Films often explore ethics and morals.
Quite recently, I watched a film that seems to have examined one extreme of what it is to be human.
Looking at the very worst of what we can imagine to be the consequences of our progression as a race. Not wanting to accept the limitations placed upon us by the lives we lead.
The Island is quite a recent film, and supposes that in the near future, techniques of cloning have been developed that enable those with sufficient resources, money, to purchase duplicates of themselves, that can be used for the transplantation of organs, should an accident occur, or disease threaten the life of the ‘sponsor’.
This kind of medical development is not as far-fetched as we might think.
What is interesting about the film is the way in which the cloned ‘property’ is kept unaware of its purpose and fate, as a means of ensuring that the organs contained within the clone have the kind of resilience that millions of years of human evolution have given ‘ordinary’ people.
The ethical issues involved in keeping to protect people alive simply for the purpose of use as spam parts is well presented.
The clones are kept in an isolated location, where the live their lives as innocent childlike beings, convinced that they are the survivors of a contamination that has destroyed the great majority of the human race.
A lottery is used to determine which of the clones might be transported to the mythical island as the film’s title, which is reckoned to be the place from which the Earth will be repopulated by those that have ‘survived’ the calamitous contamination.
But what the businessmen that have created this financially rewarding experiment I have not taken into account is the notion that the clones might develop something of the personalities of the people that they have replicated.
And one particular person, played by our hero, discovers a flying bug, a butterfly, he begins to question what he has been taught to believe without question.
His curiosity leads to him discovering the fate of lottery winners, as they are euthanised after their organs are harvested.
And when someone that he has against the rules become a little too friendly with is chosen for “relocation” to the island, he makes a desperate bid for freedom, and the two of them escape into the outside world, that they expect to be severely contaminated, but isn’t.
With the threat this poses to the business of providing clones that genetically match their ‘owners’, a hunting party is in hot pursuit of these naive escapees.
They head for a modern futuristic Los Angeles, expecting that confronting their sponsors will result in them achieving some kind of safety.
But of course it is not as simple as that.
Our hero interestingly has started to develop the kind of memories that his wealthy sponsor has developed, which means that he inexplicably is able to drive at speed, knows how to operate this kind of high-speed machinery.
It becomes a fight for survival, when his sponsor reports his arrival to the pursuing hunters.
But in an unexpected twist, it is the sponsor that is gunned down, mistaken for the clone, and suddenly the tables are turned on this morally doubtful business.
Since his clone has been destroyed by the pursuing hunters, he is taken back to the facility where the clones are kept isolated from the world, and just as the disreputable business is about to eliminate several generations of product, manages to free the entire population of clones.
The film ends with several hundred naive clones, escaping from the isolated plant where they have been kept and misled their entire brief lives.
It is impossible not to draw parallels with other failed attempts at eugenics, and whilst there is no complete resolution of what happens next, this is not necessary.
It is enough that the failed contravention of everything that is good about humanity has been ended.
Interestingly, the day after having watched this film, I watched a much older film, Accidental Hero, in which a very different perspective on what it is to be ethically and morally human is presented.
In this film, Dustin Hoffman is a small time crook, who by accident of fate saves 54 people from certain death when their aeroplane crashes on its way across America from the west coast.
Dustin Hoffman is an unlikely hero, and he flees the scene of his heroism.
Because one of the people that he has saved is a television journalist, the action takes on a search for the hero of the day.
Through an accidental misplacing of one of his shoes, when the television company offers a reward of $1 million for the identification of the hero, an indigent friend to whom he has given the one shoe that he retained claims the reward.
What follows is a humorous at times series of events, but the end is somehow resolved, when he is able to agree with the mistaken hero that he can blackmail him, ensuring the future education of his young son.
The film finishes with a tantalising moment when the accidental hero is explaining to his young son what really happened, whilst they are both at the zoo.
The film finishes just at the point where a mother has screamed that her daughter has fallen into the Lions enclosure, and father says to son, “watch my shoes”.
Seen together, the two films represent the extraordinary spectrum of possibilities, for human action to be ethical and appropriate, what we might hope of ourselves or others, and what we would wish to be not even conceived as possible.
Tuesday 28 January 2014
Thursday 23 January 2014
An Excellent Lunch Companion
I recently discovered that a poem I wrote in commemoration of the death of writer Francis King was still available on the PEN website.
English PEN is part of a worldwide network of writers, and the fact that my poem was accepted at all I considered a prestigious honour.
Discovering it is still alive and available for perusal three years after it was written and sent when I had received news of the writers’ recent death at the age of 88.
Francis King was someone that I only met briefly, but I am sure like many, meeting with him has remained in my memory. He was an excellent lunch companion.
Few people can have so many interesting anecdotes drawn mostly from a life well lived.
His circle of friends was extraordinary, and when he mentioned someone that he called Morgan, it took a later gentle reminder that he was talking about EM Forster, a writer that most of us will have heard of, but few will count as close friends.
There is the generational thing, of course. Francis King was of an older generation. A very different generation, in which being homosexual was itself considered criminal.
Impossible for most people to understand in these very different times.
And he moved in a circle where he knew WH Auden, he of the famous funeral poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral.
It is ironic that my life should have crossed with that of Francis when it did, and that I should have even been able to write that poem in honour of his memory.
That it can be viewed on the English PEN website is an added bonus, but it reminds me that I have written many poems in the context of Humanist funerals, some of which are published in my collection, 50 x 50 -Useful Poetry For Troubled Times.
It is not so much that I have a particular fascination for memorial poems, but simply that I had a Humanist Celebrant friend for whom I wrote to order a number of such poetic expressions.
