Murph's Inseparable With Endorsement At The Science

Endorsement is used everywhere from the recognition of a product to the recognition of a person. Inseparable with endorsement is the science lying behind. Since …, science has become the unbiased criteria of being. In a way, science has grown into such a fetish that we hardly remember human’s role in creating it. However, conducted and interpreted by socially biased human beings, science, far from liberating people from dominance and hierarchy through “value-free truth,” reinforces the current power structure and legitimates domination of both nature and people. On one hand, science is used as a social control by the people in power; on the other hand, every person is subject to the society, affected by and contributing to domination at the
same time. Dystopian movies, while making the subtle occurrence in real life more ostensible through exaggeration, also represent the ideas of dominance of the current society. In this essay, I will examine three modern dystopian movies in which human beings consciously or unconsciously reproduce domination of nature and of people through science.
I would like to dissect science as legitimation of domination in two aspects. Firstly, science is an expression of our social relations (Rozenberg). Scientists working for the industry overtly design their research in favor of the value of the industry. Though researchers in academia are not directly related to the social relations, the value of their works is decided according to the usefulness to the society. What’s more, because of the separation of nature and society by modern people (Latour), science has been used as tools of control without the general public realizing it. As Haraway puts it, “we have allowed the theory of the body politic to be split in such a way that natural knowledge is reincorporated covertly into techniques of social control instead of being transformed into sciences of liberation (Haraway).” We idealize science and the people in power utilize it to control. Secondly, even if scientists intend to be neutral when conducting science, the society constrains science from being “value-free”. Power, as we talk about it, usually takes the form of the law through which domination is exerted by one group over another (Foucault). However, Foucault constructed an analytics of power “that no longer takes law as a model a code;” rather, power is everywhere and involves every person. As is described in his book The History of Sexuality, “the omnipresence of power: not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another (Foucault).” In this case, domination is no longer constant but a dynamic interaction between people and events. Every person possesses preexisting ideas of domination in our society, and reinforces domination through interactions. Science, consisting of assumptions, methods, and interpretations made by social people, are no longer value-free.
The three movies under discussion are Interstellar (2014), Planet of the Apes (1968) and Soylent Green (1973). All of the movies are set in a distant future either when human beings face severe environmental issues and could not sustain themselves or when the human culture completely dissolves. These movies are selected, firstly, because all of the stories happen in extreme situations with dramatized social relations and traceable social values. The subtle domination and the bias of science we see as natural or inescapable in our society are represented in such a way that we are able to notice in the movies. Secondly, as products of our society, the movies reflect the ideas of domination in our society. These movies, like everything else in our society, are also the “points” that reinforce power and domination.
INTERSTELLAR: SCIENCE AS MODIFIED TO FIT IN THE SOCIAL VALUE
The new movie Interstellar is set in a time when human species comes to the verge of extinction. The scarcity in food supply and frequent sand storms are devastating life on the earth. Interstellar travel becomes the only option left.
Science, specifically astronomy, plays a paradoxical role in the movie.
On one hand, science is defined by the value of the society which is directly related to the practical needs of the time. “For continuing survival of the human race it was believed that humans should become farmers and not explorers, thus using all possible resources for crops, not space exploration (“IMDb: FAQ for Interstellar (2014)”).” As is evident in Murph’s parent meeting, although science is still taught at school, the authority (not mentioned in the movie) selectively transmits science to the public through the control of knowledge. For example, the history books claim that the Apollo mission to the Moon were faked. In a word, only the science that fits in the social value are regarded as true science; other science are excluded from books and claimed to be fake. Murph’s teacher, not to exert domination on purpose, reinforces the ideas of the society through her interaction with students and parents. On the contrary, however, interstellar travel is the only way to sustain human species. As a result, a secret NASA installation is founded to explore planets that can support human beings in the future. Cooper, with three other astronauts, carries out the latest mission. Although Cooper is the “hero” of the movie, he is only a worker under the charge of Professor Brand in the exploration group. Just like researchers working under supervision of their bosses, Cooper gets access only to part of the
mission that Professor Brand tells him. The most essential part, therefore, remained secret. Professor Brand, the only person who knows the whole mission, sends out astronauts to the planets without telling them that Plan A is inviable. In other words, he makes use of the hope of the astronauts to propel the mission while leaving people on the earth to die on purpose. Of course he can save the human species from extinction by doing so. Nonetheless, should science be controlled by one scientist, should thousands of lives be decided by one scientist, it is by no means unbiased. Therefore, science can easily be utilized as a tool of domination.
Science is also constrained by its assumptions which are socially affected. As said by Mruph in the movie, “you are trying to solve the equation without changing the underlying assumption about time, and that means each generation is an attempt to prove its own prove; its recursive; its nonsensical.” The same logic can be applied to any science. As long as we live in a society, the underlying assumptions are the preexisting ideas of the society. Thus, no matter how hard we try to be unbiased, science is “an attempt to prove its own prove.”
