fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1986 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1986 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 119 secrets from Secret Submission Post #284.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0- not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - take it to comments ], [ 1 2 - going to have to be a little more subtle than this ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

SPOILERS!!

In the interest of full disclosure: I'm only alive today because of organ donation (a heart/double-lung transplant in 2000), so it's a topic that hits very close to home for me. The depiction of donation/transplantation in media is of interest to me. And, sadly, it's very, VERY often portrayed in negative, "scary" ways that tend to turn people off to the idea.

Out of curiosity, I read the synopsis on Wikipedia (so, yeah, fair warning; I'm not sure how accurate little details will be). So, it's Clonus and/or The Island all over again (though at least in this version, the clones seem to know why they exist). Hmmm... yeah, it's still kinda stupid; when we get to the point where these things can be done, cloning specific organs will be way easier, and make a lot more sense, than cloning whole, sentient people you then have to find a way to control. Yeah, it makes for nice debates (Clonus actually brought up a few--who gets coned, are clones people, etc), but... just... no.

Also; aren't there certain genetic and/or congenital diseases and conditions that the clone will also have? So having a clone won't help with those. Has anyone seen a movie where that's brought up? Clonus didn't do it. But maybe The Island or this movie does?

I read the book, and their actual purpose felt kind of beyond the point? It felt like a reason to put them into a situation where they were considered non-people and eventually having to give up their organs until they died was just how it went. The awfulness wasn't really about having to give up their organs, but how they thought it was perfectly normal that this is how their lives would go. At least that's how it was for me personally- I took the book more as a metaphor for how conditioning someone to embrace their place at the bottom of the heap is a really insidious and effective way to oppress them. I've seen shades of that in my own life, and it's a really interesting thing to write about and the reason I love the book.

I am totally in favor of organ transplants, both in terms of "it's pretty cool to volunteer your innards for other people after you die anyway" and "we should work on figuring out how to grow specific organs because that's more effective anyway". I don't understand what it would be like to see forced organ donation be constantly played for horror when you owe your life to voluntary organ donation, and I'm sorry that's probably not a great position to be in. At least in this book, though, it's sort of just there to be the worst possible form of exploitation- and raising someone up just to involuntarily take parts of their body bit by bit sort of is the worst possible form of exploitation, even though voluntary organ donation is a really good thing.

I don't know about the movie, but the book made it pretty vague as to what's actually going on- the clones weren't clones of specific people they'd provide organs to, but there might have been something done to make them more compatible with anyone? Again, it's really not the point.

Yeah, I don't think it was ever supposed to portray what was going on as the most feasible way to do things. It was more about what it made you think/feel. A lot of people (and I would agree) say that it's not so much about cloning as it is about mortality. Or, as you say, exploitation. Or (and I agree with this, too) childhood, and how few people are really honest with children about life and what's really going to happen to them. (I mean... Look at the little subplot with Ms. Lucy, why she was fired, etc.)

Another interesting thing is that it didn't take place in the future. It took place in an alternate timeline where we had cloning figured out in the 50s. And I think there are a lot of ethical issues that got "sorted out" in the mid 20th century that we're only just not revisiting and realize that we might have gotten some things wrong.

Ah... Yeah, reading more about the movie and Book, I see that it's metaphorical... interesting.

Thanks. (-:

From what I remember, the only condition concerning clones was either that there couldn't be any pregnancy or STDs couldn't form somehow so sex was very casual among them. I'm not sure if that was mentioned in the movie or not.

I don't recall that part being mentioned in the movie, no. :\

STDs weren't even mentioned in the book, come to think of it! I just always assumed it wasn't an issue since they were such an isolated community.

And of course, they weren't allowed to EVER SMOKE EVER OMG. :P

I was actually kind of bothered to see Kathy portrayed as not sexually active in the movie. Like, the only person we see have sex is Ruth, and she's a bad mean girl. I get that they had to crop things out, but I really didn't like that it ended up painting Kathy as waiting for Tommy like a good girl should.

Re:STDs - in the book they were only brought up in relation to having sex with outsiders after the children left. I figured that it wouldn't matter inside the closed up community of the school, because the students were constantly subjected to all sorts of medical checks, so any STDs would be weeded out.

Yeah, that did sort of annoy me. :/ It really took a layer of depth and conflict out of her character, I think. I liked how it was shown as something she worried about, but then later in the book, another character (I'm pretty sure it was Tommy) reassured her that they were all like that and she was okay. And I think they might have made Ruth meaner in the movie, when it seemed like, in the book, she was just someone who didn't always have her priorities straight and could be unintentionally callous in ways.

...And yeah, I remember that now! I wasn't sure if it was brought up in the book or not. So thanks, Anon!

Agree about Ruth. It's been a while since I read the book but I watched the movie recently and felt that they were portraying her as "bad", when one of the things I liked about the book was that she was sympathetic, though flawed.

Oh jesus no. Really. Shut up. It's not The Island, ffs, it's a metaphorical examination on mortality and loss and how humans cope with the knowledge that they are going to die and lose everything, all the knowledge they've accumulated, all their possessions, and most significantly all the people they've loved and relationships they've had.

The books was written by Kazuro Ishiguro, who is a literary novelist and not remotely a genre writer. It's one of the most meaningful, horribly beautiful and honest books I've ever read.

It is not "about" clones. The cloning is used as a metaphor for the human condition.

THANK you! All of this. :D

Veering off topic a bit, I think a lot of things in sci-fi/spec-fic that don't make literal sense should be examined on a metaphorical level. Because that's... Well, one of the things that type of fiction is for after all. I think a book set in current reality could say "hey, you know, you're going to die TOO" outright, and it just wouldn't hit on the visceral level that Never Let Me Go seems to hit a lot of people on, because it's easy to kind of detach from such a common concept. But a story like that kind of forces you to think about it for what it is, without ever telling you that you should be thinking about it. (Which is another thing that annoyed me about the movie! That "we all complete" line was so tacked-on and PSA-like. Gah!)

(I... Am a fan of this book. I'm sure none of you could tell. XD)

[ SECRET POST #1986 ]

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