Gattaca

I somehow doubt that in such a situation you would clap enthusiastically, or that you would vote for Vincent as the airline employee of the month. I bet that, on the contrary, you would be outraged that he used deception and irresponsibly put other people’s lives at risk to achieve his selfish goal. But why then do we react so differently when we are confronted with that other Vincent, the main character in the movie Gattaca (1997), who basically does the same thing? Why do we admire him? I will try to show that this is all the work of silver screen magic. The remainder of this essay will provide a detailed explanation of how this illusion of heroism has been produced. But just to pique your curiosity, let me just briefly describe the main trick that the Hollywood wizards pulled on us here. They first dramatized things by building into their science-fiction scenario some very strong assumptions about the power of genetic predictions, but later they did everything to suppress the awareness of clear logical implications of these very assumptions.