Unclear and Present Danger - Gattaca (feat. Nicole Hemmer)

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle is joined by Nicole Hemmer, a professor of history at Vanderbilt University and co-host of the This Day in History podcast, to discuss the 1997 dystopian science-fiction film Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol and starring Ethan Hawke, Jude Law and Uma Thurman.In Gattaca, Hawke plays Vincent Freeman, a natural-born human being in a world of people genetically-engineered for perfection. Freeman dreams of space travel but is barred from it because of a genetic defect — a heart condition. To circumvent the system, he assumes the identity of Jerome Morrow, a genetically superior but disabled man, using Jerome's blood and urine samples to pass as a “valid” for Gattaca, the elite space program. As Vincent gets closer to his mission launch, a murder investigation threatens to expose his deception, forcing him to navigate suspicion while proving that determination can triumph over genetic destiny.You can find Gattaca to rent on Apple TV and Amazon.Episodes come out every two weeks, so see us then when we discuss The X-Files Movie.Sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/unclearpod. We do two episodes every month on the political and military thrillers of the Cold War as well as a weekly show on politics.

In the not too distant future, our DNA will determine everything about us. A minute drop of blood, saliva, or a single hair determines where you can work, who you should marry, what you're capable of achieving in a society where success is determined by science divided by the standards of perfection one man's only chance how do you expect to pull this off i don't know exactly is to hide his own identity this is the last day that you're going to be you and i'm going to be me by borrowing someone else's congratulations what about the interview that was it do you think you'd be doing what you're doing if it wasn't for who you are what you are i have a feeling might be there on the force pre-term

It's playing somebody else's hand. We've got my picture plastered up all over the place. You'll recognize me. They won't recognize... They'll recognize me! I don't recognize you. They won't believe that one of their elite could have succored them all this time. They are going to find me.

But in a place where any cell from any part of your body can betray you, how do you hide? When we all shed 500 million cells a day... to Gattaca. Hello and welcome to Uncleared and Present Danger, the podcast about the political, military thrillers in the 1990s, and what they say about the politics of that decade.

My name is Jamal Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. Our normal co-host, regular co-host, John Gans, is on vacation at an undisclosed location. I mean, I know where he is, but I'm not going to blow up his spot. Not like you could reach him if you knew where he was. He's in a remote place,

but he's not here. undisclosed location for John. And so this week we have a very special guest. I'd like to introduce Nicole Hemmer, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University. She studies conservatism. And is the author of Partisans, The Conservative Revolutionaries, who remade American politics in 1990s. I also want to shout out her previous book, Messengers of the Right, conservative media, and the transformation of American politics. Her whole thing is extremely relevant to this podcast. And so I thought it would be fun to have her as a guest for our film. Hello. Nicole.

Hello, Jamel. And feel free to call me, Nikki, from here on out. Yes. Yes, I'm your abnormal co-host this week, I guess. Your normal one is in a bunker somewhere. Yeah, in a bunker somewhere, hidden out like Dick Cheney. Ha! Yeah, normal was the wrong word.

I just, I couldn't think of a better word. Typical, I don't know. Usual, usual. There you go. Well, usual and unusual. Yeah, so we'll figure something out. On this week's episode of the podcast, we are covering a movie that we kind of skip. We didn't do, but is totally relevant to the podcast.

I'm surprised I didn't add it to the list. The funny thing about doing this is years ago, I made this massive list of every movie that we could possibly cover. And yet, I still, like, there's still stuff that I missed. And this is one of those films. We're covering Gattaca, 1997 film, directed by Andrew Nicol. New Zealand direct New Zealand based director he's a Kiwi and has made a bunch of movies. Some of them good. Most of them not, to be frank.

He wrote and co-produced the Truman Show, which I did not know. But his other films, Gallica was his first feature. And he also did Simone, which is a movie. Do I, what is this movie? Oh, I remember this. This is the movie about the virtual actress starring Al Pacino and Catherine Keeter. This movie is terrible. So he directed Simone, Lord of War with Nicholas Cage, which is actually fine.

In Time, which is a movie I like but is bad. It's another future, another science fiction movie that plays Amanda Seafried and Justin Timberlake. And I think was inspired by this. by Gattaca. It's kind of rift in a way. I was reading about this earlier. Yeah, it's very much a riff on Gat. It's sort of like, what if I did Gattaca again, except stupider?

And some other, he's done other movies as well. Apparently there's a Lord of War sequel coming out, Lords of War, with Nick Cage again. Nick Cage will do any movie. It's true. I don't want to disparage this guy too much. He is the director and I am not. But he has like a mixture of him. And I do think that Gattaca is probably the best film he has.

Oh, produced by Danny DeVito. That's funny. He was in twins, which has a similar premise if you think about it. Yeah. Gattaca stars Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Alan Arkin, Jude Law, Lauren Dean, and Ernest Borgnine, which I think it's very funny that Ernest Borgnine's in this movie. A very quick plot synopsis. Let me pull it up.

In a near future society, genetic engineering has become the norm, creating a strict social hierarchy between the genetically modified valids and the naturally conceived invalids or invalids. Vincent Freeman is an invalid born with a predisposition to health problems and a life expectancy of just 30 years, but he dreams of becoming an astronaut, a career reserve for valids at the company Gattaca. To pursue his dream, Vincent purchases the identity of Jerome Morrow, genetically superior but paralyzed former swimmer. who gave up on life after a suicide attempt left him disabled, following a car accident. Using Jerome's blood, urine, and hair samples to fake his genetic profile, Vincent assumes Jerome's identity and rises to the ranks of Gattaca, eventually earning a spot on a mission to Titan, one of Saturn's moons. When Gattaca's mission director is murdered shortly before Vincent's launch, an investigationist trigger that puts his identity at risk, especially since one of the investigating detectives is his own brother, Anton. Vincent begins a relationship with a colleague Irene Cassini, who also has her own genetic imperfections. As the investigation closes in, Vincent must maintain his deception

while confronting questions of his identity, his determination to surpass his potential, and what truly defines human beings. This, I mean, this is not a plotty movie. It's actually very simple, straightforward plot. Not a lot happens. This is much more of a story and character-driven film about, really about Jerome, Jerome Vincent, Jerome, Jerome, and Irene and sort of them negotiating this very strange world in which they live. And so we're not going to be talking a ton about plot on this episode. We're really going to be talking way more about theme and character because, boy, is this movie filled with them. Was there a tagline for this? There is no gene for the human spirit.

