Issues of race, gender and class in "Gattaca"

In the first ten minutes of Gattaca we are looking at a predominantly white society. One "minority" figure that is presented is the "African American" doctor. He is certainly portrayed as a man who is wise and rational, trying to do the best he can in his line of work by taking it upon himself to eradicate alcoholism, pattern baldness etc. from the genetically modified child. He has the desire for perfection and accordingly desires his work to be perfect. The only other "minority" character that I noticed was the Asian nurse who reads from the life expectancy transcript, though whether this is a nod towards women as important in the medical field or not is questionable. It is also interesting to note that Vincent's parents wish their second child to be born with fair skin, despite the father's obvious Italian heritage. However, I think that in general that world of Gattaca is not interested in race, colour and gender anymore but instead in discrimination through the genetic imperfections identified in your blood.

The clip shows a heterosexual family unit, Vincent's parents choose a son over "two very healthy girls" and choosing the sex of a baby raises a few gender questions in itself. In keeping with the idea that race and gender are redundant, gender is washed over in the film as a whole although heterosexuality is, obviously, shown as the norm.

In relation to class it is evident that the de-generates or "invalids" are relegated to performing menial tasks often associated with the second-class citizen. They are inferior to the "Valids" who are able to perform any task that they would possibly desire. We are told that there is a law against genetic discrimination but for some reason people here are above the law and only those with engineered genes are privy to "important" jobs; ie, science, government, aeronautics, etc. Vincent's own father notes, ["the only time you'd see the inside of a space ship is if you were cleaning it"]. From this quote we could also draw conclusions that there are class rankings within the family unit; Anton Snr will not give his name to his de-generate son and Anton Jnr is essentially the favourite.

More generally, as mentioned before, I think Gattaca is more concerned with what would happen if personality was no longer taken into account. Race, colour and gender have been pushed aside as "class indicators" and class structure is dependent only upon genetics. This, I think, is suggesting that even if we could take away the value of race etc. there will always be discrimination based on some form of difference and as much as society wishes for a utopian world it is invariably impossible.