Contributions of Science Fiction to Thinking up (Im)possible Future Societies: Medical Students’ Genetic Imaginary

Diversity of Sources Mentioned

Films were the most prevalent source, followed by books, documentaries, news programs, television series, informational videos, soap operas and video games. The expressive predominance of films over other types of sources, namely literary sources, highlights the important contribution of this medium in the production and circulation of information. In fact, given the average age of students (18.57 years), they were born already immersed in a visual culture that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, goes beyond the traditional movie theater, video clubs and generalist television channels, namely through new sources (YouTube, digital platforms for buying or renting movies for viewing online or by streaming, sci-fi pay television channels, etc.) and new media (computer, smart phone, tablet, etc.). This visual culture has become a condition of the present in which the image, in particular the moving image, plays an increasingly central role in the construction of a critical conscience and the production of knowledge (Tavin, 2003). The remaining categories, with the exception of one – books in their paper format – are also elements that permeate these new digital media, relieving the viewer of the work of imagining the worlds narrated by books. Alternatively, they get simplified storylines, spectacularly designed scenarios, dazzling visual effects, and exciting action, all of which captivate audiences they could scarcely capture through other means. Nevertheless, it should be noted that nine out of the 10 books mentioned were adapted for cinema and four of them were referred to in the film category (Brave New World, Allegiant, My Sister's Keeper and The Giver).

Repertoire of Gene Manipulation Techniques and Their Products

The manipulation techniques identified in the different sources indicated by the students do not differ greatly from those that have been generally used by the science fiction genre (Haran et al., 2008). Even in terms of predominance, mutations, genetic selection, and recombinant DNA technology are older genetic manipulation techniques⁸ and thus more familiar to respondents. Due to their age group, respondents were born at a time when cloning and gene editing were on the top of the media agenda, especially due to their therapeutic potential. However, in this context, gene editing should be understood here in its broadest sense and not merely as resulting from the application of the CRISPR/Cas9 technique in gene editing of animals.

In addition, the way in which genetic manipulation techniques/technologies are presented in these sources either appear not to be plausible or are scientifically inaccurate (e.g., implanting false memories in the Godsend clone) or focusing exclusively on applications strongly criticized by the scientific community (e.g., the unpredictability of unwanted and irreversible effects on off-target DNA sequences in the Allegiant film/book or the instrumentalization of life-saving human clones such as in The Island and Never Let Me Go) rather than scenarios of hope that highlight the benefits of science for medical treatments and respect for the human being. Consequently, they focus on entities generated to serve humans in the face of their powerlessness to cope with disease, aging, death and mourning or to substitute them in tedious tasks, but which, through system failures or self-learning, may become aware of their instrumentalization, generating an identity crisis (The Island or Never Let Me Go), developing free will and disobeying their creators (I, Robot) or becoming superhumans or posthumans, thereby threatening the social order (Lucy or X-Men). In fact, the use of genetic manipulation techniques for creating superhumans comes from many of the sources mentioned by students. Superhumans, either by exposure to radiation, their alien nature or genetic manipulation, are a recurring topic in science fiction and have been problematized in different ways by different directors. For example, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick focuses on a radical humanistic reflection on the possibility of the superhuman, while in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) there is already a tripartite dialectic between machine, human and superhuman (Freedman, 1998). These entities recurrently portray the Other as a threat of invasion and domination from which humanity must protect itself.

Cinematographic Sources and the Construction of Imaginary

Twenty-four out of the 26 films mentioned were classified in the science fiction genre, one of which premiered before 1989, with the other 23 being between 1990 and 2016, corroborating to some extent the findings of Haran et al. (2008). The fictional narratives of this genre explore the potential transformations generated by scientific and technological advances, presenting imagined spaces and entities, and diverse visions and solutions for dealing with disruptive changes. They therefore challenge the viewer to address speculative scenarios and take a stand in the face of ethical dilemmas emerging from these hypothetical realities. Such narratives become attractive by constituting fertile expressions of imagination, conditional experiences (“what would happen if”), allowing the viewer to become what he fears or aspires to be, to embody or interact with other possible forms of existence, to seek a meaning for the fracturing (fascinating and disturbing) realities presented that are experienced in exciting and suspenseful ways. In this sense, the results suggest that cinematic science fiction contributes greatly to reflection on the limits of human intervention in the human genome.

The mediatization of genetic engineering, in particular cloning, as well as the emergence of the biopunk subgenre throughout the 1990s, presented the public with the possibilities offered by science, but they also questioned the ethical and social implications of this progress. Even so, of the 24 science fiction movies mentioned, only a small number falls under the biopunk subgenre, indicating that films from other subgenres contribute to the formation of opinions on genetic manipulation in humans. Indeed, while different genetic manipulation techniques have been addressed in only 13 films, the circumstances under which manipulated/generated beings/creatures arise in most other films pose transversal ethical dilemmas related to the use and purpose of science.

Despite the diversity of underlying issues and projected imaginary, most films and series mentioned question the limits of human intervention in various aspects of human life and warn of the consequences of their actions, presenting dystopian views of the future of humanity or highlighting the precautionary principle. The imaginary of these films warns that science may be used for social control purposes (by governments or private corporations), leading to new forms of social discrimination or abusive instrumentalization of human life, generating superhumans or post-humans that threaten humanity as we know it, or generating creatures that, by imposing their own will, through system errors or technological singularity, fail to obey their human creator, thus becoming a threat to humanity itself. This result is in line with the predominance of dystopian visions in science fiction films (Bina et al., 2017), where a dark side emerges associated with technology or generated entities that lead to the dehumanization of individuals, humans being controlled by machines, the dominance of totalitarian governments, environmental disasters, alien invasions or the creation of superior human beings.

The dystopian scenarios presented in science fiction films reveal, on the one hand, deep-rooted fears about science and scientific research in the twentieth century, in particular from the end of World War II (Kirby, 2008). On the other hand, the underlying issues of these dystopian views may reflect the concerns and fears of contemporary American society. In this sense, the hegemony of American cinema in the production of technoscientific imaginary may influence public representations of science and technology from the reference of American culture (national, therefore), but with a global (thus transnational) reach. For example, according to Avilla (2006), this hegemony is marked by the concerns felt by white Americans regarding the growing visibility of the foreign Other. In the context of a changing postwar and postindustrial racial geography, urban sci-fi films offer a cultural space where suburban America can be compared with the image of the Other. However, this American cultural globalization, which is also referred to as “Hollywood”, opposes a national interpretation. But an interpretation by whom? According to Ulf Hedetoft (2000), “Hollywood” produces a form of global cinematic culture that is welcomed, interpreted and nationalized, not so much by viewers but above all by a specific category of national gatekeepers. Curiously, the apparent paradox is that the popularity of a movie, or rather its national reception, seems to depend on the extent to which it is in line with the international standard that Higson (1989) considers to be “Hollywood”.

Nine of the above films were produced by more than one country, with the US always present, except in the Lucy movie. This seems to jibe with the category of transnational modes of production, distribution and exhibition proposed by Deborah Shaw (2013), which considers expressing hegemonic power structures that favor “Hollywood” dominance of various film markets.

However, the hegemony of American culture is resisted in contexts that are dominated by other social, cultural and civilizational realities, such as Indian fiction cinema. Sometimes dubbed as an import of the “Western” science fiction genre, Indian science fiction is strongly marked by the uniqueness of its own history, namely its independence in 1947, its subsequent involvement with science and technology programs and its own imaginary fictional scientific studies (Lakkad, 2014). This brought about film narratives that gave rise to a new syntax leading to globalization in the new millennium, of Hindu nationalism and Brahmanism through the combination of Hindu traditions and myths and cutting-edge technologies (Basu, 2011). Generally, from the 1950s onwards, the Indian science fiction film repertoire mainly includes alien encounters, time travel, space adventures and travels, religious motives, visual representations of scientists and the harmful effects of the misuse of science and technology (Lakkad, 2014).

Genetics at the Service of Medicine and Power

The four most referenced films by students were The Island, GATTACA, My Sister's Keeper and Brave New World. The Island and My Sister's Keeper address the issue of therapeutic applications of biotechnology, but from different perspectives. On The Island, the clones are kept on an island, far from Earth, functioning as a human organ bank available to their original sponsors, who paid to have their clone there. However, what maintains the social order on this island is the farce, which is the fact that its inhabitants believe it is their privilege to live in that place, the only one capable of sustaining life. In the case of My Sister's Keeper, with their daughter suffering from a serious illness, her parents decide to have another child through in vitro fertilization to ensure that both children are genetically compatible. This film discusses how parents, when faced with a daughter's illness, are led to seek a medical solution for that daughter, relegating to the background the right to full life and autonomy of another daughter who, without being consulted, was conceived to be an organ donor. It is precisely at this point that both films touch each other, that they exhibit biotechnological potentialities in the therapeutic field, but at the same time problematize the applications and implications of these potentialities, namely the threat to the dignity of the human person that results from their instrumentalization for the benefit of third parties.

Based on the rhetoric of genetic determinism, GATTACA presents us with an imagined future in which the social condition of the human being is determined by their genetic code. However, this is not the result of chance, but an official program of genetic selection that aims to perfect and validate a perfect human species that does not get sick and lives longer. The “invalids”, those who were naturally generated, arise here not only as a reference to the injustice and perversion of the system itself, but also to make visible a subversive dimension that always accompanies these futuristic and dystopian societies.

GATTACA tells of an important dilemma, namely that medicine is entering a period in which genetics will change the process of diagnosis and treatment on the one hand and, on the other, the recognition that genetic manipulation will have substantial social and cultural impacts, raising new dilemmas and complex ethical, legal and social challenges, namely the sacralization of the human genome and its manipulation; accessibility to genetic information and the right to privacy or not wanting to know; the boundaries between hetero-determination of descent and individual autonomy; access to genetic testing and interventions, new forms of discrimination and the sustainability of health systems (Anderson, 2000; Barbosa, 2020).

Finally, Brave New Word, the vision of a futuristic and totalitarian society in which citizens are raised in artificial wombs, in a process known as “ectogenesis”, thus allowing genetic manipulation that, a priori, determines which caste a particular individual will belong to. Immediately after birth, citizens are subject to an intense and systematic conditioning program, whether physiological (through “soma”, a substance that induces happiness) or psychological (propagation of subliminal ideological messages during sleep), always with the aim of maintaining a social life sustained by induced and artificial happiness, domesticated even. Once again, the rhetoric of genetic determinism arises here, above all as an instrument that determines the social condition of individuals based on their degree of intelligence and productivity, but a determinism that is relative here, one that needs to be carried out through ex utero conditioning strategies in order to maintain the effectiveness of the strategy of normalization of social life.

The four films seem to support their narrative in the rhetoric of relative or absolute genetic determinism, but they nonetheless counteract it, more or less explicitly, with the freedom of individual choice that each of the films explores differently. Therefore, the genetic determinism that drives the narrative of these films stems from a lust for power – usually by a political regime, a capitalist enterprise or a social class – that operates through surveillance and medical-sanitary, moral or behavioral control of a society, thus turning it into a mass. However, this power almost always results in resistance to the political and social order, which is simultaneously an opportunity to the return to the real, through a fairer reordering of systems and the deconstruction of insinuated genetic providence. In Brave New World and GATTACA, for example, this opportunity is provided by error, by an imperfection in the manipulation and control system, functioning as a “vanishing point” that here takes on clear symbolism over the limits of determinism, be it genetic or power. In the end, individual freedom always ends up being saved.

Thus, in general, these films raise the question of human instrumentalization, authenticity, freedom, access to genetic information and the consequences of manipulation for the organization and control of “biopower” societies (Foucault, 1976). They also question the relationship with the Other that results from human creation itself or from an extension of itself. The fear of an Other that supplants the intelligence of its creator and takes over humanity on the way towards a posthuman condition. Moreover, by proposing scenarios of futuristic and totalitarian societies in which biotechnology is potentiated to the limits of imagination, science fiction also plays a regulating and somewhat critical role in the real societies of the present, their vices, their myths, their tendencies, but also their own fears, longings and expectations about a future they will most likely never know, but only imagine.