Gattaca and The Economist

The Filthy Rich Nation Shrinking Population epidemic is sweeping through northern Europe, and the continued demise of Third World Peoples- through debt, disease or demoralization- has been for told in Sci-Fi hits for years, most notably the Andrew Niccol’s 1997 hit Gattaca. Ethan Hawke played (again) the underdog, this time the left over genetic mess playing catch up to his genetically engineered and therefore superior brother, played by the dapper , handsome and witty Jude Law. In Gattaca’s world, the women are pretty, the people are wealthy and almost all are white save for a few random scientists. Ah, the future seems so bright.

As commentary on the role of genetic determinism and Eugenics in the future of genetic research and gene therapy, the film was radically excellent. Once our genetic sequences have been fully decoded, according to Gattaca ‘s logic, society could ‘manipulate’ away illness. Hence, like in Training Day co-starring Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke’s character gets the audience to sympathize with his inalienable ‘underclass’ status as he triumphs over social inequality and oppression. Phat story and well told.

The July 28th Economist updated readers about fact that, as the magazine presents them, “If a country wants to keep its population up, it should promote IVF.’ This statement stands in bold lettering under an equally bold close up of a Gattaca like, blond haired blue-eyed, fair toddler crawling on well manicured grass against a backdrop of a romanticized antique European building to announce the infant’s class status. The caste is clear: In Gattaca, all ‘valid’ births are through IVF, selectively combining the best of both parent’s genetic contributions. The rest are ‘in-valids’.

For a ‘non-life threatening condition’ In Vitro Fertilization is the final frontier in addressing the shrinking sperm count of the region’s native men, and the heightened age at which native (heterosexual) women tend to conceive. The native population is ‘developed’ and is shrinking. Unlike immigration or foreign adoption from underdeveloped parts of the world, IVF has ‘completely compensated’ for the reducing ‘effect’.

Other pages in the same journal indicate that immigration is unpopular in places worst hit by the Filthy Rich Nation Shrinking Population epidemic. Moreover, wealthy nations are increasingly wealthy, and the most celebrated of ‘multi-kulti’ nation-states, America, even builds fences to ward of the darkies from down south, while keeping many other undesirables locked up. In Denmark, a nation whose native population is fastest in decline, now has a stable population due to IVF technology. In other parts of the world, quite heinous technologies and methods are applied to hinder reproduction, for those populations are purported, in the same news outlets, to be explosive!

‘Inmates (see above) [indicating a large color photo of two dark skin Negro males. The younger one faces the camera, coveting an open notebook while regarding the other; an elderly man sits adjacently wearing standardized eyeglasses while holding a pen over a blank legal pad] even teach each other to read’ Though the Economist will offer lengthy statistics and their analysis, rarely do they analyze why their prison stories always picture (dark skinned) Black male ‘inmates’. Arabs, Africans all get a similar rap in that magazine, either pictured as frail from war and starvation or fat from corruption!

Harry Potter's Litany for Youth Responsibility

Order of the Phoenix is a triumphant display of everyday courage in the face of the continued ubiquitous memory of terrorism and the ensuing spread of socio-political conservatism. Harry, Hermione and Ron’s latest internal and external battles serve as a litany for young people to assert that the personal is the political, and therefore the importance of asserting responsibility!

After rescuing Harry Potter from persecution at the hands of his gluttonous middle class adopted guardians, members of the underground resistance group, the Order of the Phoenix, reminded our young heroine and his cohorts that fear is no sound basis upon which to guide your actions (or socio-political decisions vis-à-vis the bureaucratic, dogmatic and nepotistic Ministry of Magic). “Fear,” according to one wise wizard, “makes people do terrible things.”

Indeed, in response to terrorism, i.e. the return of Voldemort and his henchmen and women, the very same government provided the citizenry of witches with a sense of security through actively promoting conservative family values, charging any dissenters with ‘disloyalty’ (READ: unpatriotic!), thereby feigning collectivism. Then student groups were banned, clearly depriving young people of one major training ground of engaging democracy and rehearse good governance. In both Hogwarts and in real life, that collectivism turned out to be superficial and easily defeated by its own hypocrisy, perhaps, but certainly collapsing in upon itself ultimately because it is grounded in (collective) fear.

Like most of our commercially successful cultural stories, the good guys win and live happily ever after- along with the damsel from the spoils if the battle. By now kids and adults understand that Harry, Hermione and Ron always face obstacles and always vanquish. Yet in Rollins’ 2005 screen episode based on her widely successful bid to just get more people to read, Harry witnessed the murder of a respected comrade, an admired upperclassman who just happened to be the first to pluck Harry’s eventual love interest, Cho Chang. This installment opens again with Harry more easily defeating ghoulish attackers. As in earlier installments, Harry apparently suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), much like modern day youth thrown into battles started well before their time. In America, for example, a generation of such soldiers went horridly untreated- shameless! Yet, in asking readers/viewers to maintain hope, JK Rollins shows us that this too shall pass.

The Order of the Phoenix collectivized individuals based upon their courage to face obstacles. This resistance group was portrayed in stark opposition to ‘the bad guys’ who were visually portrayed by the archetypical effeminate, manicured, poised man-in-black with impeccable hair, the pure bred wizard Lucius Malfoy, like Scar in The Lion King and a plethora of our screen fables. The order also represented Harry greatest lesson- one of the overt take home messages of the film- that cooperation gets results! The ministry and the dark side itself, all relied more upon compliance- Lord Voldemort with murdering people and mind control, and the Ministry of Magic for corporeal punishment and, control of the public mind through propaganda. This cultivated the environment of fear in both spaces, versus the freethinking, socialists imagined clan on the side of our young protagonist, which even included criminal element i.e. Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black, to add to the transgressive appeal. Naturally this character was visually portrayed as an archetypical gypsy, just to hone in the point.