PLANET OF THE APES:
Similar to Interstellar, Planet of the Apes starts as three male astronauts land on a planet of a distant future, 2006 years after their departure. At first sight, Planet of the Apes is an upside-down world of the human society: not only that human beings are inferior to the apes in this world, but that everything in the ape’s society is parallel to events in the real world. After intense conflicts between Taylor, the only modern human who keeps his intelligence, and the apes, he discovers in the end that the planet is the earth destroyed by human.
As a direct reflection of the real world, the movie overtly presents the power structure and the relationship between science and domination in human society. Through sensational scenes, the movie confronts our ideas of domination over nature as moral or natural. In the movie, the apes treat human beings exactly the way we treat animals in real life. Believing that human beings are inferior and unable to talk, the apes keep humans in cages with frequent sterilization, randomly put humans of opposite sexes together to mate, and experiment on humans to explore the origin of the apes. More ironically, when successfully hunting humans, the apes take pictures of their victory. Those scenes frankly reveal human beings’ crime to the animals. Man’s domination over nature, thought by many as a rightful act, can no longer be regarded as moral.
Just like the purposeful change of textbook in Interstellar, the distortion of science at man’s will is also evident in Planet of the Apes. During the trial judged by three orangutans to decide Taylor’s fate, Taylor was challenged to “explain the Second Article of Faith and why humans have no soul.” Defined by religion, the value of the society is regarded as the basis of science in the ape society. Thus, any assumption underlying the scientific investigation in the society is constrained by religion, imposing subjective ideas to science. What’s more, when enough evidence was collected in the cave to prove the theory of evolution, Dr. Zaius destroyed the evidence to protect the ape society. Science in the ape society as well as any society is designed in a way that fits in the value of the society and that benefits the power.
An essential aspect unexamined so far is human society’s impact on the astronauts. The astronauts, as well as any scientist, are socially impacted human beings, carrying and reproducing ideas of the human society. According to the narratives at the beginning of the movie, the purpose of Taylor’s travel is to “find a better people”. However, when he sees the less intelligible humans on the planet, he says, “if this is the best they got around here, in six months we will be running this planet”. For Taylor, domination is an idea so essential to human society that it has long been ingrained in his mind and becomes a natural respond. What’s worse, far from being a simple thought, his act of domination continues through out the whole movie. Pretentiously regarding himself as superior to the apes, he ceaselessly manages to dominate over the apes and in the end he was able to gain his freedom by controlling Dr. Zaius, the head ape.
SOYLENT GREEN:
Soylent Green depicts a dystopia in 2022, New York City. As the population continues to grow, natural resources can no longer support people in the city and food becomes “a rare and expensive commodity.” People survive on processed rations produced by the massive Soylent Corporation, which is now advertising a new product, Soylent Green.
As is in Planet of the Apes, everything happening in Soylent Green is a reality taken to its extreme. The contrast between the advertisement of Soylent Green and its real raw material exemplifies the ways that scientific products are used as tools of domination. According to the Soylent Corporation, Soylent Green is a “high-energy vegetable concentrates” made from “high-energy plankton.” However, Thorn and Roth, the main characters, unveil a “horrible” truth that Soylent Green is made from human bodies. Here, the separation made between science and society grants the Soylent Corporation the power to conceal the secret, manipulating the public with its slogans. To the people, science equals to universal truth: they trust it and they rely on it. As a result, no matter how filthy the process of producing Soylent Green is, the Corporation only needs to assign a slogan to the product to win over people’s trust. As long as the process is kept secret, the Corporation can utilize the idealized representation of science to make money and to dominate. Thus, the head of the Corporation becomes the wealthy, tricking people with “high-tech” products while enjoying the best food and accommodations themselves. Science, which is supposed to be impartial, falls into an unprecedentedly powerful tool of domination.
All the three movies are also reflective of the ideas of domination in our society. It is justified in the movies for human beings to dominate nature for human needs. In Interstellar, It is also presented as natural to make a distinction between the people and the explorers.
Of course, this essay does not intend to disrepute the value of science.
Indeed, the advent of science and technology has bring about transformation in both the value of the society and the role of domination. Advanced technologies, especially medical technologies, “have altered our understanding of body function, body definition, and potential life span,” and “destabilized the physical and social meanings of ‘motherhood,’ ‘fatherhood,’ and ‘family,’ further disrupting gender identities and gender relationships (Shevory).” By calling into question the categorical definiation of human body and social meanings and relationships, science also alters our ideas of hierchacy and domination. In fact, only by realizing the ways that science is legitimating domination in our society can we find the right direction of science and its relations to our society and transform it into the “science of
liberation.”