Human Cloning in Film: Horror, Ambivalence, Hope

Fictional filmic representations of human cloning have shifted in relation to the 1997 announcement of the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep, and since therapeutic human cloning became a scientific practice in the early twentieth century. The operation and detail of these shifts can be seen through an analysis of the films The Island (2005) and Aeon Flux (2005). These films provide a site for the examination of how these changes in human cloning from fiction to practice, and from horror to hope, have been represented and imagined, and how these distinctions have operated visually in fiction, and in relation to genre. Images of cloning in contemporary fictional film operate in relation to the discourses of hope evident in factual forms such as news media, through an ambivalent and thus sometimes hopeful constitution of reproductive cloning in film. This ambivalence rests on the synthesis of reproduction and therapy, and the construction of realism through references to contemporary media genres outside of the film story. Human cloning is currently constituted as a story of scientific practice and biomedical hope through multiple sources and film is a critical component in this shift. However, rather than film bringing therapeutic cloning in to disrepute, the ambivalence of these contemporary tales of technoscience contributes to the intelligibility of human reproductive cloning as plausibly benign. Introduction: Change and Instability in Human Cloning The discourse of human cloning is a site where meaning has been under constant revision. There has been a particularly acute period of instability over the last decade, since the existence of Dolly the cloned sheep (born in 1996) was verified and made public in 1997. News of Dolly was read as an indication of the imminence of human reproductive cloning. Although human reproductive cloning did not emerge in this period, therapeutic human cloning has emerged as a scientific practice, and the first UK human therapeutic clone was produced in 2004. Science as Culture Vol. 17, No. 2, 145–162, June 2008 Correspondence Address: Kate O’Riordan, Department of Media and Film, EDB, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RG, UK. Email: [email protected] 0950-5431 Print/1470-1189 Online/08/020145–18 # 2008 Process Press DOI: 10.1080/09505430802062919 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f Su ss ex L ib ra ry ] at 0 6: 39 1 4 Fe br ua ry 2 01 3 In spite of the instability of meaning, and the anxiety about the distinction between therapeutic and reproductive human cloning, there are indications that both kinds of cloning are being formulated as intelligible. That is to say that human cloning has meaning within what might be thought of as the bounds of ‘respectable science’ in the UK and elsewhere (Gieryn, 1999; Haran, 2007; Haran et al., 2007). By respectable science I mean that human cloning has become an aspect of the scientific practices of stem cell production under the aegis of regulators. Practices in human therapeutic cloning at the Newcastle Centre for Life, in 2004, are the evidence for this in the UK. In some policy arenas there are also some indications that human reproductive cloning might find a possible role within UK regulated science in the future. In 2006 the government agency, the Human Fertilization and Embryo Authority (HFEA), responsible for licensing human cloning practices in the UK, anticipated an increase in therapeutic human cloning research related applications. This increase in activity in scientific and policy developments around human cloning has been mediated through narratives of biomedical hope and stem cell cures in factual genres such as press reporting. However, this understanding of human cloning as factual and hopeful is relatively new. Human cloning has more traditionally been mediated in terms of fiction and horror, and a significant site in this has been the cinema. This article asks how changes in human cloning from fiction to practice, and from horror to hope, have been represented in films, and how these changes operate in relation to film genres. How has the filmic discourse of human cloning changed since Dolly was announced as a clone, and since therapeutic cloning became a scientific practice? How has the therapeutic–reproductive cloning distinction operated visually, and what does this demonstrate about the interactions of science and film? Human cloning has been constituted in film as reproductive cloning (cloning babies/ whole humans) through the conventions of horror and science fiction since the 1950s. These visual treatments have stressed the body of the clone, through the corporeality of the cloned body and the image of the clone as twin. However, contemporary filmic treatments of human reproductive cloning, such as The Island (2005) and Aeon Flux (2005), whilst still drawing on and reflecting fears about reproduction, focus on therapeutic uses and the process of cloning, and have thus become ambivalent, pointing towards hope. Ambivalence is used here to refer to ‘having double meaning’ and constituting meanings that are contradictory. These films link the process of cloning to hopes of medical application and therapies, and as I will show in the following analysis, they also figure reproductive cloning as hopeful in some instances. The shifts from the horror of the body of the clone, to ambivalence about cloning as a process have occurred within a changing global context. Through multiple sites in the USA, South Korea and the UK, therapeutic cloning has been framed as a potential source of a revolution in health care in the last decade. Understandings of human cloning as therapeutic, as a process and as a source of stem cell treatments and cures, have become dominant frames in the science, policy and news media of the 1990s and