Wednesday, September 4, 2019
The Island Move Analysis
The Island Move Analysis In the beginning of the film Lincoln 6 Echo is very inquisitive, reminding me much of a child whos favorite question is why. He wants to know why he has to wear white, why he has to package vitamins, why survivors are being found, why people are drawn at random to go to the island, why he cant eat certain things and the list goes on and on. He has a friend who can do these things, that he visits by faking a shortage in his identity bracelet, unknown to him, this man is an actual human, while Lincoln 6 Echo and his friends are clones of extremely wealthy individuals who pay many millions of dollars to have themselves duplicated should they ever need an organ, skin, or want a surrogate to carry their child. Lincoln, goes exploring one day and realized that there is no island, those who supposedly win the lottery are killed shortly after giving birth, or having organs removed. Jordan 2 Delta, had won the lottery the evening before, and he goes and convinces her to run with him. They esc ape the under ground bunker and realize there is an entire world on the outside with people. They find out that they are clones, created with the sole purpose of keeping their human counterparts alive for many years longer then a natural life. They go in search of their counterparts to show them that they are too living, feeling, thinking individuals and not kept in a vegetative state, as they were lead to believe. Jordans counterpart had been in a car accident so they went in search of Lincolns counterpart an extremely wealthy man named Tom Lincoln, who resided in Los Angeles. They are being hunted by the institution to be brought back before the general population learns the truth of how human they are and what the institution actually does. They eventually find Tom Lincoln and tell him the story; he agrees to take them to the news station to tell their story. Jordan realizes that the original Tom is lying, because his eyes get the same look as Lincolns. Lincoln convinces her to s tay behind, so she doesnt get captured when he double-crosses them. Tom does in fact call the institution because he is not ready to die, and Lincoln is his insurance policy. Lincoln pretends to be the original Tom and the real Tom gets shot, with the mercenary thinking he is the clone. The institute offers Tom a replacement insurance policy. Jordan is captured the next day while Lincoln is going to the institute under the disguise of Tom; his goal is to save all of the other clones. During this time the institute realized that there was a defect in the clones from the echo generation on, giving them the human curiosity personality characteristic, to get rid of this problem they decide to do damage control and kill all of the clones. Jordan and Lincoln intervene and ultimately stop the institution from killing everyone. They save their friends, and the institution is destroyed and prevented from causing any further destruction. I love how this plays in with organ donation and harvesting organs from cadavers as we learned about in class, I think it is such and interesting solution that I hope our society never turns to. The public was lead to believe that the clones were kept in a vegetative state, not feeling, or thinking, or having emotions, which allowed them to be more at ease with the concept. I cant say if I had the money and I was promised that my clone would always be vegetative, that I would say no to that. I can see why it was such a popular concept from the public, I do think that if the public had known about the clones living and breathing, and feeling and being human in everyway except having a natural birth and a childhood, that some would still pay for this privilege. Many people are so scared of death that it doesnt matter how they survive, it just matters that they do. I loved that an underlying theme of the movie was not to trust anyone; humans are manipulative, and only care about their b est interests. This really hit true to me, that we lose so much of our innocents, and our trust as we age because we become so self serving, you could see that happen with Lincoln as he and Jordan spent more time in the human world. He was so trusting and willing to do anything for any one, yet he sacrificed his original counterparts life to save his own. I dont think it is a bad thing, but I think that in the beginning of the movie, it is not something he would have done. When he said, Im not ready to die either, I think it had come full circle that he was starting to become more human, and more self-serving. I think this also played very well into the end of life stages, really focusing on how far would you go to prevent your own death? My main issues with the concept of cloning for organ use are all ethical, is it ethical to clone? What will cloning lead to? What is okay to clone? Not ok? Animals? Adults? Children? Why would people need or want to clone for use other than to use organs and or other body parts? My next issue is the issue of creating life to suit and ulterior need. To me this is using life as a means to achieve a goal, and life should not be a tool to help succeed in other areas, a life should be enough to just be lived and enjoyed. My last concern is that after the clone in the movie has served its purpose, whether it be give birth or donate a kidney the clone is killed, and I cannot grasp making killing the clone ok. Cloning, the act of creating something in the exact form that already exists; to me this alone is unethical there is no need or reason in my mind why society needs to do this. I see no good or benefit for society that can come from cloning, I think it creates unnecessary temptations to do just what was done in the movie, by allowing the wealthy to clone themselves to serve a purpose. If we make cloning a common practice I see no reason why this will not become a reality, and that to me is frightening. The clones in the movie thought, felt, loved, and had all human emotions and to imagine being a clone and knowing you were created to eventually die, so someone else could live makes me ill. I would not choose to prolong someone elses life at the expense of my own unless I truly loved this person. I imagine a clone would feel the same way since they have human emotions. In this situation I think the golden rule applies, do unto others as you would want done to you. My next issue is creating life to serve an ulterior purpose. This reminds me of the book My Sisters Keeper, by Jodi Pullcott. Where the youngest daughter was conceived to ultimately save the elder daughters life. Not only does this make the produced person feel like a means to the end, but also it creates an issue of individual rights. Does the Produced person have the right to refuse to help save the life of the person needing saved? Do they have the right to put their health above the other person? I think that they should. Whether or not you were born out of the desire to create a life to love that person, or created out of the desire to save someone else, that the person who is ultimately being used should given the right to the most important issue in donation, free will in the form of informed consent. If we are going to create people to serve a purpose of saving other lives what is to stop society from breeding slaves? No there isnt the same promise that the organs will be as good of a match, but it would be a lot cheaper. My last issue is that the clones were killed after surgeries they could have easily lived through. I can maybe, in so stretch make it okay, if the clones were only being used to donate organs that they could survive with out, and if they were being compensated for them. Or if they were being treated as real surrogates, but killing them after routine operations amazed me. It seemed almost too cruel to do that just to protect the rest of the clone population from learning the truth. The killing seemed senseless and completely unnecessary. All in all I thought this was an amazing movie and I really enjoyed watching it. It was not something I would have picked to watch on my own but I am very glad that I did.
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