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Gattaca and Racial Replacement
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00:00In the 1997 Andrew Nicol science fiction drama Gattaca, Vincent Freeman is born naturally
00:19into a future world in which genetic engineering is the norm, and where rigorous genetic testing
00:24divides society between engineered valets, who constitute an elite social class with
00:29a monopoly on professional employment, and natural invalids, who are relegated to menial
00:34jobs.
00:36Congenitally afflicted with severe myopia and a serious heart disorder, defects that have
00:41now been almost eradicated in the general population, Vincent has a predicted lifespan of just 30.2
00:47years, and faces extreme genetic discrimination that makes his lifelong dream of becoming an
00:52astronaut and travelling into space a seeming impossibility.
00:56Regretting their decision to conceive Vincent naturally, his parents choose to have their
01:02second son, Anton Jr., genetically engineered.
01:06Sure enough, Anton is born without any of Vincent's deficiencies, and quickly physically surpasses
01:11his older brother.
01:12While growing up together, Vincent and Anton often compete in a game of chicken, a test
01:17of endurance where they swim out to sea as far as possible, with the first to turn back
01:22being deemed the loser.
01:24Vincent loses every time.
01:26After some years, however, an undeterred Vincent once more challenges Anton and, in their last
01:31race, he wins, saving his brother from the water when he starts to drown.
01:37After leaving home, Vincent takes a job as a janitor at the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation,
01:43where he still dreams of the stars.
01:45The only way he can realise his ambition, he learns, is to impersonate a Valad with the
01:50genetic qualities that Gattaca demands.
01:53A golden opportunity to do so arises when he meets Jerome Eugene Morrow, a former Olympic
01:58swimming star with an elite genetic make-up, who is now paralysed from the waist down and
02:03wheelchair-bound after being hit by a car.
02:07Using Jerome's identity and DNA profile, Vincent gains employment at Gattaca, and after showing
02:13his aptitude quickly rises through the ranks, until he is assigned as lead navigator for
02:18their upcoming mission to Saturn's moon, Titan.
02:21All the while, Vincent conceals his true, invalid identity, meticulously scrubbing away his own
02:27genetic material in a lengthy set of daily rituals, and continually using harvested blood, skin,
02:34and hair from Jerome's body to trick Gattaca's genetic surveillance system.
02:38A week before the planned Saturn launch, however, a high-ranking Gattaca administrator is murdered.
02:46When one of Vincent's eyelashes is found at the scene, detectives quickly surmise that
02:50an invalid must be the culprit, forcing him to evade constantly increasing surveillance and
02:55security.
02:57During the investigation, he pursues a relationship with Irene Cassini, a co-worker also slated for
03:03the Saturn mission.
03:04As they fall in love, Vincent discovers that Irene, though a valid, also suffers from a
03:09heart defect that will keep her from travelling to Titan.
03:13Meanwhile, his friendship with Jerome deepens, until one day after a night of drinking, Jerome
03:18confesses that his paralysis was self-inflicted.
03:22Tired of living up to the expectations of perfection, he had thrown himself in front of the car in a
03:27botched suicide attempt after placing Silver in the Olympics.
03:33At Gattaca headquarters, the Saturn program's mission director finally confesses to the murder,
03:38revealing that he feared that his superior had planned to cancel the Saturn mission and
03:42sabotage his life's work.
03:45With the murder solved and the launch seemingly assured, Vincent learns that his brother Anton
03:49was the detective who closed the case.
03:52Meeting for the first time in many years, Anton confronts Vincent and challenges him to one
03:57last game of chicken.
03:59As the two swim far out into the ocean in the black of night, Anton is again forced to
04:04turn back, and Vincent again saves him from drowning in the water.
04:10On the day of launch, Jerome reveals that he has stockpiled enough samples to last Vincent
04:14two lifetimes upon his return.
04:17Vincent thanks Jerome for giving him his identity.
04:21Jerome thanks Vincent for giving him his dream, handing him an envelope which he instructs him only
04:25to open after takeoff.
04:29After saying goodbye to Irene, Vincent goes to board the shuttle, but is unexpectedly asked
04:34to provide a final urine sample in a new company policy.
04:38Caught off guard, his true identity as an invalid is discovered.
04:43The company doctor, however, reveals that he has known all along that Vincent has been posing
04:47as a valid, but, inspired by his determination and moved to sympathy by the struggles of his
04:53own son who also has a flawed genetic profile, he intervenes on Vincent's behalf, changing
04:58the test results to allow him to pass.