early twenty-first century (Williams et al., 2003; Mulkay, 1997; Parry, 2003). These contemporary biomedical representations of cloning as a global technoscience have been constituted through a visual language of cloning which is hopeful and less fixed on the corporeality of the clone. The twin, as the embodied icon of cloning, has been replaced with images of process, of cell enucleation, stem cells, or the somatic cell nuclear transfer derived embryo. Cloning has become 146 K. O’Riordan D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f Su ss ex L ib ra ry ] at 0 6: 39 1 4 Fe br ua ry 2 01 3 a matter of stem cells and in this transition it has been harnessed to the discourse of biomedical hope through which imagined stem cell cures are figured in factual media genres. Language of Cloning: Mediation and Practice Human cloning in film was, until recently, found almost exclusively in what might be termed the niche market genres of science fiction and horror (Hills, 2003; Stacey, 2003; Thacker, 2002; O’Riordan, 2008). These include medical horror films of the 1970s such as The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler (1971) and Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979) as well as the ‘body horror’ films of the 1980s such as The Fly (1986). However, as has been argued elsewhere, the technoscientific themes of these niche market and genre-specific products have expanded into successful multi-genre, mass market formats since the 1980s (Best & Kellner, 2001; Hills, 2005; Wood, 2002). Although, for example, Jurassic Park (1993) is not about human cloning it is an early and dramatic instance of the successful re-packaging of biotechnology (and other technosciences) as a mass market, multi-genre product (Franklin, 2000; Stern, 2004; Wood, 2002). Many filmic cloning themes and story lines, since 1997, have been in mass-market films—by definition multi-genre—and they have dealt ambivalently with human cloning. In some films this includes hopeful moments in the figuring of reproductive cloning. Lacking the distinctive imprint of horror, imparted through that genre’s treatment of cloning and other forms of genetic engineering (Hills, 2003, 2005), contemporary human cloning might almost be a positive cinematic theme. In factual media genres the distinction of the term cloning has become blurred through a number of moves. Subsequent to the cloning of Dolly, somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) as a scientific practice in humans became (re)referenced as cloning. Somatic cell nuclear replacement and cell nuclear reprogramming have also entered the contemporary discursive terrain of human cloning. During the late 1990s and early twenty-first century, the distinction between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning, and anxiety around this, became crucial in the political debates about regulation and governance in the UK. This distinction was key in a particular moment of science policy formation—the licensing of therapeutic cloning—and its emergence as a UK scientific practice in 2004 (Haran, 2007; Mulkay, 1997; Parry, 2003; Williams et al., 2003). A factor in these distinctions in the visual imagery of cloning is whether the foregrounding is of the body of the clone, or cloning as a biomedical process. It is this latter vision of cloning as process that has become dominant and this inflects representations of cloning, including recent representations of the cloned body. In many references to biomedical processes of somatic cell nuclear transfer, ‘cloning’ has dropped out of the science and policy vocabularies altogether. In some representations therapeutic cloning has become conflated with creating stem cells. An example of this conflation (which until this point had been largely implied rather than literalized) occurred in 2007 in the UK Sunday newspaper, The Observer, in a story about the announcement that the HFEA would licence semi-commercial egg sourcing by allowing financial compensation for ‘donors’. At the end of the article a paragraph subtitled ‘the role of stem cells’ described the creation of stem cells as follows: Human Cloning in Film 147 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f Su ss ex L ib ra ry ] at 0 6: 39 1 4 Fe br ua ry 2 01 3 To create stem cells, an egg is taken from a woman and its nucleus removed. Then a cell is taken from a patient, its DNA scooped out and placed in the nucleus-free egg (Dennis Campbell, Sunday 18 February 2007). The description of enucleation and nuclear transfer used above had previously been attached to definitions of therapeutic cloning, which had in turn been attached to embryonic stem cell cures. Although the paragraph above is clearly a matter for correction as it describes cell nuclear transfer—not the more general creation of stem cells which can be derived from multiple sources and do not require cell nuclear transfer per se—it illuminates the extent to which therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cell cures have become conflated in the contemporary media ecology. The unequivocal link between human cloning and cures in factual genres is made through figuring it as a source of embryonic stem cells, DNA matched stem cells, and information about cell development (Franklin, 2006; Waldby & Mitchell, 2006). Embryonic stem cells in particular are currently represented as the future of the biomedical sciences, and thus of society. This process and cures focused repertoire displaces the body of the clone. Instead, images of people getting up out of wheelchairs (Christopher Reeve, Won Rae Kang), or stories of the promise of cures for motor neurone disease (Jimmy Johnstone, Ian Wilmut), appear in multiple coverage about stem cells in the press, and other media forms globally (Haran et al., 2007). Contemporary filmic renderings of cloning draw on these factual genres in the process of