The Island

Warning Spoilers Ahead

Without qualification, The Island is A Good Movie. Scarlett Johannson (playing the vulnerable young maid she always plays) is hottt. Two Ewan McGregors is also hottt. Lots of explosions are, of course, hottt.

However, what I liked best about this movie is that it made me think philosophically about it. Firstly, there are the ethical issues raised. Is it okay to breed human clones for the purposes of prolonging life and curing cancer? The Island thinks no. While it appears, then, that the makers take a staunch deonotological position on the sanctity of human life, the good guys, Lincoln and Jordan, seem to be justified in killing the bad “doods” out to get them. So The Island’s assumption becomes more consequentialist, since the pair’s mission is to save the other clones from impending death. And why should they be justified in saving all these lives? Because humans want to survive, or so we are told.

So, I think we can map out The Island makers’ ethical assumptions:
1 Harvesting humans for body parts is wrong.
2 People with pragmatic approaches to the value of human life are evil and deserve to be punished by the hero.
3 Human life should be protected because humans have an innate desire to survive.

In fact, it seems that innateness is a tenet of The Island. Lincoln along with all the other “Products” live in a controlled, big-brother type environment. Everyone wears white, including white Puma shoes (ahh, the product placement in this movie is so obvious I’m convinced it’s ironic), has a controlled diet and sleep and work peacefully in a sterile environment. Even though all the products are clones, they’re still human so they require an incentive. This is a lottery to “The Island”. Lincoln is Plato among the Products; he questions why he has to wear white, why he can’t eat bacon, and if there really is an Island.

Lincoln’s philosophical nature is curious. He has been genetically modified, and the only “experiences” he has had is artifical stimuli and his three year existence within a controlled world. And yet, he believes that there is more to existence than just the world around him. Ergo, there must be some things about human nature that are innate, that cannot be learnt through experience. Among these things is scepticism and a sense of morality. The movie is not clear as to wether such things are the result of genes or something more transcendental.

Interestingly, Lincoln has memories that belong to his clonee. Annoyingly, the movie does not explain how this is possible, except that maybe in cloning the original Lincoln, his memories and knowledge were duplicated too. Somehow.

It is interesting that after many years of Empiricism, a warped kind of Rationalism is back in vouge. Maybe it’s a consequence of society trying to push blame away from the individual and onto their genes. Maybe I’m just being cynical.

Going back to the film’s ethical assumption, it seems that 1 is true in virtue of 3. However, positing human desire to survive as the reason for preserving human life commits the naturalistic fallacy; why should we respect that human desire?

There also appears to be a contradiction between 1 and 3, on the one hand and 2 on the other. Surely survival is a pragmatic consideration?