05:01As the rocket launches, Jerome places his Olympic medal around his neck, and climbs into his
05:07home's incinerator, immolating himself alive while the silver medallion turns to gold in
05:13the flames.
05:14With the rocket ascending into space, Vincent opens Jerome's letter to find a lock of his
05:19hair.
05:22From the outset, Gattaca presents a world ruled by genetic heredity and defined by intense interpersonal
05:27biological competition, and as the story unfolds, it will become clear that this is a metaphorical
05:34representation of racial competition, with its two lead characters serving as personifications
05:39of real-world racial archetypes.
05:42Within this narrative microcosm, the story's hero Vincent Freeman is quickly established to
05:47be a genetic outsider amongst his peers, a narrative device that designates the character, though
05:53played by a white actor, as a symbolic racial other.
05:58This otherness is most obviously implied by his unaltered genetic code, which distinguishes
06:03him on a biological level from the genetically engineered majority population amongst which
06:07he lives.
06:09It is further suggested by the genetic prejudice he faces as a biological minority, subject to
06:14the power and privilege of the dominant group, a clear allegory for racial discrimination.
06:20By the story's end, this outsider will struggle against and triumph over the genetic majority,
06:26a destiny reflected by his name, Vincent, Latin for to conquer.
06:33More than just a racial other, however, Vincent Freeman is more specifically a symbolic representation
06:38and personification of the Jews, and his narrative arc within the story is a metaphor for their
06:43role and trajectory in Western culture.
06:47This is first indicated by his crypsis, as he is a genetic outsider who conceals his unwelcome
06:53alien nature through changing his name and adopting the appearance and habits of the surrounding
06:57population, a practice long specifically associated with the Jewish diaspora in the Western world.
07:04In a microcosmic metaphor for the racial infiltration of the host society, Vincent meticulously erases every
07:11observable trace of his true identity as a member of the out-group and appropriates the name, life and
07:17genetic profile of a member of the in-group.
07:20Alluding to the racial character of this deception, he conceals his naturally dark eyes behind blue
07:25contact lenses.
07:28Vincent's archetypal Jewishness is further esoterically implied through the character's symbolic relationship
07:34with Saturn.
07:36In religious and astrological tradition, Saturn, the seventh known planet in ancient astrology,
07:42named for the Roman god of wealth and harvest, has been commonly linked with the Jews, as they hold the
07:48traditional seventh day of the week, Saturn's day, to be sacred, calling it the Sabbath.
07:54This Saturnian connection has been claimed as the origin of the Jewish fascination with the number seven,
07:59reflected by the Midrash, all sevens are beloved, and manifest among other ways in the seven branches
08:05of the Temple Menorah, the seven Noahide laws, and Jacob's taking of seven boughs before Esau,
08:12an anecdote from the biblical tale of a stolen inheritance that bears obvious thematic parallels
08:18to Gattaca's central narrative.
08:21Accordingly, Vincent's first and last names, Vincent Freeman, both contain seven letters,
08:27and the Titan launch on which he ascends must, we are told, take place in a small window only open
08:33for seven days once every seventy years.
08:37Moreover, in classical antiquity, the Jewish tribal deity Yahweh was directly identified with Saturn
08:44by Roman writers such as Tibulus and Tacitus, who held Judaism to be a cult of Saturn worship.
08:51Vincent, through his own devoted obsession, could also be said to worship Saturn,
08:57a suggestion reflected both in his religiously observed ritual of watching the Saturn test launches
09:03and in his spiritual quest to reach it, for which he diligently performs a set of daily ablutions.
09:09Thus, in a coded evocation of the Jewish concept of chosenness,
09:13Vincent is continually linked with God and divinity, in spite of Gattaca's future world
09:19being otherwise presented as conspicuously secular.
09:22We learn, for example, that, as a naturally born human with an unaltered genetic code,
09:28Vincent is known as a God-child, implying a special divine nature.
09:33In the film's first lines of dialogue, when the Gattaca mission director comments
09:38on the immaculate cleanliness of Vincent's desk, he replies,
09:42it's next to godliness.
09:45But if Vincent represents the Jew, Jerome can only archetypally personify European men.
09:52Suggesting this racial metaphor, Jerome is a member of the advantaged genetic in-group,
09:58born with the desired qualities of blood that Vincent lacks.
