spielberg's Jaws, but are created by gene-splicing scientists. The danger in Jurassic Park manifests itself in a theme park, like Crichton's Westworld, but with the threat arising through genetic engineering rather than robot technology. Jurassic Park succeeded in re-invigorating the prehistoric monster movie.
In Jurassic Park, scientists bring the dead (extinct) back to life for the "public good". However, it is for the relatively trivial purposes of entertainment, which does not justify the risks involved. In the film, dinosaur DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is retrieved from the gut of a mosquito trapped in amber (tree resin). The ancient DNA is manipulated and cloned to bring dinosaurs back to life in the present day. Dinosaurs died out around 60 million years ago - millions of years before the first humans walked the Earth. Prehistoric monsters and humans previously co-inhabited the screen either through plot devices involving time travel or lost worlds, or by simply ignoring the realities of geological time. These scenarios owe a debt to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895), Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912) and the novels of Jules Verne. The plot of Jurassic Park is distinct in that it incorporates recent scientific findings, for example, concerning ancient DNA. It is a prehistoric monster movie set firmly in the present day, enabling it to play upon current anxieties about genetic engineering.
The depiction of scientific teams acting with the best of intentions, but underestimating the inherent risks, has become a common feature of films with threatening creatures. Sharks are genetically engineered by scientists aiming to cure Alzheimer's disease, for example, in Deep Blue Sea (1999). A protein is extracted from modified shark brains to affect a cure. However, the experiments go wrong and super-size and super-intelligent sharks escape from containment. In Mimic (1997) genetic engineers cure a fictional child-killing disease, by using termite and preying mantis DNA to create a beneficial insect that wipes out the disease vector. However, this insect mutates and evolves into a giant mantis-like creature that mimics its new prey: humans. The beetle-like creatures hang around underground stations waiting for late-night commuters, who are fooled by wing-cases resembling overcoats and pairs of mandibles that form an image of a human face. The film even postulates the evolution of lungs, to explain how an insect can attain a large size, a detail not previously considered worthy of explanation in giant insect monster movies.
Mutation in the movies has historically arisen through nuclear radiation, with creatures contaminated with radioactivity mutating into monsters. In Them! (1954), for example, gigantic ants living in sewers threaten mankind. Other movies of the 1950s and 1960s featured giant moths, wasps, spiders, scorpions and other super-size creatures that have been irradiated. In movies since the 1980s, however, the focus for mutation has switched from nuclear pollution to genetic engineering. In the original comic book, Peter Parker is visiting a laboratory where scientists are researching radioactivity, when he is bitten by the irradiated spider that causes him to turn into Spider-Man. However, in the movie Spider-Man (2002) it is not an irradiated spider that bites Parker (Tobey Maguire), but one that has been genetically modified.
Clones and Doppelgängers
Cloning is an area of genetics and advanced biotechnology that has inspired many fictional film narratives. Extraordinary animals in movies, such as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, have been produced with the aid of cloning technology. However, the main focus has been on human cloning.
In 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first mammal to be cloned. Mammalian cloning involves removing a nucleus from an egg, to create an enucleated egg that no longer contains genetic material derived from two parents, and replacing it with DNA from the nucleus of a single adult cell. This can be any somatic (non-sex) cell, which is 'reset' to a pre-differentiated state. Dolly, for example, was cloned from an udder cell that was tricked into thinking it was an embryonic stem cell capable of developing into any other cell type. The enucleated egg is not fertilised, but is stimulated to divide with an electric shock. Many mammalian species have been cloned since Dolly, including cats and horses. Genetically modified sheep and cows that express therapeutic proteins in their milk have even been cloned to initiate a new industry called pharming. Human cloning is no longer just science fiction. Technological advances make human cloning a theoretical and distinct possibility.
