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> The part that I could never get over is that the discrimination against the main character actually made sense. He's trying to hide his heart condition to go

> The part that I could never get over is that the discrimination against the main character actually made sense. He's trying to hide his heart condition to go in an important space mission. That's the part I also couldn't ever get over. He's shown to have a serious heart condition, and then cheats his way onto a space mission? Yes sure, discrimination bad and all that but— that's a human judgement. In actual fact, he's dramatically increasing the risk of failure of said mission, along with the risks to everyone else involved with it. My own take-away was that, grit or not, he's incredibly selfish.

mejutoco 4y ago
Those are great points. To follow the argument: is a lion selfish when she kills a gazelle? To me, the story is about individual struggle. Even if his behaviour is selfish, his life is richer than if he accepted the imposed limitations by others (imagine how boring that story would be, why is that). In a way, he is following nature‘s rules (survival of the fittest), instead of the arbitrary deterministic society rules he lives in. Ultimately, if we only cared about the good of the planet, we would probably choose to cease to exist. Up to a point, everyone alive is a bit selfish.
- savryn 4y ago
  >nature‘s rules (survival of the fittest) no he isn't, he is merely exploiting the compassion of the society of the fittest that temporary allowed the less fit/ gifted /engineered to still live / work near them and infiltrate at the right time -- it's got a bit of that a heist/noir of criminal cat and mouse Vincent uses criminal connections to pull the entire scheme off (the german), just like a bank heist in a film it feels fun for reasons that don't work without a movie's magic 'genre' control of tone/sympathy/agency etc. similar to other problems we have today where 'compassion' politics actually harms the fittest members most An old homeless loony stabbing a brilliant healthy young person today isn't a show of the former's fitness, it's because (there are other incentives for the) the fittest of society (elites) choose to not wipe out/exile/enslave the unfit for various reasons (inextricable from the society itself--labor dynamics, crime and fear being useful, christian virtue, etc) Gattaca in the opening even says it's only because he was born in the 'early stages' of the transition Actual 'meritocracy' safety and other values require ruthlessness and violence, which we already have as all states do, just distrubuted in one configuration (gattaca) versus another configuration (chaotic US today, versus say the safety of singapore, or dictatorship of north korea, or some other gattaca 2.0 where the Vincents aren't born at all because fertility is managed) A society can distribute its coercion/violence/reward structure in different ways, vincent is just a defector in a trust game Always reminds me of that lame smug 'Feynman negging woman at a bar' anecdote, how is defecting on social norms clever? that's literally the point of lying/cheating/stealing/littering etc, one individual wins a temp game at the harm of the environment / culture long term. Once a few men are rude / cads, reputation of the place declines and fewer girls show up, or only certain types and not others, etc. A higher status guy like F can avoid/internalize the social ding of resentment from others who lose out of the good vibe/meeting someone cool while he's there, but can't tell him off. Managing mini social games everywhere is 'culture' and essentially the reason infinite invisible class norms are so 'stifling' and invisible at once, it excludes the riff-raff and keeps those included people on their toes, behaving in a way that makes the place/group/experience "rich" rather than the vincent-like 'richness' of just maxing his own experience at cost of group. (essentially why costume dramas are so fun to watch for girls (me included, I just don't lie to myself lol) as a guilty pleasure that doesn't feel like a guilty pleasure (you claim it's high status reasons -- the set design, jane austen, the history, so well written!!! etc) -- But the ideology of the genre of the movie itself does all the heavy lifting on cost of the 'nice things' you're not allowed to advocate for or admit to yourself you want as an elite experience missing from our lives today (the fantasy of *extreme social exclusion* so only the very pretty, very rich, and very witty girls can join the tea party-- as well as enjoy the courtship dance pre-filtered by only worthy rich/pretty/witty men :) Genre expectations let you relax, they 'hold the space' ideologically. Real life is social chaos of competing norms and suspicion and low trust, that's the price... But I digress Once they find out Vincent's fraud, next years space program is gonna have to be even more draconian, annoying rules for all coworkers because of him... Maybe all the fellow blue-collars will get fired too. 'we live in a society'
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    > he is merely exploiting the compassion of the society of the fittest If they are the fittest, how come he can actually do it? If he can "win", that is fit enough for nature, moral questions aside. If we had a whole system saying that people with 11 toes always run faster, and a person with 10 toes wins once, that system was based on false premises, taken as objective truth without proof. Now, if we have a system that claims people with 11 toes usually/on average run faster, why not allow the diversity of runners with 10 toes?
    - savryn 4y ago
      'the fittest' could destroy him but choose not to -- since fitness in a social species is, reductively, how groups of elites structure their power games over others. elites 'let you win' some games for all sorts of ulterior motives, implicit or unconscious even. Vincent barely wins for a small time, he almost collapses on the treadmill lmao My point is they left the exclusion / ruthlessness dial at level 7 when they could choose to crank it to 9 Vincent takes advantage of that temporarily, next guy and group will be punished for it.
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
> That's the part I also couldn't ever get over. He's shown to have a serious heart condition, and then cheats his way onto a space mission? But he survived. He survived far longer than calculated. Isn't this direct evidence that his genetically determined heart condition was successfully counteracted by a non-genetically identified trait? And his perfection and determination when designing the mission plan was flawless. Presumably far more flawless than the "valids" he was working with, despite having an inferior genome, or the director would never have commented on it. His attitude dramatically improved the odds of mission success. You seem to be arguing that if a metric says "don't do it", that this metric should be obeyed, even in light of evidence that it is wrong. Had the metric about his heart condition been correct, he never would have made it onto the flight.