10:02And while Vincent faces discrimination on account of his biological otherness,
10:07Jerome's heredity grants him acceptance and privilege.
10:10It is this racial character that Vincent must appropriate,
10:14represented not just by the assumption of Jerome's personal identity,
10:18but by the literal harvesting of his body and blood in order to become and ultimately replace him.
10:24As with Vincent's metaphorical Jewish role, Jerome's role as embodied European man
10:31is implied through a series of coded symbolic devices,
10:34most directly through the name Jerome,
10:37a pun on the word Rome which alludes to Rome as the enduring symbol of European civilization
10:43and to the Romans as the archetype of European man.
10:46Rome, however, is fallen, symbolized by Jerome's now crippled body.
10:51This interpretation could be dismissed as outlandish were it not for the presence of a character
10:57conspicuously named Caesar, a man bearing the title of the Roman emperors,
11:02but who is a lowly janitor for the Gattaca corporation.
11:05This, we will see, alludes to the role reversal around which the story centres,
11:10as the former master, Jerome, that is to say, Rome, trades places with the former slave.
11:17In accord with this symbolic subtext, just as Vincent's archetypal Jewishness
11:23is indicated through associations with the Jewish deity,
11:26Jerome's Europeanness is esoterically suggested through his former career as an Olympic athlete,
11:32the Olympic Games having been named for the Olympians,
11:35the twelve gods and goddesses of the ancient Greek religion.
11:39When Jerome is first introduced, this godlike Herculean nature is described by the identity broker,
11:46who outlines his many genetic gifts, from perfect eyesight to the heart of an ox,
11:51asserting, the guy's practically going to live forever, traits reflected in his middle name,
11:57Eugene, meaning well-born or good genes.
12:01But just as Rome has fallen, so too has the Olympian been cast down from Olympus.
12:08This is signified when, later in Jerome's introductory scene,
12:12Vincent points to the staircase behind him and asks,
12:15Who lives up there?
12:17Gesturing to the upper floor, to which the crippled Jerome replies,
12:21Well, I certainly don't.
12:24In a striking allusion to these racial and religious themes,
12:27this staircase bears a strong resemblance to the most iconic artistic depiction of Jacob's ladder,
12:33that painted by the English artist William Blake.
12:36In Jewish religious tradition, Jacob was the mythic forefather of the Israelites,
12:42known for claiming his brother Esau's birthright through deception.
12:46Jacob's ladder, described in Genesis 28, 10-19,
12:50was a vision he experienced of a ladder or staircase into heaven,
12:54upon which angels were seen to climb up and down.
12:58This story has been understood in rabbinical scriptural exegesis as a metaphor for the rise and fall of nations,
13:05a divine assurance to the Jewish people that the Gentile nations atop the ladder would eventually fall,
13:11while the Jews as the chosen people would one day rise to its summit.
13:15The last of the nations to fall would be Rome,
13:18identified with Europe, which they call Edom, and which they customarily associate with Esau.
13:24In the context of Gattaca's racial themes, the symbolic intent of this reference is clear.
13:30Vincent is Jacob, or Judea.
13:33Jerome is Esau, or Rome.
13:35Vincent rises upon Jacob's ladder.
13:38Jerome falls from it.
13:40Vincent claims Jerome's birthright.
13:42Correspondingly, while Vincent's destiny is the ascent to power and godhood represented by the Titan mission,
13:50Jerome's is to serve as fuel to power his rise.
13:53In his aforementioned introductory scene, when he first sells his identity to Vincent,
13:59Jerome is framed smoking a cigarette, prefiguring his narrative role as a burnt offering.
14:05Later, as they celebrate the upcoming launch,
14:08Vincent asks Jerome what he is going to do while he is away on Titan.
14:12Foreshadowing his self-sacrificial fate,
14:15Jerome responds,
14:17I'm going to finish this, before downing a glass of red wine.
14:21Red wine being associated with sacrifice in Western religious tradition,
14:26principally through the story of Jesus' offering of his body and blood as bread and wine,
14:31which has been symbolically represented in Christianity by the ritual of the Eucharist.
14:36As Jerome comes to fulfil his sacrificial life purpose,
14:40he too will offer his body and blood in the form of genetic material for Vincent to consume,
14:46and Vincent will use it to acquire power, prestige and even, as an invalid,
14:51to win the love of a valid woman in a metaphorical interracial union.
