Gattaca Insights + Questions By: Cindy Forni

1) What stood out to me in the movie Gattaca is how the writers of the movie explore a world of genetically mortified people. Today we are doing that exact same thing, not to the same degree but it is still exists. Now these days if you have the money you can walk into a sperm bank and pay for whatever you think the best child will be for you. You can chose what type of baby you would like from eye color to I.Q, from height to skin color, its all there for the picking’s
2) The 2nd subject of found insightful is how, the character playing the part of Umma Thurman (Irene), even in a powerful position there is still a gender difference. She is still beneath the men in her organization.

In terms of Ideology, Hegemony and power, and how it invades peoples lives in the film is very clear. I see it as a constant struggle to be better than the next person. Throughout the film, survival of the fittest is just as clear. An example would be how at the end of the movie the brothers compete against each other, in a swimming competition.
The two frames I chose for the movie and how they apply in the film, is Frame 1: Gender Differences at work by how the Umma Thurman and the fake Jerome engage

with each other throughout the movie. How Umma Thurman (Irene) is constantly portrayed as weaker even though she is in a position of power in the organization she belongs to.
The 2nd Frame I chose is Gender Identity as Organizational Performance. I chose this frame because I believe that this frame works in conjunction with Frame 1. From the micro practices throughout the film and the emotion of labor, to how the main characters refer to each other from moment to moment. There is a significant level of class relationships.
A true and funny experience I have had is, I am an Emergency Medical Technician and the guys that I work with assume I cannot park the Ambulance. It’s the running joke even though it’s obvious that I can or else I wouldn’t have a license. So they back me out of the E.R and so do the security guards and the police officers and anyone else who’s in the E.R parking lot at the time, its funny but so embarrassing. I chose this story because I do work in a very Masculine field where the assumptions are that women are more nurturing so they give us the old patients, women, and children to take care of on a call to and emergency. The Guys like doing the dirty work, they’ll always check the ambulance out first and gas it up if need be and they take the emergency calls that are very aggressive from gun shot wounds to car accidents. Although I don’t mind it the gender differences clearly exist and how it affects ones performance at work.