There you go. That's a good tagline. A lot of taglines for a lot of movies are bad and tell you nothing about the film. This is a good tagline. It's actually a pretty good summation of the film. Yeah, yeah. It tells you what the movie is going to be about. It doesn't really spoil anything for you.

Okay. This movie did not do well at the box office. It cost $36 million to make. It brought in $12.5 million. That, that, my friends, is Habba. It was critically well received, right? Like, it got very good reviews. Cisco and Ebert loved it.

It was nominated for a bunch of awards with art, art direction and screenwriting. Like, it was a very well-regarded movie. And for stars, Hawk and Uma Thurman, it, like, it was a big boost for them. But in terms of how well it did, it did very poorly. My hunch is because it's just like if you're going, if you're a moviegoer in 1997 and you're looking at the newspaper and you're like, what am I going to see?

And it's like Gattaca. I don't know what that's about. And it's like Titanic. I'll go see Titanic. I think that's right. And I mean, the 90s are big blockbuster era with a lot of action stars. And this is a thinky movie. Yes.

I think that if this movie came out to. day, it would do much better. Oh, absolutely. Because the dystopia, the themes that it's playing around with, like today, I think this one would be a banger. But just the wrong, wrong season for it. I think audiences would love this movie today. I think also critics would lose their minds over this movie today.

It's sort of, it's like a B plus 90s science fiction picture, but it'd be like an A double plus 26 science fiction movie, science fiction movie. Because it has like a vision. It has like a take. And there aren't a lot of movies with just like a take these days. A take. And you can already imagine like the dozens, if not hundreds of think pieces that it would spawn. And so even if it's not a perfect movie, it like would absolutely, it would be something

that everyone talks about. Actually, it's kind of like the book yesteryear where the premise is so compelling and it touches on things that people are so interested in thinking and talking about that it doesn't matter whether it lands the plane or not, that it is going to be something that people want to consume and critique. I know, you know, I know, I know that this book exists. I have no idea what this book is. Oh, okay. Well, I will give you the quick synopsis of the book yesterday year, which is that it is a trad wife influencer who wakes up one day in 1855. That's a, that's like a wonderful premise for a book. Yeah. And it hooks you right away, right? So you know

you're going to get like trad wife influencers, you know that you're going to get like this kind of bewildered displacement and the stories are woven together. And it's all anyone's talking about right now in the book talk space. All right. Sorry, I just pulled up the Wikipedia page and now I might actually read this book. I would actually highly recommend it. And it also pairs really well with Octavia Butler also has a book that's about a black woman who wakes up in 1855. Obviously, very different experiences. Yes. But let's call them in conversation with one another.

All right. Real quick, I just don't note this. Gataka was released both in English and Esperanto or in 90s choice. Okay. Gataka was released on October 24th, 1997. So to check up in your Times before that day, the front page. the two the three big headlines are whitman plays down polls that show her in a tight race this is christine todd whitman running for re-election as governor of new jersey this was this is such a throwback of like

american politics so i'll just read the first paragraph here expressing cop cautious optimism about her re-election bid governor christine todd whitman today played down recent polls showing her lock into close race with her Democratic opponent, but she acknowledged that voters were sending her a strong message to address their concerns of her property taxes and auto insurance. Leading concerns of the day. Leading concerns. I mean, it's both sort of like Christine Todd Whitman, kind of like paradigmatic, modern, moderate Republican.

You know, today would be unambiguously a Democrat. Very much so, yeah. But at the time, it's like, yeah, there's like, there are still moderate Republicans. and they're not like moderate in affect. Like they're actually politically moderate and are in the Republican Party. You know, the fact that the gubernatorial election concerns over property taxes on auto insurance, this was the thing in Virginia around this time as well with Governor Gilmore, I think may have been, was he running for his first phrase?

Well, around this time, Jim Gilmore is running for governor on a pledge to end the car tax, which didn't happen. still pay a cartbacks. But just like an election being fought in the media over something that isn't just sort of like culture war insanity, but like an actual thing like that affects people. Like kind of technical fiscal policy. Right, right. There was still craziness around taxes in that era and the tax revolts in California.

But it's just different, right? Like there's nothing about trans people anywhere in this article. She won this election and then she went on to serve until 2001 when she was picked for George W. Bush's cabinet to serve as the ninth administrator of the EPA, which she held from 2001 and 2003. So. And she goes wrong in that role. Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, Bush didn't have a lot of cabinet turnover. A lot of people hung around for a while. So next headline. House approves tax-free savings for school costs.

Victory for Republicans, Democrats, the idea helps the wealthy and takes money from public education. Moving on a Republican showcase proposal, the House today approved tax-free savings accounts at supporters. They will get parents more control over their child's children's education to help them pay for private school tuition, tutoring, and home computers. What is this bill? I think it is part of those, like, let's give everyone savings accounts for everything, like health savings accounts, school savings accounts, and the government will give you a tax break on them, and that will replace, like, the Department of Education.

