For a long time, humans have toyed with the idea of eugenics, or genetically modifying humans to enhance physical or mental traits. The idea of modifying genetics to create a “better” human being has been a trope of sci-fi media for a long time as well, with parents being able to pick and choose what traits they’d like their children to have before they’re born, for example.
The movie Gattaca is based around the idea of eugenics. In that film, society has long since embraced eugenics and newborns are created with all the “negative” traits like physical or mental disease eradicated; even if the parents were to wish otherwise, they would be pressured into keeping the baby “perfect.” While genetic discrimination is illegal in that film’s world, society is still split into “valid” and “invalid” people; those born with modified, perfect genes are the former, and those born more naturally without human intervention are the latter. The film follows a man, who was born as an invalid, whose dream is to go to space, a feat reserved for valids. He accomplishes this by altering his body to match that of a valid individual, modifying his own physical features and using blood and urine samples from the valid person to pass genetic tests he couldn’t pass on his own. With this, he transforms himself into a more superior human.
While this feat isn’t yet possible in real life, scientists are always working closely with genetics. In The Corporation, by Mark Achbar, in the segment Advancing the Front, it’s mentioned that the United States Supreme Court ruled it legal for anything alive (short of an actual human being) can be patented. What this means is that companies are now allowed to do research on bacteria, genes, DNA; anything inside of a living being, and legally own it. When a company commercializes genetics, it’s just short of owning an entire animal species by law – and this, of course, includes animal species closely related to humans. If a breakthrough is discovered in the genes of these animals closely related to humans that can also be applied to actual humans, the legality of what can be done may be questionable at best.
In Flesh Machine: Cyborgs, Designer Babies, & New Eugenic Consciousness is a chapter titled The Coming of the Age of the Flesh Machine. It describes the flesh machine in comparison to the war machine and the sight machine, both of which are concepts revolving around history (or rather, how violence has evolved throughout history and how we now have the power to destroy all life with ease) and how we view it. The flesh machine is described as lacking in development compared to the other two, with the reasoning being cultural lag, or the lack of connection or purpose compared to the other two machines.
What’s explored in Flesh Machine is the idea of how the flesh machine can develop, namely: eugenics. As mentioned in The Corporation, humans are already researching and inventing new things using bacteria and living organisms already. While they aren’t allowed to patent actual human beings, they can come very close to it. These discoveries and inventions are designed to improve humans, not unlike what’s explored in science fiction media. Gattaca‘s in-universe society revolves around it, but films like RoboCop are similar as well – namely, the reconstruction of an entire deceased human into an android that is not quite alive, but still resembling that of a living being. With the deceased person being a former police officer who was killed on duty, the purpose of RoboCop‘s creation was to rebuild him from the ground up as a better, superior being – not unlike what eugenics research today is striving towards.
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Achbar, Mark and Jennifer Abbott, directors. The Corporation. 2004.
Flesh Machine: Cyborgs, Designer Babies, & New Eugenic Consciousness. Autonomedia, 1998.
Niccol, Andrew, director. Gattaca. Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment, 1997.
Verhoeven, Paul, director. Robocop. Orion, 1987.
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