I suppose I had, and still have, the time to be able to respond quickly. Funerals of course are never planned far in advance.
But this is certainly the most prestigious opportunity to have the last word.
My style as a poet lends itself perhaps, unpretentious, and when I worked closely with my humanist celebrant friend, she was grateful to have someone at that could take a simple narrative of someone’s life, and frame it within blank verse, that came across as a poetic expression of those things that had been communicated to me.
This facility of mine became the focus of my application to the Arts Council of England for a small grant. The first and only time that I have received funding from this source for my own work.
I mentioned in the poem I wrote that was simply entitled Francis King CBE that he had been generous enough to have read some of my poetry and commented positively on it, and said that he would write on my behalf to the Arts Council. It was how he himself had started out as an author, in very different times, with the receipt of an award from that body.
But Francis spent most of his long life working for the British Council, often overseas, and he had a particular liking for Japan.
Which was something we could talk about, because I had the good fortune to travel to Japan when I worked as the Development Director for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
My week in Japan is one of the highlights of a life that is far more constrained these days, and such travel would simply be impossible these days.
But I am glad to have done it when I could, and in some style too.
It is a simple fact that when you work for a National orchestra, that when you stay abroad, you stay in five-star hotels. And a size star hotel in Japan is quite an experience.
But that lunch with Francis King was an excellent one, and he was an extraordinary raconteur.
Francis King CBE
The family has gathered, the struggle ceased
but sadness should not cloud the day.
Your life must end, but it has been long
and filled with so many friends along the way
who have already sung their song.
I like to think that you will soon be drinking tea
with many of them, Japanese style
- and how you will admire the waiters!
You were kind to me, and read my words
for which I am so grateful. Better still
you said you liked them, and wrote as much
to those that gave you your first start
for which I'm truly humbled.
But then, you are a gentleman, and a nearly-knight
though a sword, in truth, wouldn't suit you quite
for it would clash with your convictions.
The conversations over tea
would be well worth overhearing.
Such a literary gathering it will be
and a library's worth of worthies.
Besides, so many shelves across the world
will keep your memory fresh
for you chose for your profession
one in which death is only the beginning.
English PEN is part of a worldwide network of writers, and the fact that my poem was accepted at all I considered a prestigious honour.
Discovering it is still alive and available for perusal three years after it was written and sent when I had received news of the writers’ recent death at the age of 88.
Francis King was someone that I only met briefly, but I am sure like many, meeting with him has remained in my memory. He was an excellent lunch companion.
Few people can have so many interesting anecdotes drawn mostly from a life well lived.
His circle of friends was extraordinary, and when he mentioned someone that he called Morgan, it took a later gentle reminder that he was talking about EM Forster, a writer that most of us will have heard of, but few will count as close friends.
There is the generational thing, of course. Francis King was of an older generation. A very different generation, in which being homosexual was itself considered criminal.
Impossible for most people to understand in these very different times.
And he moved in a circle where he knew WH Auden, he of the famous funeral poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral.
It is ironic that my life should have crossed with that of Francis when it did, and that I should have even been able to write that poem in honour of his memory.
That it can be viewed on the English PEN website is an added bonus, but it reminds me that I have written many poems in the context of Humanist funerals, some of which are published in my collection, 50 x 50 -Useful Poetry For Troubled Times.
It is not so much that I have a particular fascination for memorial poems, but simply that I had a Humanist Celebrant friend for whom I wrote to order a number of such poetic expressions.
I suppose I had, and still have, the time to be able to respond quickly. Funerals of course are never planned far in advance.
But this is certainly the most prestigious opportunity to have the last word.
My style as a poet lends itself perhaps, unpretentious, and when I worked closely with my humanist celebrant friend, she was grateful to have someone at that could take a simple narrative of someone’s life, and frame it within blank verse, that came across as a poetic expression of those things that had been communicated to me.
This facility of mine became the focus of my application to the Arts Council of England for a small grant. The first and only time that I have received funding from this source for my own work.
I mentioned in the poem I wrote that was simply entitled Francis King CBE that he had been generous enough to have read some of my poetry and commented positively on it, and said that he would write on my behalf to the Arts Council. It was how he himself had started out as an author, in very different times, with the receipt of an award from that body.
But Francis spent most of his long life working for the British Council, often overseas, and he had a particular liking for Japan.
Which was something we could talk about, because I had the good fortune to travel to Japan when I worked as the Development Director for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
My week in Japan is one of the highlights of a life that is far more constrained these days, and such travel would simply be impossible these days.
But I am glad to have done it when I could, and in some style too.
It is a simple fact that when you work for a National orchestra, that when you stay abroad, you stay in five-star hotels. And a size star hotel in Japan is quite an experience.
But that lunch with Francis King was an excellent one, and he was an extraordinary raconteur.
Francis King CBE
The family has gathered, the struggle ceased
but sadness should not cloud the day.
Your life must end, but it has been long
and filled with so many friends along the way
who have already sung their song.
I like to think that you will soon be drinking tea
with many of them, Japanese style
- and how you will admire the waiters!
You were kind to me, and read my words
for which I am so grateful. Better still
you said you liked them, and wrote as much
to those that gave you your first start
for which I'm truly humbled.
But then, you are a gentleman, and a nearly-knight
though a sword, in truth, wouldn't suit you quite
for it would clash with your convictions.
The conversations over tea
would be well worth overhearing.
Such a literary gathering it will be
and a library's worth of worthies.
Besides, so many shelves across the world
will keep your memory fresh
for you chose for your profession
one in which death is only the beginning.
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