I wonder if this actually went anywhere. But, yeah, I mean, you know, people who have children will know 529 accounts, just basically, maybe this is the bill that created them, although I feel like 529 accounts predated this. But, yeah, tax advantage savings accounts, which really only matter if you have money to put into a tax advantage savings account. And if you do not, then it's like, who cares? So, I mean, Democrats are right here. This is a policy that helps people with money not pay taxes on their money.

Right. People with money don't pay taxes on their money. But we're also in that kind of neoliberal moment where Democrats are also like, how can we futz around with the tax code in order to give people money instead of just giving people money? Everyone wants to, it's like, it's like everyone wants to be a consumer and everyone wants to like, you know, be, manage their own personal hedge fund. So let's like, let's do what we can to help people do that rather than, as you say,

just like direct public provisioning. Americans famously economically literate. So this is, this is a great idea to just put everyone in charge of their own savings. You know, this is a good idea for a column, actually, because there's, you know, there's Social Security financing problems people are really worried about. And there's going to be a push to do some kind of privatization. But it's like worth remembering that, yeah, Americans are actually quite famously bad at financial management. Why were people constantly moving west to new homesteads? Because they ran out of money and needed cheap land.

Cheap land and to get away from their debtors. Right. Harder to do these days. Okay. This is very much a Gans thing. I don't know a ton about this, but he would. A plunge in Hong Kong shakes markets. Sell off follows an attack on currency. A plunge in the Hong Kong stock market touched off by an attack on local currency shook financial markets from the world yesterday. Stocks lost 10.4% of their value in Hong Kong, causing a frantic sell-off first in Japan,

then on Europe's stock exchanges when they open for business. hours later, Wall Street was engulfed as well. I think this is the beginning of the Asian Tigers crisis. I think you're right. I also cannot step into Gans' shoes on this, but it has a lot to do with like the rocky shoals of the financialization of everything and particularly the crisis in Asia that is going to engulf, I think, the next couple of years economically, not just in Asia, but across the world.

The last thing I want to note on this front page is on the bottom left here. A sushi bar brings Hollywood to its knees here on the eastern edge of the Pacific Rim, where power is mystic and nothing is quite so attractive as whatever is just out of reach. A peculiar phenomenon thrives, a restaurant in which even Hollywood's high and mighty must take whatever they are given, including stern lectures from the chef. And this is just about what appears to be in Omikaze that's opened up. It is an unlikely temple sandwich in the storefront and a modest mini mall in Studio City just down Ventura Boulevard from the sound stages of Universal, Winter Brothers, Disney, and NBC. But at sushi nozawa, the lines spilled into the lot full of luxury cars and a handful of seats at the wood grain for Mika bar are almost always taking my people willing to spend upwards of $50 each to be humbled.

$50 whole dollars. $50 whole dollars for an omacaze. This is super interesting because the 1990s is when I was first introduced to sushi. So I grew up in rural Indiana, which is not a place where you would encounter avocado, much less sushi. And in the 1990s, Toyota opened a plant in the fields around the town that I grew up. And that brought in so many Japanese business people that they started opening Japanese markets and Japanese restaurants. And so all of a sudden you have all of these like meat. potatoes Midwesterners who are sort of having to deal with the reality of raw seafood as a delicacy

year. And a lot of people took to it. That's so fun. There's a similar thing. If you go down outside Montgomery, Alabama, there are, and also in Georgia, there are lots of Hyundai and Kia plants. And you can find like really good Korean food in those areas because of just all the Korean businessmen and workers who are passing through. I was just looking up real quick on me. inflation calculator, what 50 bucks in the 97 would be today, it'd be $104. That's no money. I'm not going to say how much money I have spent in omacaze, but it's more than $100. Yes.

Yes. I think that what's different here, maybe like what we're seeing develop, is fine dining becoming more of a mass consumption commodity. Like, it's something that I think in the 1990s, I just don't know how many people were actually exposed to, like, high-end fine dining or something like the sushi bar. Whereas now, it is that kind of, like, dining experience is something that many, many, many more people both indulgent, but then also share online. I mean, not to say that, right, like, everything is unambiguously. good today. That's not the case. But it is true that sort of Americans' exposure to all to both fine dining, but just all kinds of food is dramatically broader than it was in the 1990s,

which the 90s people were like, oh, wow, sushi. That's like, you know, look at us. We live in the 90s kind of deal. But it was kind of a niche thing. If you did not live in a major metropolitan area, in really a major metropolitan area on the coast, the odds that you'd be able to find sushi, or Thai food or anything that wasn't either like an American, new American restaurant or maybe a Mexican restaurant or an Italian place. That's kind of your, that's like, that's where you're going. Sort of like nice date. Nice date steakhouse, right?

Like family meal, Italian place or chain of some sort. It just wasn't the case. Whereas today, you know, you can be, you can be in the middle of. of nowhere and get like sushi at your grocery store. And it's like, it's not going to be bad. It's not going to be sort of the best thing to read, but it'll be like a perfectly fine tuna roll. A perfectly fine tuna roll and a perfectly fine introduction.

I think that's what stands out most in my memory is, you know, I moved to New York after growing up in Indiana. And my mom would come out and visit me. And I just having been introduced to all of these new cuisines could then introduce. her to all of these new cuisines. And so you see somebody being introduced for the first time to Ethiopian food or to Korean food. And it's really remarkable. When I was living in Sydney, I took my mom to her first degustation menu, like a first big tasting menu. And it's just one of those things that she had never experienced in her entire life because she lived her whole life

in Indiana. And until the late 90s and 2000s, she was eating the same kinds of food. And she was eating the same kinds of but with more sort of like chemistry added, that her mom would have eaten. Yeah. And now that's changed dramatically. Right. Now you can go to Indianapolis and have like an expensive tasting menu meal. Easily. Very easily.

