ART and Art in the Movies 2010
Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are a repeating theme this year in Hollywood, and the results seem to be decidedly mixed.
First came The Back-up Plan, a Jennifer Lopez vehicle: She can't find the right guy, gives up, has artificial insemination, and then finds the right guy. It was widely though not entirely panned by critics but moderately successful.
Next up was an indie movie, The Kids Are All Right, a hit with critics that started small but found an audience; Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo star. The premise involves ART, since the kids of a lesbian couple get in touch with the sperm donor who is their biological father, but it's not really about ART or lesbians so much as about marriage and families; people more than technology or stereotypes. Worth a look.
Now there is Jennifer Aniston in The Switch, inspired by a short story called "Baster" by Jeffrey Eugenides, published in The New Yorker in 1996 [sub]. Aniston's buddy replaces the sperm of the designated donor with his own and later begins to check up on the kid without admitting his relationship. Eugenides more or less disowns the movie, critics are underwhelmed, and the opening weekend saw it come in a disappointing 7th.
On a somewhat different track, coming October 8th is the latest sci-fi designer-baby flick, Jim. So far, the point of interest is that the producers have set up a website for a fictional company called Lorigen: "Better Kids, By Design" seems to be the overarching slogan, but there is also "It's Not Luck. It's Lorigen" for their enhancement sales pitch, and on their "Access" page: "Why do we do this? Because We're In This Together®" [obvious typo fixed, it seems to be a low-budget operation]. The synopsis includes some kind of distant-future posthuman Earth in which a rebel clone is connected by dreams to our near-present-day hero. Here's the "viral" promo:
Genuine imagination is always welcome, of course. (Note: Alice in Wonderland came back big this year, as the 2nd-highest-grossing movie so far.) Jim may turn out to be a great piece of humor, intentional or otherwise, but the lesson of the others seems to be simple: Strong characters make good movies; technology, even ART, has little to do with art.
Previously on Biopolitical Times: