This movie is really inspiring and so telling. From my perspective, I feel that the aliens are synonymous with the minorities in our society today. Like the aliens, they are constantly rejected by the society and ostrasized as a result. In terms of recognition, no matter how hard they try, they are always pinned down chronically. No one believed in them, whenever they try to make a breakthrough, people think that they are always up to no good and that effort was redundant. Perhaps, we should step back and reflect sometimes, how are we actually treating the minorities today? We have accepted the flaws and all of the majorities but why are we still stereotyping and discriminating the minorities? How many potential chances are we actually giving to them? Practically none. Like in the movie, Wikus began to morph into an alien and immediately, he was exploited and ostrasized by all. No one wants to be close to him anymore, even his close friends and all. But isn’t this relevant in our society? When you are a doctor or a lawyer, you gained reverence from the others, but when you are lost your job, people start veering away from you immediately. When you call them, they will think that you are merely trying to get opportunities and money out of them. On the other hand, they might just need a helping hand at that point in time, but who really is willing to lend that helping hand in this society where survival of the fittest prevails?
Also, the movie has raised a number of ethical issues in biotechnology. Wikus who has successfully integrated the DNA of the aliens along with his has since then been the one to watch out for. The whole world is looking at this breakthrough, the unbelievable morphing. He was made to test out alien weapons which only they can see with his left alien hand. It began with testing on dead cows and slowly it moved on to living aliens as test subjects. It is not surprising that today in our biotechnology industry; we use all sorts of test specimens including living humans. But how far can we actually go and where will our limit be placed?
Cloning technology is under research and who knows ten years or even five years down the road, you see a plethora of humans that actually look alike down the street? Perhaps this is the result of the pressure which the world has put in place on the industry. To constantly keep pushing them to come out with something new and fresh for the society to look at and eventually earn billions of dollars out of it. Finders’ keepers so to speak. Whoever uncovers the new technology first wins?
The next issue highlighted was the notion of survival. Looking at the Maslow’s Needs of Hierarchy, we see that Man’s lowest need is psychological needs and that is the need for food and basic survival. In the movie, we see that aliens are trading top-notched machines and technology for cat food. This might sound incredulous but this is true. We, humans, are constantly working so hard, researching, planning, and experimenting, for what? For money of course, to bring us a better standard of living that is. We might not be looking for cat food, but ultimately, aren’t we too, working to get a luxurious lifestyle along with fine cuisines out there? We used our entire life to work on breakthroughs and trade off our invaluable skills just for something as basic as food and living. After one big round, we still have to come back to the basic psychological needs of survival.
Last but not least, Wikus in the movie has been trying very hard, consistently to go back, to fix himself, to return to normal. Is our society trying to fix itself? Not really, from what I see and even they try to, their efforts will definitely be in vain. Today, we are already so competitive and moving at seemingly light speed, we cannot afford to take any breaks now. Once you stop, you will be overtaken and your social status will be instantly obliterated. You will be banished back to a commoner and a minority. No one wants that because we all know we will be looked down upon and no one can survive glaring eyes and supercilious eyebrows raised upon us today. We all want to succeed and win this battle, to be recognised and be a winning individual.
But sometimes, have we gone too far that we ignore consequences that might even results in the death of our competitors? Look at Pfizer’s recent controversial ban and fine for the mis-usage of Bextra. We are researching on new drugs relentlessly in order to find one that will benefit mankind and hopefully gets approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But once approved, people seems to deviate away from their goal, they start to try as hard as possible to sell the drug in a n effort to recoup back the money loss in other drugs research and money spent on the approved drug. This has apparently resulted in many deaths in the United States because of the mis-usage of the drug as a palliative drug. Have we truly lost our purpose and direction in life? Are we so infatuated with money that we see lives as merely a stepping stone to our success? Can we truly take a step back and start moving backwards, to a once happy society and a peaceful community without any wars? Not very possible I surmised.
Credits -shockya, -mikeely, -scifiscoop, -bloggingjupino, -timeanddate
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