Yeah. Yeah. This is the thing I find like cultural memories move quickly and the extent to which like people just like, you know, you, there's always food discourse. Like I don't want to have to eat leftovers every day. It's like 25 years ago, 30 years ago, right? You know? Do you remember when people used to be able to one salary, raise a family and go out to eat?

That didn't happen, you know? We went out to a restaurant like maybe once a month and it was the most special thing. We never had fast food and things like that. And that's like, I'm not that old, Jamal. Like, it's, we're about the same A. It's the same deal for me. Like, I, we maybe. We maybe went out to eat, yeah, once a month.

It would be at like a buffet, like a golden corral or an old-country buffet, right? So, like, so first of all, the kids didn't, you didn't have waste any money trying to, you know, satisfy what your kids wanted to eat. And they could, they might eat a salad. So they could get a best bowl of them. And it was like, yeah, that was once a month. Maybe after like a soccer game, you go to McDonald's as like a treat. And like we weren't, we weren't like a poor family. We're like perfectly average middle class family.

And that was like, that was standard. Nowadays, with my like spoiled ass kids, it's sort of like, you know, what are we going to, you know, my son, when are we going to go get sushi, you know? Amazing. I mean, amazing that he has this lovely broad palate and probably less so for your food budget. I do, by the way, love that we have spent probably three times as much time talking about the sushi bar than the Asian financial crisis. Well, you know. sweet spot. Okay, Gallica.

Nikki, you recommended that we do this movie. So tell me why you wanted to pick Gallica. I assume you've seen it before. Talk to me about your experience of Galica. So I had actually not seen it before, which is part of the reason that I wanted to watch it. Because I love sci-fi. I love dystopia. And I also, I think these conversations around genetic determinism and gene splicing and

those kinds of things are really, really interesting. They were really interesting in the 90s. I think they have evolved in really interesting ways with epigenetic knowledge today. So it's just, it's a topic that I'm super interested in. And then I had like, Ethan Hawk in it. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to watch Ethan Hawken, Uma Therman on screen. That's going to be amazing. So I actually went into it earlier this week, pretty blind.

Like, I knew the premise of the movie, but I didn't really know what was going to happen. And I think that's why it actually took me a while to fully wrap my head around it because I wasn't expecting the kind of retrofuturism, which is it's got this like 1950s, 1960s feel to it. And I think that I also wasn't expecting. You know, one of the big plot points is that Ethan Hawke wants to go to space. Like he dreams of the stars. But for a sci-fi movie, this is not a movie that cares about space at all.

No, not at all. And so it took me a while to sort of figure, okay, it's a sci-fi movie. It's kind of like a noir murder mystery movie. And it's kind of a romance, although I wouldn't say that the romance is like the most compelling part of the movie. Like the part of the movie that's really fascinating and is the reason that I wanted to watch it is how do you envision a society in which genetic manipulation is the sort of structure for society? and the structure for discrimination, the structure for accomplishment, the structure for assessing whether somebody is worthy or unworthy, that kind of stuff.

I mean, we see it now in sci-fi all the time. I read a ton of dystopian sci-fi novels and fantasy novels. And so this got at those themes. And I think when it was focused on those, like, details of what life might look like in a genetically modified future. I think those are the times when I was most just like captivated by it. Yeah. This isn't like this isn't a movie with a ton of what I think the case might call lore. Like it kind of, it doesn't explain a ton. It tells you in terms of it gives you a voiceover with the Ethan Clark character. It's kind of give you a broad overview of what the society is.

It's a society where it's not clear if most children are conceived this way. But sort of if you want your kid to have any chance. It's sort of a successful life. Your kids are genetically engineered. Enough people are genetically engineered and the powerful people are that this becomes sort of like the basis, as you say, for kind of structuring the entire society, how far you'll go is shaped by basically the amount your parents presumably could pay to have you perfectly engineered. And people who are not engineered are kind of a subordinate caste. They're really only in, you know, they do maintenance work. They're janitors. So Ethan Hawks care. is a janitor first before he kind of banishes and reemerges as someone pretending to be

a highly genetically manipulated individual. You get glimpses, you know, when the detectives show up and they can kind of like, you know, without a warrant, kind of check people's genetic material, you know, do a lot of unreasonable searches and seizures. Yes. Fourth Amendment is not strong in the near future. No. You get a sense that this is sort of, this might be almost like a totalitarian kind of society where control is established by like this strict genetic monitoring across society. And yeah. So like, but everything else comes to you just from sort of like you have to, you have to infer a lot from just how people relate to each other, how people talk to each other, how people move through the world. We get these scenes when Ethan Hawke, when Vincent,

Vincent Jerome is kind of dating Irene. They're like they're going to things together and they go to these. It's very fancy piano recital. And first of all, the pianist has 12 fingers. And so you're like, oh, do people get genetically modified to do for like, for these reasons for art, right? But then also it's clear that this is like, this is for the upper class,

this is what you do. This is like what entertainment is. And you get glimpses of like basically sort of a parking lot where like, you know, invalids are like doing fights. Like I mean, this is this this will reveal a little bit about how the stuff I consumed when I was a teenager,

but you get basically like bum fights. Yep. That's what you were watching is a teenager bumfights. Well, you know, you know, I grew up in the suburbs. And without any monitored internet. So that's like clear.

