Futures 31 (1999) 631635

www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

Film

Gattaca: defacing the future

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our
language and our language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably [1].
Can an image create a future? Can a word create a future? Most emphatically,
yes, I would say. Moreover, not only can words and images create a future, they
are the only means of future creation. They are that important because they are that
close to our creation of meaning. Thus, it makes perfect sense to look to word and
image in its most voluminous formfilmto see suggestions of what some of the
future(s) might be.
This is not an analysis in the standard sense of a film review. My only comments
lie with the creation of future(s) in language and for present purposes, perhaps even
more so, in image. There is one important point to be made about one particular
word right here at the outset, though. One of the most important criticisms in future
studies is that we treat the future as an inevitable manifesting of itselfsomething
that happens out there, beyond our control or influence. Consequently, there is only
one future, as though it is already written in the script of a God, and we are playing
it out on stage. This attitude is reflected in language insofar as we consider it standard
to use definite, rather than indefinite articles; that is, to say the future, just as we
say the present and the past. In fact, we do have some say in the future(s). It is not
some sort of intentionally-guided say that we have, however. And it is certainly not
some sort of happy control of destiny. It is more of a structural influence. That
influence is an influence whereby we create an atmosphere of possibilities. That
* Tel.: 353-1704-8133; e-mail: [email protected]
0016-3287/99/$ - see front matter 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 1 6 - 3 2 8 7 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 2 1 - X

632

Film / Futures 31 (1999) 631635

atmosphere is created through words and images. And insofar as that atmosphere is
one of enabling and constraining discourse, it should remain open to multiple futures,
and to futures which resist dominant futures. To accomplish this, we need to attend
to small tasks such as the individual words that we use to keep open the possibility
of multiple futures. Consequently, I have adopted the somewhat clumsy convention
of using the word future(s), where grammar would usually call for the singular,
so as to indicate that more than one future is in word, image and in deed possible.
The narrative of Gattaca is in some ways quite simplein a world where human
cloning is possible, a class system of clones and not-clones has developed. Clones
with particular characteristics qualify for space travel. A non-clone has a dream, but
no social chance for space travel. To subvert the system, he organises a variety of
tricks in identifying his genetic code in order to try to pass undetected for a clone,
and travel in space.
From the story of Gattaca we see how language will control the meaning of what
has already been discussed elsewherethe material distinctions that could be made
between those who are clones and who are not. Gattaca uses the terms valids and
in-valids (which also gives us some insight into our own contemporary use of the
latter term) to describe clones and non-clones. Employers in such a world are not
interested in an invalid when they can employ a perfect individuala clone. We do
not need the film Gattaca to know that employers, through systems set up by
insurance companies, already practice that brand of discrimination.
There are words, there are images, and there are words about images. One of these
words about images is vision. In its more literal sense, vision usually means
something to do with sight from the eye. But in its more figurative sense, it means
that we are understanding; more pointedly, that we are understanding the future.
That is what it is to have a vision of the future. Appropriately, I found in the first
of the BBCs paper version of Tomorrows World, a monthly publication with the
same title as the television programme, that Writer-director Andrew Niccols vision
compellingly warns what a brave new world based on human genetics could be like
[2]. What can we make of this sense of vision? In saying that Niccol was providing
us with a vision of what the future could look like, the author suggests that other
futures would be possible. If we however go back to the words compellingly warns,
we find that the author is not only making a suggestion about a possible future among
many other equally possible ones, but rather is suggesting that the one that Niccol
sees is in fact a likely onehence the warning. This observation is only slightly
limiting compared to others, however.
A far more limiting sense of future(s) is not in what is explicitly seen or said by
Niccol or his film, but in what is implicitly carried along. This reminds me of the
fable of the little boy who is challenged to smuggle anything of his choice past the
kings guards. He first takes a wagonload of sand, in the centre of which is his toy
bear. The guard laughs at such an obvious attempt, and duly notes the hidden bear.
The boy then tries the same tactic with a toy cat hidden in sand. The guard again
is amused. This happens five times and the guard duly records the hidden toys each
time. In the end, the boy demonstrates his success by pointing out to the guard that
although the guard saw and recorded the hidden toys, he failed to record the sand