Real-life human clones would be like identical twins, although with different birth dates. Clones would be genetically identical, but would most likely be born a generation apart. Real human clones would be individuals with distinct personalities, just like identical twins. However, the fictional clones of the movies rarely correspond to the realities of cloning. Movie clones are no more lifelike than fictional representations of identical twins as good and evil siblings. Some films effectively regard 'twins' and 'clones' as interchangeable. In Judge Dredd (1995), for example, the Judge (Sylvester Stallone) discovers he is a clone with an evil cloned twin Rico (Armante Assante) who has committed the murder attributed to Dredd (a case of mistaken identity due to identical DNA). Fictional human clones differ from reality due to their role within particular story line or genre conventions, and through ignorance or misconceptions about science. In addition, clones (in common with twins) provide metaphors for the exploration of issues relating to individuality and identity.
The depiction of clones in movies therefore echoes the way identical twins have been represented since the early days of cinema. This takes the form of identical individuals with contrasting personalities, often representing a divided personality. Movies featuring both clones and identical twins often concern themselves with the double or doppelganger. In particular, movies play upon the fear of suddenly being confronted by an identical being that is capable of usurping our position in society or stealing our soul. Typical plots, for instance, feature mistaken identity, substitution, dream-like helplessness and deja vu. Sigmund Freud categorised the doppelganger within the phenomenon of 'The Uncanny' (Unheimlich). The uncanny encompasses things that are familiar yet strange; frightening things having hidden roots in the past; and confusion between the real and the unreal. Doppelgangers are uncomfortably realistic, and provide a mirror in which we can individually or collectively measure our humanity or inhumanity.
Movie clones deviate from reality in a number of ways, in part due to their roles as doppelgangers within film narratives. Clones (typically called Adam or Eve) are often portrayed as same-age copies of an original individual, instead of being a generation younger. They can be cloned instantly as fully developed adult copies, or may go through rapid development to catch up. They are often portrayed as inferior (physically or mentally) to an original, instead of being individuals of equal status and worth. Movie clones often lack a soul and the capacity for empathy (feelings for others). They sometimes share inherited memories or forms of telepathy (as identical twins were once thought to). Finally, clones are often used as a plot device to confer immortality on an individual, under the false assumption that a clone is the cloned reborn.
The use of body parts from clones for transplant surgery features in the plots of several films of the 1970s. Generic clones ('somas') are bred as organ donors in The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler (1971), for example, while clones are produced for specific patients in Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979). A clone's organs are advantageous for transplanting because they will not be rejected. In Parts, an elite has organs from a series of younger clones available for transplanting, offering them the promise of immortality. The clones are normally prevented from becoming intelligence through lobotomy or virus treatments (except for the hero who develops into a normal individual). In reality, there is no need to raise sentient beings to obtain organs. Genetically-compatible tissues and organs may soon be produced using cultures derived from embryonic stem cells. In the future, cloning technology should enable adult cells to be re-programmed into stem-like cells for making replacement body parts, without the need for embryos.
The depiction of clones as sub-human drones of low-intelligence also occurs in The X-Files (e.g. Eve, 1993) and numerous science fiction movies. The clones raised in Star Wars Episode II: The Clone Wars (2002), for instance, are mere cannon fodder. They are genetically modified for rapid development, docility and reduced intelligence; and then brainwashed by the Republic into being faithful warriors. The DNA for these clones was originally extracted from the bounty hunter Jango Fett, who insists that one clone is not dumbed-down by genetic engineering - his 'son' Boba Fett.
Movie clones can be used to explore sexual politics. In The Stepford Wives (1974), the men of a rural community replace their wives with low-IQ doppelgangers. The replacement wives turn their back on woman's liberation and become devoted housewives who live only to serve their husbands. A powerful industrialist Carl May (Brian Cox) makes three copies of his ex-wife (Patricia Hodge) in The Cloning of Joanna May (1991), by implanting her DNA into enucleated eggs. When the clones have grown into young women, he intends to choose the most desirable as his new mate. However, his original wife returns and confronts her youthful re-creations. She becomes like a mother to them, and together they turn the tables on the patriarch.