It's like that's entertainment for the proles, right? Sort of like and I'll say this, I mean, this this conceit, it's a very, although genetic engineering is very late 20th century concern. I think this is around the time of the first clone sheep dolly. Around the time that you just year before. This is when we've sequenced the human genome, like the idea that you might be able to sort of genetically manipulate. a fetus to eliminate all kinds of things, just like very much in the public, public culture. So like that concede is very to the time. But the, the kind of structure of sort of like upper class, lower class, strict divisions,

represented both in terms of sort of like language and fashion and all these things. That feels very HG wells. It sort of, it almost feels sort of like, you know, you're taking kind of the, the concede of the time machine and then just sort of like change you just going around a little bit and you have this. But it's a very 19th century feeling kind of like science fiction world in a lot of ways. I would say that the other scene that because again, like there isn't a lot of lore. You don't, you're not given a lot of details on how people are navigating their daily lives. But they have these places where you can check DNA. Like if you have somebody's like eyelash or saliva or something, you can check their DNA. And you just get this very

quick glimpse of a woman getting her. lips swabbed so that she can check the DNA profile of the guy that she just kissed to see if she should go out with him again. And it turns out he's a 9.3. So she's definitely very excited about this. But that idea that like it's almost nowadays, I think we talk about it more like a social credit score. I think that's the dystopian version of it. But it's that same conceit, right? That there's this kind of rank ordering that happens that is totalitarian in some ways. I mean, you're thinking of H.G. Wells. I think that I'm thinking of like, recent things like hunger games, right, that you have this deeply stratified society in which

your birth determines what you do in life, how high you can rise in life, who you're going to be able to partner with, and what your future possibilities are. And I think it's an idea that people are pretty obsessed with today. And I think that's not just because of like creeping authoritarianism, but I do think that there are still these real anxieties over what we can scientifically do. Like, right? Like, it's telling that this is, we were talking about the 1990s culture that it's part of, like, the human genome project. It's also just a couple of years after Jurassic Park, which I think is asking a lot of the same questions in a way.

Right, right, right. In Jurassic Park, I mean, quite famously in that movie, it wasn't asked, like, are these dinosaurs dangerous or whatever? Can they reproduce? Like, no, no, no, we remove that from them. We genetically modify them through that, that's not possible. And then it is possible. They kind of, they kind of upward their potential, which is very much the theme of this movie. Are people limited by the raw materials?

Can they go beyond their potential? You know, I don't think you can talk about this movie. This movie is basically sort of like, what if you had eugenics dystopia? And you could ask that question as well. What if you had a eugenics, utopia? Because like eugenics as like a ideological moment. movement at the beginning of the 20th century was utopian. It was this sort of we can select for the perfect human being. We can create a society of perfect human beings. The flip set of that

is that like we can we can remove those who do not have the proper genetic potential in order to do this as well. And this movie I have no idea if the writers were like you know reading early 20th century, whatever. But like, this very much is plugged in to a very, this, this, this, this, this, very real period in American history where American elites were kind of obsessed with this. They were obsessed with the notion that one could, through science, create a society of superior people, superior breeding. And that's what the eugenics movement was. And this takes a dystopian lens to it, but I think if you showed this movie, to like Elon Musk, he might be like, yeah, that's what I want society to be like.

Yeah, he would miss the point. Yeah, he would miss him very much. But this is, this is, this can work as a utopian vision of society for, I think a lot of people, you know, an argument I've made is that eugenics was discredited because of, the Second World War, that's that's a common observation. But I don't think it ever like went away. Like it was always just sort of like nothing you talk about in polite society, but the basic idea that some people are of higher genetic stock and it's important to maintain that stock. And then some people are of lower genetic stock in that your fate in life is basically just a

function of this. That idea, I think, is still in like common circulation amongst America. elites. Donald Trump talks about all the time. All the time. He talks about his genes. I don't think we've had a president, probably maybe Teddy Roosevelt, but I don't think we've had a president talk quite so much about his bloodline in genetic terms though, right? Like he's not a blood and soil kind of guy. He's like a genes and soil kind of guy. And that's the modern turn after the 1990s. I think that's right that eugenics has always been or begins as this deeply utopian idea. And it always has the problem of what you do with the people who don't fit that vision. And then you get something like the Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell, which says,

we can just sterilize them. Like three generations of idiots is enough. And it obviously feeds into racism, into ableism, and all of these different things. And it is, a version of it is discredited by the Holocaust. And, uh, a version of it is discredited by the Holocaust. And, uh, A version of it, I think, lives on. But it's, I mean, it's the, that, that question that then lurks after the 1940s, which is, what if we go too far? I think that remains a live question. And I think that's why you got Jurassic Park and Gattaca and all of these movies, because people are like, but we know that there's a dark side to this. And so how if we pursue these things, do we ward that off? Two, two thoughts. The first.

is that we in previous movies we've kind of observed the changing relationship of Americans to science in the previous episode we covered Armageddon and that's a movie as stupid as it is where like the scientists are not the villains but they're not like they're not heroes right like the heroes of that movie are you know blue collar roughnecks and the scientists are seen to be naive are seen it to be maybe even counterproductive and are an obstacle to the goal, which is saving the world. And that kind of skepticism of science is everywhere. And I think this movie, not in such a crude way, like Michael Bayway, but it's all sort

of reflecting a kind of ambivalence about scientific progress, you know, directly related to this, you know, what if the rich could make their children better than the rest of us. So that's the first observation. The second one is, you know, I was watching this and I did think about looks maxing. I didn't think about sort of like today's obsession with kind of like hyper optimization. That guy was saying Brian John, Brian Johnson, is that right? Who is like, I'm going to optimize myself to be like the perfect human being, right? That obsession with human optimization as if your potential is tied to how optimized you are is very much like, again, it's like the utopian other side of gas.

Antica's dystopia. It's sort of, yeah, that's what you do with science and technology. You make yourself, you know, a superior, a superior human being. I mean, I don't want to fully uncork on this because I have a ton of thoughts about how, how particularly like the, the broad use of peptides in recent years has been a kind of eugenics adjacent kind of movement, because it is focus so much on that idea of optimization and maximizing your genetic potential, which is often it's understood as like, you know, the, what is it, the genes set the, load the, load the gun, and the environment pulls the trigger, that you can actually do quite a lot with that, with that genetic environment that you can maximize. But what are they maximizing for?