Film / Futures 31 (1999) 631635

633

and the wagon which each time were left inside the palace grounds and replaced
with new ones. What wagons and sand are getting past our watchful vision of the
future while remaining mindful of the hidden toys that are the moral lessons of cloning?
This query begins to be answered in the same review by concluding with evidence
of one future, even though we were told that it was only a possible one (suggesting
that there could be more). The review concludes with a promise that acts as evidence
for the inevitability of one future: By the year 2000 scientists believe they will
have mapped all 100 000 human genes [2] (p. 9). This parting comment compellingly suggests that we need be concerned about the implications of cloning because
we will soon have mapped all of our genes. The connection between the mapping
and cloning is enthymematically left out. This compelling suggestion leaves little
room for an image or vision of the future that is not in some way enmeshed with
cloningthe one inevitable future. The sand and the wagon in Gattaca are the common suspicious political categorieswhite westerners in a technologically-driven
lifestyle, fuelled by market capitalism, spiced with a romantic love story to keep
things human. We should unpack these symbols as they slip past us, however, and
not be caught in moralising about the obvious only.
The social, political and ethical implications from this narrative are not all that
subtle. They moralise in a way that suggests that if we go the route of cloning, this
is the bad stuff that will happen. Far more subtle is the sense of one inevitable scifi type of future which a film like Gattaca suggests by portraying only it: white,
technologically-based, sterile, and (should we be surprised), in some ways identifiable with the present, such as the use of cars and contact lenses and the love story
that helps to carry the protagonist along to his one inevitable destiny. (Did anyone
ever really believe he would not make it to the space ship?) The image of the disenfranchised in Gattaca comes poignantly through Ernest Borgnine as a cleaner. Is
this a cleaner or is this Ernest Borgnine? If this is as bad as it gets (being an aging
Ernest Borgnine), how bad could it be?
The sterility of the stainless steel surfaces and broad, institutionally-lighted indoor
landscapes, with hard heels marching on hard floors which shine and reflect the light,
help to remind the audience of the sterility of the social meaning of the system as
well. But it does not point out the sterility of any one future. Singularity is a more
sterile concept then vacuumed floors and hair-free computer keypads.
And there is Americanathe protagonist came into the world in those heady days
of love-making in the backseat of a big American car on the beach. And the progeny
of that celebration will beat the sterile system and rise, metaphorically and physically,
into the outer space of his dreams.
Images of a pastNazi eugenicswhich foretell of a future, are on hand as well.
Uma Thurman, as the heroine, is none-the-less one of them, and with her blondsculptured features, and uniform-like business suits, suggests more than a little
stereotyping. The confused supplier of DNA material to the protagonist meets his
end in the flames of an incinerator. In addition, the menacing police force, with
its penchant for identification of impersonators, provides the social backdrop of a
technological police state. The twist which makes this the sci-fi American future

634

Film / Futures 31 (1999) 631635

instead of the Nazi past, is the working of capital in the launching of the dreamtfor rocket voyage, and the murder of one of the industry captains involved in the
launches. This is not a police state, its a private industry-policed state.
As a stylistic ideology, the realism of the film also serves to focus us on the one
set of moral issues around cloning. The success of this image-style is reflected in
the advertising campaign that accompanied the films American release. In the advert,
a perfect baby was pictured with the text Children made to order. Only a tiny
PG-13 and even smaller Sony Pictures logo suggested that they were not genuine.
Calling an accompanying phone line, 1-888-BEST-DNA, prospective parents were
promised the chance to engineer your offspring. It was disconnected after the American Society for Reproductive Medicine appealed to Sony to change the ads [3]
(p. 15).
One might think that given that they were present for all of the reminders that
this was a construct, the actors might have more of an opportunity to move outside
of the realism. Instead, they propagated it, even off the movie set. One of the actors,
Jude Law, when talking of the making of the film, said the following: The Chicago
Bulls were in the basketball play-offs with the Knicks, and we realised that the Bulls
were valid, while the Knicks were in-valid: they were varying heights, and they
would win games through their guts, sweat and blood, while the Bulls were these
godly geniuses who only had to breathe to win [3] (p. 14).
The limiting and constraining notion of a vision is also experienced with prediction. In general, the word prediction suggests that one can say something pre or
before something happens. Of course predictions can be wrong, but once they are
made, we are constrained by their very existence to treat the future as a fulfilment
or unfulfilment of the prediction. In this way, the prediction, fulfilled or not, is the
axis around which we interpret the meaning of the future. Even if the prediction is
unfulfilled, it has served to form the discourse we have about the events as they
unfold. This is particularly dangerous not for the obvious issues which a prediction
talks about (the toys in the sand), but for the context of the issues (the sand) and
the vehicle which carries them along (the wagon), all of which slip by us, observed
and with affect, but unrecorded for conscious purposes. In the specific case of Gattaca, this phenomenon can be noticed in the reviews themselves: In a few decades,
will our genetically modified grandchildren tune into Andrew Niccols vintage 1998
sci-fi film, Gattaca, and giggle at its naivety, or wonder at its prescience? [3]
(p. 12).
The possibility for our grandchildrens behaviourgiggling or wondermentis
impliedly based upon whether we got it right or got it wrong. What if it is simply
a non-issue, or one issue among many? More importantly, what is the implied it
involved in getting it right or wrong? The it is the fact of what the future will
befloating out there in a pre-determined destiny of reality, waiting to manifest
itself and thereby move from the present to the future; to make predictions right or
wrong, and to make prescience into science.
Thus, Gattaca does provide us with words and images that are only so slightly
fanciful that they are indeed disturbing. But the film is also a Trojan horse of sorts,
for in its overt moral criticism of capital, scientism and a technologised social future,

Film / Futures 31 (1999) 631635

635

it relieves us from feeling the need to go further with criticism. That further criticism
lies with the covert suggestion that there will be one, inevitable futurea technologically-based, American looking, capital driven, white middle-class futureand our
only input will be to fine tune those categories, including the moral spin. To break
from those limiting categories, and from the assumption that there is one inevitable
future already written into destiny, we need first to create the possibility that there
may be multiple futures. That possibility is created in the words and images of
the present(s).

References
[1] Wittgenstein L. Philosophical investigations, 3rd ed. (Anscombe GEM, translator). London: Basil
Blackwell and Mott, 1958:115.
[2] 2020 vision. Tomorrows World, April 1998:2533.
[3] Charity T. Cell shock (interview of Andrew Niccol). Time Out, 1118 March 1998;No. 1438:1215.