mejutoco 4y ago

Those are great points. To follow the argument: is a lion selfish when she kills a gazelle? To me, the story is about individual struggle. Even if his behaviour is selfish, his life is richer than if he accepted the imposed limitations by others (imagine how boring that story would be, why is that). In a way, he is following nature‘s rules (survival of the fittest), instead of the arbitrary deterministic society rules he lives in. Ultimately, if we only cared about the good of the planet, we would probably choose to cease to exist. Up to a point, everyone alive is a bit selfish.

savryn 4y ago
>nature‘s rules (survival of the fittest) no he isn't, he is merely exploiting the compassion of the society of the fittest that temporary allowed the less fit/ gifted /engineered to still live / work near them and infiltrate at the right time -- it's got a bit of that a heist/noir of criminal cat and mouse Vincent uses criminal connections to pull the entire scheme off (the german), just like a bank heist in a film it feels fun for reasons that don't work without a movie's magic 'genre' control of tone/sympathy/agency etc. similar to other problems we have today where 'compassion' politics actually harms the fittest members most An old homeless loony stabbing a brilliant healthy young person today isn't a show of the former's fitness, it's because (there are other incentives for the) the fittest of society (elites) choose to not wipe out/exile/enslave the unfit for various reasons (inextricable from the society itself--labor dynamics, crime and fear being useful, christian virtue, etc) Gattaca in the opening even says it's only because he was born in the 'early stages' of the transition Actual 'meritocracy' safety and other values require ruthlessness and violence, which we already have as all states do, just distrubuted in one configuration (gattaca) versus another configuration (chaotic US today, versus say the safety of singapore, or dictatorship of north korea, or some other gattaca 2.0 where the Vincents aren't born at all because fertility is managed) A society can distribute its coercion/violence/reward structure in different ways, vincent is just a defector in a trust game Always reminds me of that lame smug 'Feynman negging woman at a bar' anecdote, how is defecting on social norms clever? that's literally the point of lying/cheating/stealing/littering etc, one individual wins a temp game at the harm of the environment / culture long term. Once a few men are rude / cads, reputation of the place declines and fewer girls show up, or only certain types and not others, etc. A higher status guy like F can avoid/internalize the social ding of resentment from others who lose out of the good vibe/meeting someone cool while he's there, but can't tell him off. Managing mini social games everywhere is 'culture' and essentially the reason infinite invisible class norms are so 'stifling' and invisible at once, it excludes the riff-raff and keeps those included people on their toes, behaving in a way that makes the place/group/experience "rich" rather than the vincent-like 'richness' of just maxing his own experience at cost of group. (essentially why costume dramas are so fun to watch for girls (me included, I just don't lie to myself lol) as a guilty pleasure that doesn't feel like a guilty pleasure (you claim it's high status reasons -- the set design, jane austen, the history, so well written!!! etc) -- But the ideology of the genre of the movie itself does all the heavy lifting on cost of the 'nice things' you're not allowed to advocate for or admit to yourself you want as an elite experience missing from our lives today (the fantasy of *extreme social exclusion* so only the very pretty, very rich, and very witty girls can join the tea party-- as well as enjoy the courtship dance pre-filtered by only worthy rich/pretty/witty men :) Genre expectations let you relax, they 'hold the space' ideologically. Real life is social chaos of competing norms and suspicion and low trust, that's the price... But I digress Once they find out Vincent's fraud, next years space program is gonna have to be even more draconian, annoying rules for all coworkers because of him... Maybe all the fellow blue-collars will get fired too. 'we live in a society'
- mejutoco 4y ago
  > he is merely exploiting the compassion of the society of the fittest If they are the fittest, how come he can actually do it? If he can "win", that is fit enough for nature, moral questions aside. If we had a whole system saying that people with 11 toes always run faster, and a person with 10 toes wins once, that system was based on false premises, taken as objective truth without proof. Now, if we have a system that claims people with 11 toes usually/on average run faster, why not allow the diversity of runners with 10 toes?
  - savryn 4y ago
    'the fittest' could destroy him but choose not to -- since fitness in a social species is, reductively, how groups of elites structure their power games over others. elites 'let you win' some games for all sorts of ulterior motives, implicit or unconscious even. Vincent barely wins for a small time, he almost collapses on the treadmill lmao My point is they left the exclusion / ruthlessness dial at level 7 when they could choose to crank it to 9 Vincent takes advantage of that temporarily, next guy and group will be punished for it.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

> That's the part I also couldn't ever get over. He's shown to have a serious heart condition, and then cheats his way onto a space mission? But he survived. He survived far longer than calculated. Isn't this direct evidence that his genetically determined heart condition was successfully counteracted by a non-genetically identified trait? And his perfection and determination when designing the mission plan was flawless. Presumably far more flawless than the "valids" he was working with, despite having an inferior genome, or the director would never have commented on it. His attitude dramatically improved the odds of mission success. You seem to be arguing that if a metric says "don't do it", that this metric should be obeyed, even in light of evidence that it is wrong. Had the metric about his heart condition been correct, he never would have made it onto the flight.