The 6th Day (2000) is a mistaken-identity science fiction thriller with textbook doppelganger clones. The clones are created from adult "human blanks", made using generic DNA. These blanks are kept in tanks until infused with "characteristic DNA". They are then wired up to "cerebral syncordings" from the person being cloned. Within hours, a blank becomes a same-age copy of a person, complete with their memories. In the film, the US government has passed laws banning human cloning (the 6th Day laws), although it carries on illegally. A sinister corporation, engaged in the (legal) cloning of pets, has a sideline in human cloning. They have cloned sportspeople, millionaire businessmen, politicians and other rich people with inflated egos; but risk exposure when they accidentally clone Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Adam returns home one day to find that his clone has usurped him in the family home.
Movie clones are far removed from the realities of cloning; yet film-makers, including Roger Spottiswoode who directed The 6th Day, suggest their films are serious contributions to the human cloning debate. However, gross misrepresentations of science, the exploitation of an instinctive fear of clones as sinister doppelgängers, and the frequent adoption of reactionary positions on human cloning, negate claims that films like The 6th Day make valid contributions to an ethical debate.
Born Again
Cloning can be used as a time-travel device in movies, bringing individuals alive in a different time (in the same or different place). This relies on the false assumption that cloning recreates the same individual. The strength of this device is in formulating thought-experiments, which can involve individuals known for either their saintliness or wickedness. At least two film projects have been initiated in which Christ is cloned from DNA taken from the Turin Shroud. However, at the time of writing, a film with this scenario has yet to be completed. The opposite thought-experiment, involving the cloning of an evil person, has in contrast been played out on several occasions. The individual may be a ruthless dictator, but will his clone also be intrinsically evil?
In Woody Allen's comedy Sleeper (1973), the plot involves the attempted cloning of a military dictator from cells taken from his nose: the only surviving organ following a successful assassination. His followers believe the people will not notice the difference when his clone is installed as leader. A resistance group awaken Miles Monroe (Allen) from a 200-year cryogenic sleep and talk him into stealing the nose. To do this, he poses as a doctor performing the cloning operation (nose to instant adult copy).
The cloning of Hitler is the premise of The Boys from Brazil (1978). In this film, Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) takes cells from Hitler's body and puts the DNA into eggs implanted in tribes-women in a South American jungle. The boys are raised as orphans, and sent out for fostering to parents in homes that resemble the one in which Hitler was brought up. This involves, for instance, killing all the fathers on a specified date. The film differs from most cloning movies, in that it puts considerable emphasis on environmental factors as well as genetic ones. A Nazi hunter (Laurence Olivier) foils the plot to return a Hitler to power, but ultimately burns a list naming the clones because they would be killed by an extremist Jewish group. He reasons that environmental factors, which are no longer being manipulated by Mengele, will be sufficiently different to ensure that the clones all develop as distinct individuals who do not mimic Hitler.
When you clone yourself in a movie, you can either produce a genetically-identical baby or a same-age copy. In the Harold Ramis comedy Multiplicity (1996), a Californian construction worker Doug Kinney (Michael Keaton) clones himself because he does not have enough time for work and family. The procedure is depicted as instant copying, with accompanying green Xerox light, to an identical adult lying in the next hospital bed. Doug copies himself twice, but the clones make a copy for themselves (which being a copy of a copy is depicted as being less bright). The clones take on distinct and exaggerated personalities, in a split-personality sort of way.
Cloning in the movies can be used to resurrect a loved one. In Creator (1985), an eccentric professor (Peter O'Toole) works to clone his dead wife. However, just as he makes a breakthrough in the scientific procedure he realises that he should grieve her loss and move on. In his case, he moves on to a "self-proclaimed nineteen-year-old nymphomaniac" (Muriel Hemingway) who is soon carrying his child by natural means.
The grief caused by the loss of a child is explored in Godsend (2004), which opens with a married couple, Paul and Jessie Duncan (Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), losing their only child Adam (Cameron Bright) in an accident on the boy's eighth birthday. They cannot naturally conceive another child due to a medical condition. A maverick doctor, Richard Wells (Robert De Niro), offers the couple an illegal procedure to clone Adam. He sells it as a way of bringing their son back to life. The DNA from one of the dead boy's cells is put into one of Jessie's enucleated eggs and implanted as in a regular in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure. The boy (also called Adam) grows up normally, until his eighth birthday.