Right. Ryan Johnson is maximizing for longevity, which I think there are some interesting, big moral and existential questions with. But what most people are doing it for is because they want to be thinner. They want to have better hair. They want to have better jaw lines. They want to build muscle more quickly. That it is about trying to approach this culturally constructed idea of what the ideal human form looks like and what ideal human optimization looks like. And so I think that it's related to genetics, but I also think it's related to people trying to figure out how to maximize their advantage in an economic system that no longer works for them. Like, I also think that it's closely tied to the K-shaped economy and to just the, like, to gambling, right? Like,

gambling is high at the same moment that all of this looks maxing is happening at the same time, because people are like, I don't know how to, survive in this culture and this economy. Maybe if I look max, I'm going to get that little bit of a benefit of a job interview or I can go become an influencer, but I first have to like turn myself into the Uber mensch or the Uber woman inch. I mean, that's a this is a good place to look at the ways of which like you, Gattaca, we don't get really a real look at like the economic world of Gattaca. We don't really good look at the full social world. And some of the stuff you can kind of infer, especially in the economic level.

I think before we started, one thing that we both noticed is that, like, this is a very multicultural world of, uh, of, uh, superior people. And that, that feels like a very 1990s, like, end of history. We've, like, solved, we've solved racism. Like, there isn't going to be any, like, base racial prejudice. There'll be new prejudices. Like, the prejudice, the, the instinct to be prejudice to create stratified hierarchical societies won't go away, but it won't be about race. And I found that in the midst of the dystopia, the fact that we have like a multi-coucadica is quite multicultural, and there are women, right? Like women are, seem to be on a basis of equality with the men within Gattaca.

I found that really interesting. It's sort of reflection of the moment of which it's made. And as we think about our present moment and the kinds of, you know, powerful people who are obsessed with this stuff. Like for them, it very much is part of like a larger set of social hierarchies. Like it's not just that you are looks maxing. Is that like you're white and you're a man? And that's part of what makes you this better class of human being.

And all that's kind of absent from Gattaca in a way that I find really interesting. I found it super interesting as well. And I think in part because, you know, he started Ethan Hawking, his voiceover at the very beginning says, you know, we are now in a society where there is no prejudice based on skin color, but it's now based on your genetics. And so they introduced you to this, this multicultural world. It was counting the women in the scenes. And I was like, okay, they might not have speaking rules, but they're definitely women in this movie as well. And it made me wonder, like in some ways, that's a good storytelling choice, because it really does isolate the question down to

what are the consequences of this kind of genetic meddling? I did find myself probably because I'm a product of the 2020s, of wanting to think about what this movie might look like if those existing prejudices were poured into the story because people wouldn't just be selecting for height and POV Max, like different, different sort of physical characteristics like that, but they would be opting for weight, skin color, eye color,

all of those things that they understand will give maximal advantage to their child. But that means that probably the genetic choices that are being made are going to be deeply racialized and have these deep cultural sort of impacts. And it also made me think about like, I would never call the 90s a utopia. And of course, this is just a film. It wasn't a post-racial society. It obviously wasn't a post-sexism society. But it just, it was a society, and they don't tackle this either.

It was a society that was pretty anti-gay and was like trying to figure out like where gay people fit in. But there were also these conversations, well, well, if sexuality is genetic, you could just opt out of having a gay child. I think that would have been the conversation in the 1990s. I think that there's some interesting. moral questions that it's able to sidestep because it's bought into the 90s vision of multiculturalism. Right, right, right. No one's, there's, it's almost really important to be careful about this because it's not, it is not the case that the 90s, or post-racial moment.

But there was like this, I feel like maybe elite cultural consensus that the path we were on was toward a post-racial society. Maybe that's the way to put it, right? Like the assumption was that in the future, race wouldn't be that big of a deal anymore, at least among cultural elites. You see this kind of in politics, too. This is not the 90s, but I consider it basically the 90s. It's 100-day O'Connor's opinion in the affirmative action case in 2002, where she's like, you know, 20 more years. And we'll be, we won't need to do this stuff anymore.

2002, 2003, around that time. The fact that in the next Republican president self-consciously stacked his cabinet with black American, Latino Americans, Asian-American. It's like this is this is a multiracial country. This is a multiracial Republican Party. So all of that is like in the background of this movie. And again, I'd love to talk to the writers because it's like, was it a conscious choice to just sort of say we're focusing on the genetic stuff or not thinking about race or gender

Or was it kind of the background radiation? Like, yeah, well, of course in the future, no one's going to care about this anymore. So you could be one of the valids and also be like dark skin black man. You could also be an Asian woman. You could also be, you know, ethnically ambiguous. And what matters is right, like these qualities that are somewhat physically presenting, you know, like how muscular you are, how athletic you are, your eye color, all that stuff. but are largely seen to be like things you can't see. That's what they have to test, right?

You know, your propensities for any kinds of behavior, any addictions, any diseases, that kind of thing. But like if I were writing this kind of genetic dystopia, it would be tied up in race and gender. Like it just would be the case in this society that if you had widespread use of genetic alteration, It would be like, yeah, look into my, look into my genetic history and see if any of my ancestors were African descent and then delete that from my, from my embryo, right? Right. And even just selecting for dark skin versus light skin, like if it's two black parents, and they're trying to think, like, how can we optimize the outcomes for our child, then there are choices that you would make. Right.

And I don't know what I'm going with this. It's just interesting to think about this movie as dystopia as also reflecting some of the utopian aspirations of the moment in which it's made. That again, yeah, maybe we'll all hate each other because of our genetic markers. But like, at least there won't be skin color discrimination. And it is kind of, it is like bleak to think that like, yeah, even in a future where humanity is going to tighten. Yeah, there probably would still be in this society some form of, you know, racialized thinking that would make its way into this sort of world. Right.