14:56This dynamic, Vincent as devourer and Jerome as the devoured,
15:02culminates in the film's climactic scenes,
15:05when as Vincent ascends, his dream realised, Jerome burns,
15:10his life rendered meaningless,
15:12now that its purpose as fuel for Vincent's rise has been fulfilled.
15:16Accordingly, the fire of his self-immolation is juxtaposed
15:20against the burning ignition of Vincent's rocket as it takes flight,
15:24symbolically powering its journey.
15:26In imagery with clear racial connotations,
15:29we see Vincent surrounded by a multiracial, non-white crew,
15:33Gattaca's chosen candidates,
15:35just before Jerome is incinerated,
15:38the white man's sacrificial death framed against their triumph.
15:43Our death to facilitate our racial replacement is,
15:46we are told, a true victory.
15:49As Jerome dies, his silver medal turns to gold in the flames that burn him,
15:53an imagery that frames his self-immolation as a heroic triumph.
15:58Moreover, this sacrifice, we are assured,
16:01will live on in the memory of our racial replacements.
16:04A promise signified by the lock of Jerome's hair that Vincent,
16:08now having fully assumed Jerome's identity,
16:11carries with him into the future.
16:13We even learn that this bargain,
16:15our death for the fulfilment of their dream,
16:18though seemingly gainless,
16:20in truth favours us,
16:22when Jerome asserts,
16:24I got the better end of the deal.
16:26I only lent you my body,
16:28you lent me your dream.
16:31Over the course of the story,
16:33these themes will be reiterated through the actions of its secondary characters,
16:37who, like Jerome, betray the system
16:39to assist the outsider in his deception and rise.
16:42Irene, his blonde, blue-eyed lover,
16:45hides her knowledge of his true identity from the authorities
16:48after it is revealed to her.
16:50Caesar, Gattaca's head cleaner and Vincent's former co-worker,
16:54does likewise,
16:55meticulously cleaning Vincent's workstation
16:58to remove any trace of his true genetic profile.
17:01The mission director, Joseph,
17:03clears Vincent of suspicion of murder
17:05by confessing to the crime himself,
17:07assuming the blame for a crime which he may or may not be culpable.
17:12Lamar, the company's doctor,
17:14reveals that he has been covering for Vincent all along,
17:17and in the film's final scenes
17:19falsifies his identity
17:21to allow him to board the Titan vessel.
17:23These characters,
17:25through assisting the racial other in his infiltration of their world,
17:28prove themselves, like Jerome,
17:30to be heroes within the story's moral paradigm.
17:33Human nature is innately imitative.
17:38Myths and stories are the principal cultural means
17:41of providing a people with mimetic exemplars,
17:44models for imitation whose choices within fictional narratives
17:47serve as templates for real-world choices.
17:50A people's attitudes and behaviours,
17:53both individually and collectively,
17:55and therefore a culture's trajectory,
17:57is substantially guided by its myths.
18:00Fiction, consequently, shapes emerging events,
18:04as its tropes and archetypes,
18:06once accepted and internalised,
18:08begin to manifest in the real world.
18:12The adage,
18:13the pen is mightier than the sword,
18:15expresses the superiority of words and ideas
18:17over physical violence in the realm of human conflict.
18:21From this superiority it follows
18:23that just as there are predators of the physical order,
18:26so too are there predators of the psychological and spiritual order.
18:31And in domesticated societies,
18:33this is the dominant form of predation.
18:36Such predators ensnare and consume their prey
18:39not with physical means,
18:40but with images, ideas and stories,
18:43designed to empower them and disempower their victims.
18:47In the modern age,
18:49the engines of thought control and formation in the Western world
18:52have fallen into the hands of a hostile outgroup and their collaborators,
18:56and naturally,
18:57they pursue these predatory ends as a collective
19:00in the sphere of racial conflict.
19:03Through the conscious manipulation of narrative tropes
19:05and the calculated use of symbols,
19:07allegories and archetypes
19:09that correspond in the mind to real-world racial and ideological counterparts,
19:14they use fiction to covertly foster sympathy for outgroups,
19:18including themselves,
19:19over and above the in-group,
19:21to morally justify hatred and aggression towards us,
19:24and to conceal their true nature and motives.
19:27More, they target the host population
19:30with moral and spiritual ideas designed to mislead,
19:33enfeeble and demoralize,
19:35by mediating them through the vector of an audience avatar and mimetic model.