That Damn Delores Umbridge and her dark arts!
This film also resolves one lingering quandary- Hermione and Ron’s attraction to the heretofore virtually ascetic, androgynous even, Harry Potter. The relaxed way in which the portrayal of the trio’s bond, at times flirtatious, at times jealous runs the erotic border barely segregating human emotion. In its film adaptation, the Order of the Phoenix can then be seen as wholly Queer positive in the truest sense: That all forms of sexuality are OK, and that by not shying away from erotic attraction does not endanger plutonic friendship. Quite to the contrary, the bond between Harry, Hermione and Ron never rejected any of these feelings, and were even comforted as seen in this very apex scene where Hermione finally LOL.

Meanwhile Hermione’s deep sense of compassion for Harry’s love interest, the Asian-Irish classmate and fellow Quidditch jock, Cho Chang, as compared to Ron’s ‘emotional depth of a teaspoon’ frankly leaves viewers wondering if Hermione’s pensive concern is based on jealously (after the recruitment meeting for Dumbledore’s Army she noted that Cho Chang could not take her eyes off of Harry) or Hermione’s own attraction to Harry or to Cho Chang? The ambiguity, and apparent acceptance within the world of the film, demonstrates to viewers another type of courage. Interestingly, this scene is crucially used later in the film.

Upon careful advice from a cautious new compassionate comrade, Luna, Harry choose friendship as a means to increase his overall chances of surviving an increasingly inevitable attack prompted by terrorizing visions of the Lord Voldemort attacking Harry’s loved ones. These visions blur the line between good and evil- while in the visions, Harry can even feel the will to act in those murderous ways. We are alike, he’s warned, and the only difference rests in our choices- for we have the ability to choose. But choose what?

Harry chooses to eschew the isolationist approach- a clear comment on our socio-political climate! Flashbacks of the Hermione/Ron/Harry love and friendship scene allowed Harry to resist Voldemort’s attempts at mental colonization, a technique vigorously taught to Harry by another archetypical character, Order of the Phoenix co-founder- Professor Serverus Snape. The classic Goth, as we are shown in Harry’s final lesson, believes so greatly in the cause against evil that he is able to bestow a skill upon the son of his greatest tormentor- Harry deceased dad who was apparently a school bully. This scene reiterates to viewers that Harry is different, more powerful than the rest, exceeding even his parents, because of his ability to choose. Hence in the final showdown between the good side and the bad guys, Harry declares that ‘You [Voldemort] will never know love and friendship and I feel sorry for you’. Voldemort’s weakness, his inability to build coalitions based on courage, but simply a group based on compliance and fear, is overthrown, along with the government. The Prime Minister is asked to resign, all is well at Hogwarts and our trio, now having grown into a collective, lives happily ever after- at least until the next sequel. Voldemort's weakness is Harry’s strength; the only difference between good an evil, both immensely powerful and differently seductive, are the choices we make. To do so in isolation, by usurping the powers granted through democracy and free will, is to choose to loose and leads to real transgression.

“Something worth fighting for.”
As opposed to other superheroes, those granted immense power and. Despite the terrible threats of terror- through the hero’s repeated murderous visions, or the actual return of Voldemort and the ensuing mass death- Harry Potter is comparatively non-violent. Where ‘the dark side’ has lengthy scenes maiming several important characters, including a near morbid plethora of deceased parents in abstentia, our side is often scene defeating evil by a very limp wrist. In fact, the most powerful spell that Harry has to teach his generation of fighters is to imagine the happiest moment ever, the Patronus spell! This spell “conjures an incarnation of the caster's innermost positive feelings, such as joy, hope, or the desire to survive;” indeed, happiness is the most powerful magic.

This most special incantation protect to conjuring witch/wizard through embodying an ethereal animal figure. The concept of waving a wand and asserting “Expecto Patronum,” yet is not. In the film, the spell is used to defend against Dementors, the scary ghoulish creatures that opened this film. Dementors have attacked Harry on the train, and now on the street with his cousin, whom he defends with the Patronus spell. Dementors have hunted young Harry since the first installment- a lifelong threat! And yet to conjure a ‘full-fledged’ Patronus, to defend one’s life against the scariest creature, one who attacks unrelentingly and with great surprise, whose very hooded image evokes great fear, a witch or wizard must fill their entire being with happy thoughts. And frankly, it is deeply patriarchal, reflective of the comfort one is taught to seek, through religion or patrimony, to ‘protect’ us. Oh Father, please protect us.

Magical non-violence
One last message lies beneath the wondrous imagery of the author and filmmakers’ vision of this ultimately non-violent world. The Patronus Charm is positioned in the film as the ultimate ‘weapon’ against the terrorists that Harry has to teach. Yet, in the final battle scene, we all discover that the ability to build coalitions trumps individual happiness. It is as if individual happiness, i.e. meditating one’s individual happiness as a powerful force to defend against sadness and death through, is yet incomplete unless shared. Sharing comes from empowering others, not dominating them as shown by the downfall of both the ‘dark sides’ of the magic world and the government. And even the individual only taps into a portion of their won will to live through ‘Love and friendship’ i.e. not just talking but actual compassion. Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix is a litany for international relations, if we all intend to survive. For those who’ve seen Spiderman III, you will recognize a very similar moral. (P.S. Harry’s Patronus is a stag!)