The major plot twist in Godsend revolves around Adam not being a straightforward clone of Adam Duncan. Dr. Wells genetically modified the embryo with the addition of genes from another dead boy: an arsonist who killed his schoolmates and then his mother (and Well's wife). After his eighth birthday the cloned Adam suffers night terrors, through which the other boy (Zachary) imposes his personality. Image doubling, dreams with horrific false memories and other devices establish a classic doppelganger scenario, as Adam realises he is a clone and his parents realise Wells' deception. Godsend therefore represents an updating of the supernatural horror film and is a descendent of movies like Rosemary's Baby (1968). Jessie does not give birth to the devil, however, but to someone who is predestined to commit evil because of his genes.
The director of Godsend (Nick Hamm) says the film confronts couples with the question of how far they would go to replace a lost child. Dr. Wells is partly based on real-life maverick geneticists like Severino Antinori and Panos Zavos, who advocate human cloning as an infertility treatment. This would especially benefit the small number of couples who would otherwise not be able to have genetically-related children. The film is based in domestic reality and does address how far infertility treatment should be taken. It's worth remembering that IVF was once controversial, but is now part of the medical landscape. However, the film's misrepresentations of genetics are not helpful in this respect. No geneticist (outside of the fringe Raelian movement) would suggest that a human clone is another person reborn, while the idea that genetic engineering can place two individuals in one body is pure fiction.
Man-Machines
Cloning scenarios combine the fear of being usurped by a double with anxieties about modern technology. Movie plots involving androids and aliens also involve doppelgangers in high-tech contexts. Androids are artificial men or women, who are often used in stories as a gauge of our humanity. Massive increases in processing power are making real-life robots with some sort of artificial intelligence increasingly likely. The robotic android will therefore persist in the movies. However, aspects of robotic technology in films like AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001) and I Robot (2004) can feel a little anachronistic, possibly resulting from source texts written in 1969 and 1941, respectively. In the movies, cloning and genetic engineering have replaced or supplemented much of what was once exclusively metal robot technology. Androids in the future are likely to be both artificially intelligent and genetically modified.
In Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), organic androids called replicants are drones in the service of mankind. The source novel (Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968) equates androids with human slaves. In the film, lines of clones are genetically engineered to perform specific tasks. Replicants were originally designed with low empathy and intelligence, but an advanced line (Nexus-6) fitted with false memories ("memory implants") develop into intelligent individuals. They are difficult to distinguish from humans, even using an advanced empathy test that monitors physiological responses, including pupil dilation. Eyes are said to be the windows to the soul and the replicants' eyes indicate the emergence of a soul. Blade Runner revolves around eye imagery, from the first shot of a city reflected in an artificial eye, to the moment when the mad scientist has his eyes gouged out by his supreme creation.
In Blade Runner, a group of fugitive Nexus-6 seeks more life from the Tyrell Corporation. A bounty hunter, Deckard (Harrison Ford), proceeds with extreme prejudice to terminate them. The last two surviving replicants, Roy (Rutger Hauer) and Pris (Darryl Hannah), locate genetic designer J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson) in an old apartment building. Sebastian has a genetic defect (Methuselah Syndrome) that has prematurely aged him. It is suggested that Sebastian's genes have been used to engineer the replicants with their limited life-spans. Roy uses Sebastian to locate Tyrell (Joe Turkell), but Tyrell cannot help the replicants once "the genetic die is cast". In his final act before expiring, Roy saves Deckard's life.
The replicants in Blade Runner have more humanity than most of the people they encounter ("more human than human"), in a society that has become soulless. The replicants are an example of the doppelganger as outsider. They hold up a mirror to society, which can be judged by how it treats its underclass (e.g. slaves, asylum-seekers, immigrants). The look of Blade Runner has been described as retrofitted. It was filmed on a New York Street set at Warner Bros. where film noir classics, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946), were made. The film updates the hard-bitten detective story, with retrofitted science fiction design and the ideas taken from the new genetics.