Well, I mean, the man who is currently trying to build a rocket to Mars is a pretty open white supremacist, as you have written about. So, yes, it's not the future they imagine. And I actually think that's part of what's kind of fascinating about watching this movie is that I think in the 1990, there was plenty of counter examples for the direction in which society was heading, but broadly, culturally, where the conversation was, you were seeing, you know, there were nine women in the Senate. Like, this was enormous progress. That there was this sense that we are on a glide path now.

Like, things aren't better yet, but they're going to get better. And they're inevitably moving in that direction. And to see how many steps back we've taken since then is dispiriting in a lot of ways. And I just want to say real quick, I think the Musk point is important that like futurism isn't doesn't necessarily have to come like social progress. That for Musk, a human future, a progress is in fact one in which, you know, white racial hierarchies are reestablished and strengthened, one in which gender hierarchies are reestablished and strengthened. Have you read Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff's book, Muskism yet? I haven't read it yet, but I've heard Quinn talk about it. It's quite good.

And they really zero in on this. It's sort of like part of Musk's future vision is, you know, I mean, for Musk almost, it's like the hierarchies are necessary to create the kind of stable society that would enable you to go to Mars. And Musk says this explicitly, you know, we have to save Western civilization in order to, you know, do this. progress and all these things is tied up in whiteness, is tied up in this kind of rigid hierarchy. And he is a reminder, right, that like futurism does not, it's almost like ideologically neutral.

You can have, there are many, there are many futurisms, many futures. And some of them are like Star Trek, you know, utopian, multiracial space communism. No one wants money anymore. No one needs it. Some of them are like Gattaca. And then some of them are even more bleak than what is on offer in Gattaca. Yeah. And I think, you know, with Musk and maybe this also ties into some of the themes in Gattaca, the reason that his, he presents his vision as meritocratic. Like in order to get the best possible scientific outcomes, the best possible outcomes for anything, you have to have the best people at the top.

And his set of beliefs are that the very best people are white and that they are men. And so that sort of hierarchical order is absolutely necessary. But then when he talks about it, he's a bad example because he's so explicitly white supremacist. But it calls attention to, I think, the ways in which meritocracy, which was very much a watchword of the 1990s as well, that multiculturalism and meritocracy could go hand in hand. It was just like a very different vision of what meritocratic success could look like. And now you have a much more hardened racial determinist vision of that. But they all go under the same word of meritocracy.

And so it creates room for a ton of confusion or it makes it easier to sort of whitewash Musk's worldview because you're like, well, this isn't about those things. This is about pure science. And it's that pure science thing that gets people in trouble. We should be wrapping up soon. So any last thoughts on Gattaca? First, I mean, would you recommend it? Would you recommend people check it out?

I absolutely would. I, you know, I was, my first kind of instinct, my first kind of response to it was like, I wanted so much, I wanted this movie to be doing more than it's doing. But I felt that way because I found it so thought-provoking. Like the thing that I wanted after I finished watching that movie was to have somebody right next to me who I to be like, okay, we need to talk about this movie, which I think is a really good sign, right? Like, it has enough provocative ideas in it. And it's doing enough interesting things through its storytelling that I think it is absolutely well worth watching.

I think everyone should go watch it. And then they should hit me up and talk to me about it. I would also strongly recommend it. It is, among other things, it's just like it's a great looking movie. I mean, I feel like this is a low bar these days. But like movies look terrible these days. I was checking you see if my child's in here before I say this. Movies look like shit these days.

And, you know, there's a trailer last week for, or the week before we were recording this, for the new Avengers movie. And I was like, oh, this was all shot on soundstages with green screens. And you can tell. Like, the set is all brown. And it's just like brown and like energy. And so to see a movie that these are all real sets. It's all a very specific visual language that they're using. As you noted, this kind of retrofuturism.

With actors who are giving great performances, Hawk, Thurman, Jude Law is terrific in this. It's just like it's a real pleasure to watch. And it really grabs you. I've seen this before a couple times. So I was not expecting, I was expecting for this to be a watch where I could take notes and kind of like not have to pay a ton of attention. but I 100% was like gripped as like 10 minutes in.

I'm like, oh, yeah, this movie is great. This movie rules. So I would also very much recommend people check out Gattaca. You can find it to watch on Apple TV and Amazon Prime. I watched a 4K copy that I own and I'm a little embarrassed to say that I didn't realize I owned it. I was like looking at my shelf. It's like, do I have this?

And I do. Which is just a testament to how I kind of just buy Blu-rays and never watch them. But if you have a 4K Blue Ray player, that transfer looks terrific. So I would recommend that as well. It is a really visually beautiful movie. And you can tell that it's not much CGI in a way that actually makes it more charming and draws you into it more. I mean, even there's the only real kind of anything computer would be the rocket launches. And even those are very clearly.

What's what I'm making for? I think it's just like a puppet or something. It doesn't look like it's animated with a computer. If it is, it's sort of like a combination of computers and practical effects. Yeah, the rocket launch was exactly what I was thinking of. And it is part of the artistic style of it. So it takes its retrofuturism all the way to the design elements. All right.

That is our show. Thank you, as always, for watching. If you're new to the show, you can leave a rating and review over, I believe, an Apple podcast or wherever you can do it. You should do it. It helps people find the show. And the show can be found wherever podcaster found. So I don't think there's any place where the show is.

