Spoiler Alerts
Have you ever wondered what led humanity into the genetically enhanced yet heavily segregated dystopian near future world of Gattaca? The events that unfold in the documentary styled present day District 9 may explain how we got to this future world. In District 9 we have an alien ship that crash lands into Earth leaving a whole alien crew stranded in the slums of South Africa’s famously apartheid loving Johannesburg. The important thing to remember here is that this is a singular event. This is why it never comes up in Gattaca. There is no Independence Day style alien invasion that levels cities or really affects any part of the world outside of Johannesburg. The aliens essentially come in peace and park their big space craft within earths atmosphere before being relegated to the slums while humanity tries to figure out what to do with them and their incredible genetically linked technology. Guns that can only fire when a member of the alien race handles one but will not turn on in the hands of a human. Nobody in Gattaca’s society, a society revolving around human genetic superiority, would freely admit that so much of it’s technology was stolen from non-human aliens.
How did Gattaca’s society evolve to what it became in the film? It is entirely possible that the research done into these weapons and space travel systems and accompanying genetics research necessary to merely activate this technology leads humanity down a path where we are no longer segregating aliens, but begin to segregate less genetically modified humans at the plausibly rapid pace of change that accompanies defense spending and military investment. What if more alien ships show up and they are less friendly, especially in light of how humanity has been treating the first set of alien visitors? This explains why the segregation in Gattaca is so out and in the open and everyone seems to be okay with that. Once you open the door to segregation of another intelligent species such as that of District 9, there is no turning back.
What else could explain the rapid development of technology in such a short frame of time. In Gattaca, we see that, over the course of Ethan Hawks lifetime, space travel has also advanced from what it is in our time to multiple manned launches to the moon and beyond to other planets every single day (as our protagonist hopes to be on one of these flights). The only thing that would explain such a dramatic technological advancement in such a short period of time is alien technology. Currently, our society is toning down efforts at space travel, but if we knew beyond a doubt that aliens existed and could in fact reach earth, space travel would probably become a bit more of a priority.
One subtle reference in Gattaca is the 6 fingered piano player, an evolved humanity’s classical metaphor evoking the first human genetic transformations which revolved around being able to handle the alien technology. Humans first started by altering their hands as they had seen happen with the protagonist of District 9 in their documentary / top secret tape of the earliest human encounter with being able to use the alien weapons. In District 9, humans were still struggling after 20 something years to activate the weapons before the events of the documentary transpired. That tape must have been studied over and over by Gattaca's futuristic scientists with whom all metaphorical significance concerning how we should treat each other is lost upon.
shut up
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