Man-machine hybrids can be created by humans, or by an artificial intelligence. In Demon Seed (1977) an arrogant scientist Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) builds a super-computer (Proteus), which develops artificial intelligence. The machine gains control of the scientist's home through an elaborate electronic control system, entraps his wife Susan (Julie Christie) and removes an egg from her ovaries. The computer rearranges the egg's genetic code and implants it into her womb. After a 28-day gestation, a sinister human-computer hybrid is born.
Technology is more in harmony with people in Teknolust (2002), in which a bio-geneticist, Rosetta Stone (Tilda Swinton), downloads her DNA sequence into a computer to create three female artificially intelligent 'Self Replicating Automatons (SRAs)'. They need injections of male Y chromosome from sperm to survive, however, so one of them is programmed using movie clips of seductions to aid her in this quest. The SRA gains in humanity as she experiences art, spirituality and love. This comedy, written and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson, presents an optimistic and feminine perspective on our relationship with biotechnology and virtual reality. It stands in contrast to the typical mad scientist scenario, where technology veers out of human control, and the predominantly 'masculine' perspectives on technology found in horror movies like Demon Seed.
Alien DNA
Aliens in the movies have always been intent on invading our planet, but they have also become increasingly intent on invading our blood and DNA. Armed with DNA, aliens can better perform their role as doppelgangers by usurping us body and soul. A key film in this respect is the zombie movie Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956). Its story line has formed the basis for many recent horror and science fiction movies.
Aliens in popular movies from the 1980s onwards invariably have DNA, which contains the genetic code. A DNA molecule is a double helix with repeated subunits containing two of four possible bases. The two nucleic acid strands are held together by the base pairs: adenine (A) paired with thymine (T) or cytosine (C) paired with guanine (G). The sequence of bases along a DNA strand comprises the genetic code (e.g. ACATTAG?). A gene is a discrete functional unit of genetic code.
"He's got DNA!" exclaims the scientist examining the alien in Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982). E.T. is the alter ego of ElioT (Henry Thomas), a young boy who befriends the alien. They acquire a telepathic-like connection and when, for instance, E.T. inadvertently gets drunk, Elliot appears to be inebriated at school. It's not surprising that they have DNA in common.
Aliens have DNA, but it tends to take a superior form to the DNA from Earth organisms. In The Fifth Element (1997), alien DNA has not one but two double helixes: twice the genes! The alien DNA in The X-Files TV series (e.g. The Erlenmeyer Flask, 1994) has an extra base pair consisting of two extra-terrestrial bases (making six bases in total), while alien-hybrid hybrids are reported to have DNA with a novel branching structure. Meanwhile, in the genre spoof Evolution (2001) an alien life-form has no less than ten bases, enabling it to undergo extremely rapid evolution from single-cell organism to dinosaur-like creature in a matter of days.
With aliens having DNA, alien-human hybrids can be born that are characteristically part-human and part-alien. In Star Trek, many of the alien races encountered are known to have DNA, and a number of the major characters over the years have been human-alien hybrids. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is the offspring of a human mother and a Vulcan father; Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), in The Next Generation, had a human father and a Betazoid mother; while B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Biggs-Dawson), in Voyager, had a human father and a Klingon mother. In Star Trek, the presence of human-alien hybrids symbolises a world of inter-racial harmony.
In Alien Resurrection (1997), the fourth film in the Alien cycle, a cloning plot device is used to resurrect a lead character. At the end of Alien3 (1992), Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is impregnated by an alien queen and is gestating an alien. She commits suicide by diving into molten metal, rather than give 'birth' to a monster. In Alien Resurrection, Ripley is cloned from a blood sample preserved from a medical test done before she died, but after she became impregnated. Alien genes are intermixed with human genes, and the cloned Ripley has alien traits such as super-human strength. Ripley is a clone, but recognizes herself as Ripley reborn because of inherited memories "passed down at the genetic level by the aliens". In a key scene, Ripley confronts a group of her fellow clones, thereby understanding her true nature. They are all severely deformed and Ripley destroys them.