19:40In the case of Gattaca,
19:42by utilizing a symbolic language
19:44to covertly communicate Vincent as personified racial outsider,
19:48their representative,
19:50and Jerome as personified racial kin,
19:52our representative,
19:54to the film's audience,
19:55Jerome is subliminally established
19:57as the white viewer's avatar and model for imitation.
20:00In light of this understanding,
20:02a number of observations regarding the film's ideological function
20:06and purpose can be made.
20:08Firstly,
20:10Gattaca seeks to condition its audience
20:12into a state of amplified outgroup empathy
20:15and corresponding in-group hostility
20:17by framing the personified genetic outsider in the role of protagonist,
20:21and pitting him against the genetic in-group as antagonist.
20:25Within this narrative microcosm,
20:28in-group prejudice,
20:29denoting our own racial prejudice,
20:31is the principal evil and primary obstacle to overcome,
20:35and those who betray the in-group to assist the outsider are righteous,
20:40while those who remain loyal to it and oppose him are unrighteous.
20:45Secondly,
20:46Gattaca aims to demoralize the white viewer through the debilitation,
20:50abasement, and sacrifice of their cinematic avatar, Jerome.
20:54By utilizing the dying or maimed white archetype trope,
20:58a recurrent narrative fixture of Hollywood storytelling,
21:01which I have previously addressed in my videos on Breaking Bad and The Whale,
21:05Gattaca subliminally suggests that the white race as an archetype is incurably sick,
21:10and thus has no hope for its own future,
21:13and that we can, therefore, only find meaning and purpose vicariously
21:18through assisting the racial other in his victory.
21:22Thirdly, this being the story's implication,
21:25Gattaca acts as an incitement to white racial self-erasure
21:29through Jerome's facilitation of his own death and replacement.
21:33This is signified by the giving of his name, identity, body, and life to the genetic outsider
21:39in a coded metaphor for racial replacement,
21:43a narrative arc that culminates in his sacrificial self-immolation
21:47through an act of suicidal altruism.
21:51Myth requires continual reinforcement to maintain its power,
21:56and so its stories must be told and retold in the language of each age.
22:01Gattaca is the story of Rome and Judea,
22:04of the Olympians and Yahweh,
22:06and of the spiritual conquest of European man,
22:09told in the language of our time,
22:11modernized and humanized in order that it can be reified.
22:15And so Western man,
22:17displaced as protagonist from his own story,
22:20through the commandeering of his mythic world,
22:22has learned to see the hero in his usurper.
22:25So blinded, he offers up his wealth, his nations, his labor, and his life,
22:31as Jerome offered his name and body for the fulfillment of another's dream,
22:36the realization of another's good.
22:40It is now every kind of stranger, and every kind of lesser,
22:44that we, with our own strength, raise above ourselves,
22:48enabling them in the harvesting of our identity and our destiny.
22:52It is hardly surprising that these outsiders have come to see us,
22:56and we to see ourselves,
22:58as bound to sacrifice everything for their sake.
23:01Jerome's fate is the one which we, in our collective actions, have seemingly chosen.
23:07But how, one may wonder, were our adversaries able to seduce us with defeat?
23:15To die is to no longer struggle,
23:18and to no longer suffer or inflict suffering.
23:21Therefore, it is easier to die than to live.
23:25The temptation of the solace of death is the weapon they wield,
23:29framing surrender as not a defeat, but a victory,
23:33not cowardice but courage,
23:35in order to grant their confounded audience permission to give up the fight.
23:40Had this capitulation been presented to us as the ignoble thing that it is,
23:45without the veil of heroism in which it has been disguised,
23:49it would surely have been refused.
23:52Tear away the sympathetic mask, then,
23:55and what is Gattaca's hero, Vincent Freeman, really?
23:58Aggressive mimicry is the mark of a parasite.
24:02Gattaca is an apologia for the parasite.
24:06The devourer seeking to justify itself to the devoured,
24:10lest his victim should awaken,
24:12and no longer permit himself to be consumed.
24:16Our weakness, though nurtured by others,
24:19is in the end self-imposed.
24:22We are host to parasites because we allow them to feed.
24:26We are under the heel of our enemies,
24:28because we hold them above us with our own strength.
24:32Let them stand on their own feet again,
24:36so that we can stand upon ours.
24:38!!!
24:52We are alltid with young people,
24:54let them dwell on their own hands,
Recommandations
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