And I recently learned someone was asking me, hey, why doesn't someone keep up with like the YouTube version of this? And I was like, YouTube version of this. So I suppose someone is posting the show on YouTube. So, you know, the show is everywhere. listen to it where you want to listen to it. And that's great. If you want to reach out to us for feedback,

there's the feedback email on clear and present feedback at fastmail.com. I found this very funny. So we had the Armageddon episode. And typically after every episode, we get maybe like a half dozen emails in the email inbox. You guys had a lot of thoughts about Armageddon because we have a lot, we have a lot more than that. And I am not going to go.

go through all of the Armageddon feedback. And also, a lot of the feedback, very long emails. You guys have a lot of thoughts. It might just be because of Armageddon is like right jam smack in the middle of the kind of demographic, you know, of this podcast. So it's just like, yeah, a lot of you were nine-year-old boys in 1997 and saw this in theaters. So that makes sense. But in terms of feedback email that I'm going to read, I'm going to read this one from Tucker, Armageddon the coming Bush era. Hi, Jamel and John. I had to write in after the Armageddon episode, which are reasons. First, my dad was obsessed with this movie after it came out.

He showed it to everyone who came over to the house to the point that he had to buy a second VHS copy of the war out the first. That is crazy. Second, I thought the Bush-era mentality discussion was spot on, but I was surprised he didn't take it a bit further. Namely, the one thing the movie shows the government doing well is creating advanced military technology, the space shuttles that once put in the right hands enables America's will to become reality. Obviously, this was exactly the idea in the minds of the neocons who planned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, where America's technology would lead to swift victories. One could even might even compare the international sport of the Armageddon mission with Bush's Coalition of the Willing. All the best. I've loved the show since the start.

And P.S., I'm surprised she didn't cover 1997's Most Wanted, a movie I doubt is that good, having just a fun memory of watching it in middle school, but essentially shooter starring Keenan Ivory Wayans instead of Mark Wahlberg. At the very least, I'd love to hear the discussion against probably the kind of trashed smell with love and John would hate. That sounds about right. Just a quick comment. First, thank you, Tucker, for the email. And a quick comment on the email on the thought. Yeah, I mean, this idea that America's technology will help it achieve any objective at once is still prevalent.

I mean, we're in month four of the Iran war. And it's very clear that the going thinking of the administration was that, oh, yeah, we can, we have all the advanced technology and Iran does not. And so, you know, a couple bombs here and there. and this will be over. So it's working out well. I mean, it's the same theory in Vietnam, right? Yeah.

We have all of this superior technology. We can easily win and it never goes that way. And we never learn that it never goes that way. Yeah. I would note that I think part of the reason we never learn is because there's a real, it's like racialized. It's sort of like, you know, those brown Middle Easterners can't stand up to American, American weapons.

Yeah, it cuts too close to the bone of American superiority, white superiority, and it's just, it's not going to stick. Right. I actually, to bring Musk into it, he recently said something or quoted someone saying, he quoted the old thing, you know, sort of like at the end of the day, we have the maxim gun, which is like a 19th century colonialist. I forget exactly who said it, but about sort of like, yeah, we might be outnumbered, but that in the day, we have superior military military technology. And this is like a, this is like a trope almost. That again, continues to shape policy. Yeah.

And how very white South African of him. We're outnumbered and it's not a problem for us. Right, right. Thank you again. Thank you so much for the email, Tucker. Episodes of this podcast came out roughly every two weeks. And so we will see you in two weeks with the X-Files. movie. That's right. Originally, originally, it was going to be, I want to say, saving private Ryan.

But when I added Gautica to the list, I was like, what else in 97 did I miss? And I missed the X-Files movie. And it would be kind of like a travesty if this podcast didn't cover the X-Files movie. So next film is the X-Files movie. I don't know if I really need to spend a lot of time telling you people what the X-Files is. But I I will offer a quick, a very quick plot synopsis. Directed by Rob Bowman, Mulder and Skelly now taken off the FBI's X-Files cases, must find a way to fight the shadowy elements of the government to find out the truth about a conspiracy. That might mean the alien colonization of the Earth, movie about the deep state. And I think we'll have a lot to say about this one.

This one will be a big conversation. I'm looking at the letterbox reviews. I do think it's very funny that half the letterbox reviews are like, quote, Jillian Anderson come kiss me on my hot mouth. Yep, that seems right. I mean, I get it. You know, I understand that. It is Jillian Anderson.

So, you know, I'm not going to judge that. We're not going to talk about that on our episode. We'll talk about all the other stuff. The way no other couple will ever compare to Mulder. Kelly, this is so funny. Well, if this was the Elon Musk episode, I feel like that could be the Joe broken episode because that man loves a deep state conspiracy and loves aliens. Yes, yes.

So that's the next episode of X-Files. Nikki, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for such a good movie. Thank you. You picked it, and I'm very happy to watch it. I already plugged your two books, but would you like to plug anything else? Yes, let me also plug, since we've got some podcast listeners here, I do a three times a week history show called This Day.

And this year, we are focused on America 250 and the 50 weeks that shaped America. So come check us out over there when you're looking for a little history content. I was on this, right, talking about the second inaugural. Yes. You were indeed talking about the second inaugural. We're always trying to reel you back in. So it's a great podcast and folks should listen. All right.

So that is it for today. Sorry, I'm going to tell list your things that's happening in my life. I've just got to text that my wife and oldest left home early for lunch because he was, he needed to get the energy out. He needed to not climb the walls at her house. kids are great but you have to wear them out yes it's a constant battle right where you're constantly trying to like bring their batteries back down right it never works it we once made them like we went to made them we went to the pool and they were like swimming for like two hours

and then came home and we're still sort of just like wired and it's like I don't understand how the human body could do that the whole point of going to the pool is that they pass out in the car on the way home yeah This is why I take my dog to daycare and then he comes home and he sees all of his toys and he like, it's spun back up. No, no, no, no. I just paid some people good money to get you really nice and tired. Doesn't work. All right.

All right. We're done for Nicole Hammer. I'm Jamer. This is unclear and present danger. And we'll see you next time later.