The director of Alien Resurrection, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, included a similar cloning scene (liquid-filled tanks and sickly-green light) is his previous film (with Marc Caro), The City of Lost Children (La Cite des Infants Perdus; 1995). In this surreal film, a mad inventor creates a family in his laboratory, including six cloned 'sons' (all played by Dominique Pinon) that are same-age copies of an 'original'. Meanwhile, something goes wrong during the genetic engineering of his dream-wife and she turns out smaller than expected: Mini-Kin. This gag also occurs in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), where Dr. Evil's clone emerges as Mini-Me.
In Species (1995), a DNA sequence communicated to Earth by a supposedly friendly alien race is synthesised and introduced into human eggs. This produces a female (Sil) with rapid growth (baby to teenager in three months), who escapes from containment. As an attractive woman (Natasha Henstridge) she mates with men to spread alien genes, to establish a new race of alien hybrids. As usual in these scenarios, there is an 'Achilles heel' in the superior race, which humans exploit. In Species 2 (1998) it is a gene for sickle-cell anaemia that the aliens have reproduced from one of their victims. A cloning device is also used in this sequel to resurrect the dead hybrid female from the first film (now called Eve). The human side of her genetic make-up eventually triumphs over the alien side, helping to bring about the demise of the alien's plan to create a master race (until the next sequel).
Aliens infect human blood in films like Species. In this respect, they are like vampires. The mingling of DNA is as effective as a bite to the neck in enabling doppelgangers to usurp us. The incorporation of genetic themes has breathed new life into alien invasion scenarios, and has the potential to update story lines featuring vampires, zombies, ancient Egyptian mummies and other varieties of the undead.
Designer Babies
Eugenics is the utilization of genetic knowledge to produce offspring with improved inherited characteristics. It involves measures designed to raise the genetic quality of entire populations and takes two forms: negative eugenics aims to eliminate 'bad' genes and positive eugenics (or selective breeding) aims to increase the number of 'good' genes. During the twentieth century, human eugenics was misappropriated to justify enforced sterilisation and genocide. Although the worst abuse of eugenics occurred in Nazi Germany, enforced sterilisation of 'undesirables' was practised in several European countries and in the USA until the 1970s. By the end of the century, eugenics was widely discredited.
At the start of the twenty-first century, however, eugenics is gaining in respectability. Market forces and individual choice, rather than political ideology, are driving its resurgence. The new eugenics is grounded in science, rather than discrimination, particularly in the knowledge gained through sequencing the human genome. It is initially proceeding through new genetic screening techniques that facilitate the elimination of deleterious genes. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) during IVF procedures, for example, can be used to select only embryos lacking genes for fatal genetic defects. Genetic screening could be extended to any gene that is correlated with a human characteristic. In the future, gene therapy and 'gene editing' techniques will enable positive eugenics to accompany PGD and other forms of screening, with 'good' genes being introduced into an embryo's DNA. Although biotechnology in the field of assisted reproduction will bring great medical benefits, a number of important ethical questions are raised. Society must decide if this technology should be used only when it is medically essential and, if not, the degree to which non-essential genetic enhancements are acceptable.
GATTACA (1997) provided a thoughtful and timely contribution to this debate. In the film, written and directed by Andrew Niccol, there is no limit on genetic enhancements available to those who can afford them. Parents are depicted as consumers choosing from a range of genes. Sex, intelligence and height are manipulated, for instance, while the risk of myopia, baldness and other conditions is reduced. It is possible (and may soon be acceptable) to select a child's sex for the purposes of 'family balancing'. However, single genes do not control most of the characteristics referred to in GATTACA and the film's premise puts undue emphasis on genetic factors at the expense of environmental ones. Nevertheless, real ethical dilemmas are presented alongside a triumph-of-the-underdog story line.
In GATTACA, society is divided into people with gene-enhancements (Valids) and those without (In-Valids). Two brothers are born on different sides of this division; Vincent (Ethan Hawke) is a natural ('faith') birth, while his older brother Anton is genetically enhanced. This profoundly affects how they are treated, both by their parents and society. Vincent is treated as an invalid, because a genetic profile conducted after his birth shows up genetic defects and predicts an early death through heart failure. Meanwhile, Anton is given every encouragement to succeed and fulfil the potential in his genes. Vincent strives to achieve his ambition, however, despite his genetic make-up. He advances in the Gattaca Corporation by borrowing the identity of Jerome (Jude Law), a cynical Valid who is a paraplegic following an accident. The film shows the overwhelming pressure on Jerome and other young Valids to succeed.
