8 Of The Best Transhumanist Films

Gattaca

Ah Gattaca, the good old ‘go-to’ movie of any teacher who wants to introduce pupils to the fact that the idea of ‘breeding good humans’ as if they’re something to be shown at a country fair is not just something that started and ended with the holocaust in Nazi Germany. But there really is good reason that Gattaca has hung on to this status for so long.

Despite – at almost twenty years old – being among the oldest movies on this list, its principles are actually among the most chillingly possible, and, crucially – as time catches up with the movies’ futuristic vision – is now one of the most accurate representations of real life transhumanist practices that are actually beginning to happen in the modern world.

Gattaca takes place in a future in which children are rarely born via the usual natural process, but rather are created externally to the human body (which is a slightly more romantic way of saying ‘in a dish’), in a way that allows their genetic material to be manipulated. That is, all potential ‘defects’, both mental and physical, are screened out, leaving the resulting child a specimen of human genetic perfection. Of course, any child born naturally – i.e. “outside of the program” – is still vulnerable to any disease or affliction that affect ‘normal’ human beings (the basic model that we know and love/generally tolerate today).

Although genetic discrimination is technically ‘illegal’ in Gattaca’s world, biometrics (processes of blood, hair, fluid sampling) are used to distinguish between the two groups. Businesses and companies etc. naturally want to employ the genetically healthy, meaning that those of ‘faith-birth’ (i.e. natural) origins are left with either menial or no employment. The overall result is a massive division between those born through the screening program and those who are not, with the latter being seen as a new type of underclass – one which is based on a person’s genetic identity.

Vincent (Ethan Hawke), a natural birth child who has dreamt all his life of being able to join the Gattaca Space Program and so fakes his genetic identity via an arrangement with Jerome Morrow (Jude Law), a screened-birth man whose genetic profile is perfect but who has recently been paralyzed in a car accident. Vincent gains a place at Gattaca, but he must work continually and meticulously to make sure than none of his own genetic material is ever discovered – scrubbing himself of his own loose skin/hair etc. every morning, daily applying fake rubber finger tips filled with Jerome’s blood and attaching sachets of Jerome’s urine under his trousers, vacuuming his keyboard throughout the day and shedding the odd particle of Jerome’s skin over his workstation in case of random DNA testing.