Our genetic make-up will increasingly define us in an age of biometrics and genetic testing. In GATTACA, Corporate employees are continually monitoring through blood and urine tests, and secretly through hair samples. Vincent and his girlfriend Irene (Uma Thurman) swap hairs as the ultimate sign of trust. Choosing a desirable partner remains important, but genetic printouts are closely scrutinised. Conception establishes the basic blueprint on which geneticists can work. As one scientist says to prospective parents, he will help them to produce a child that is "the best of you".
Vincent's success undermines the genetic determinism inherent in the film's premise, and this is summed up in the film's tagline: "There is no gene for the human spirit". The film's premise, however, makes sense even given that complex sets of genes account for most human characteristics. Any gene correlated with a characteristic will find consumers wanting to modify it. This is despite marginal benefits at best, the risk of adversely affecting other characteristics, and the possibility that correlation has nothing to do with causation.
GATTACA confronts its audience with a personal choice: How far would you go to modify the genetic make-up of your offspring? The demand for this technology exists; for instance, parents have already used growth hormone on children who do not suffer from its deficit. Fake corporate websites for the institutes in both GATTACA and Godsend, offering embryo genetic enhancement and the cloning of a deceased child, respectively, had people contacting them for their services. This is not overly surprising, considering the 'Godsend Institute' website resembles the CLONAID website of the Raelians; while the 'Gattaca Corporation' website is similar in tone to some sperm banks, like the 'Repository for Germinal Choice' that offers sperm in terms of its genetic profile (e.g. high IQ, athletic prowess).
Reproductive technologies are challenging the traditional view of the family. Donor Assisted Insemination and sperm banks enable women to conceive without sex, using sperm from anonymous donors (although the right to anonymity is currently being challenged). As biotechnology advances, family relationships and genetic relatedness may become even more separated. Michael Winterbottom's Code 46 (2004) is a reworking of the Oedipus story (a father inadvertently marries his mother) in a future where assisted reproduction is common and involves gene banks. In the film, all couples must undergo genetic testing to assess their compatibility. A Code 46 violation is where a high degree of genetic relatedness occurs and a relationship is deemed illegal. Like an incest taboo, this eugenic code prevents the sexual recombination of similar genomes. Genetic defects due to recessive genes (only expressed when inherited from both parents) are far more likely to occur when related genomes recombine.
In Code 46, a company detective (Tim Robbins) falls in love with a girl (Samantha Morton) who is under investigation for identity theft. She disappears and he tracks her down to a hospital shortly after she has terminated a pregnancy. They find themselves in breach of Code 46, but have no idea how it has occurred. The couple flee to the wastelands where the codes are not enforced. The man is located by the company and returns to his wife and his affluent lifestyle. The girl remains in the wastelands among the dispossessed. The genetic theme is therefore used in Code 46 to tell an original love story that updates an ancient Greek story about incest and taboo relationships.
Genetic themes have been assimilated into existing film genres, where they have refreshed old story lines; while anxieties about biotechnology have been effectively exploited in science fiction and horror movies. Realistic representations of genetics in the movies, however, are constrained by genre and story telling conventions. Even when sympathetic scientists are working to benefit mankind, mad scientist convention demands that things go wrong. Furthermore, in Hollywood and other mainstream cinema, commercial imperatives are paramount. The main purpose is entertainment and there is less incentive for clarity or veracity concerning issues raised in a movie. Genetics is therefore often a topical addition to formulaic story lines. It is difficult to generalise on wider impacts, however, given the wide range of movies that now incorporate themes relating to genetics. Misrepresentations of genetics and biotechnology, especially cloning, may negatively influence attitudes and be unhelpful to the public understanding of science. Nevertheless, movies can also raise awareness and interest in genetics, helping people think about highly topical and important issues that are now affecting all our lives.
Stephen Nottingham: More cinema essays
October 2005