locating science themes in mass-market film. Films reference the conventions of science communication, news media and documentary, examples of these other forms appear on screen, and films borrow from the message of hope. Through these moves cloning appears through an intertextual realist aesthetic, constituted through contextual references to factual genres circulating at the same time as the production, release and circulation of the film. Context of Cloning in Film: From Horror to Ambivalence Human cloning has been traditionally embedded in film through a set of images and stories dealing with horror, abjection, monstrosity and the uncanny (Stacey, 2003, 2005; Battaglia, 2001; Hills, 2003). This embedding, in part reflective of the historical relationship between film and literature, also located cloning as a form of genetic modification investing cloning as horrific through the associations of mutation (genetic modification), twinning, and the creation of life (golems, Frankenstein). In some older films, cloning has been coupled with associations of evil in an exchange of meaning, which reinforced the horror of both cloning, and the social issue it was tied to. An example that retains currency in contemporary debates is the film The Boys form Brazil (1978). This film (based on the novel by Ira Levin) has become a touchstone for discussions of cloning, and its coupling of Nazi eugenics with the cloning of Adolf Hitler seemed to reinforce images of the horror of social control through science. Invoking the horror of cloning through references to The Boys from Brazil has seen a return in a recent popular science book which, conversely, puts the argument for therapeutic cloning; After Dolly: The Uses and Misuses of Human Cloning (Highfield & Wilmut, 2006). The Boys from Brazil is referenced repeatedly in the book as an example of what human cloning will not be used for. The reference operates in this 148 K. O’Riordan D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f Su ss ex L ib ra ry ] at 0 6: 39 1 4 Fe br ua ry 2 01 3 context to repudiate specific types of cloning (reproductive) in the attempt to secure other types of cloning (therapeutic) as intelligible (Haran et al., 2007). In this way film, novels and other fictions are repeatedly positioned as the sites at which misleading information about science is produced, and this popular science account by Roger Highfield and Ian Wilmut reiterates this. According to many journalists, and scientists, concerned with science communication, films and novels are the sources from which various publics get their misconceptions and fears (Turney, 1998; Frayling, 2005; Henderson & Kitzinger, 1999). In current debates circulating in the news media and popular science writing in the UK, horrific visions of human cloning in fiction are used as a marker for what human cloning won’t be in fact. Human clones, and otherwise genetically modified humans have been represented as monstrous, and evil, in a range of films. These include the overlapping genres of medical horror, body horror and science fiction already referenced. Images of cloned bodies also bear traces of links to versions of nearly human others, such as automata, golems, robots, vampires, AI, other animals and aliens. Fictional human cloning scientists, and figures in factual genres who have proposed or laid claim to reproductive cloning (Dr Panos Zavos, Brigitte Brosselier, Severino Antinori, Richard Seed) have also been represented as ‘maverick’, weak or evil. Fictional characters and such factual ‘maverick’ characterizations are often based on archetypal figures of the scientist such as Dr Faustus and Dr Frankenstein (Frayling, 2005; Haran, 2007; Haynes, 1994; Nerlich et al., 2001; Turney, 1998; Van Dijck, 1998; Weingart, 2003). A range of actors interested in human genetic modification and cloning, including scientists, politicians and celebrities, have highlighted the significance of such representations, primarily by expressing concerns that publics will continue to be so misled by these images that human biotechnology—and particularly cloning—will never lose its negative associations. This rhetorical move was used in criticism of the 2004 horror film Godsend (Haran et al., 2007; O’Riordan, 2008). This cloning film stuck to the vision of both cloning and genetic modification as horrific, and evoked ‘maverick’ cloning claims (Haran, 2007). It was criticized at the time of release for potentially giving cloning a bad name and it was suggested that this might impact on future biomedical cures by setting back research. Still, there is a danger in Godsend’s fear factor—that the distinction between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning will be blurred even further by the film and by the fake but all too credible website. Already, many people confuse reproductive cloning with therapeutic cloning (. . .) (Ewing Duncan, 2004). Such adverse publicity worked in the film’s favour, generating (along with its elaborate marketing strategy) controversy, and therefore access to audiences, which it might not otherwise have had. However, the film’s dependence on visions of cloning as horrific contributed to the incoherence of the plot and its inability to either be particularly horrific or convincing. The early part of the plot attempts to take up cloning as horrific but the visual representation of cloning as ‘just like normal IVF’ (Godsend ), leaves the audience without the required element of horror, suggesting that there is little to fear from cloning. The birth of Dolly in 1996 secured the contemporary meaning of human cloning as equivalent to somatic cell nuclear transfer (therapeutic cloning). Subsequent to this event, and to the later announcement of the completion of the mapping of the human Human Cloning in Film 149 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f Su ss ex L ib ra ry ] at 0 6: 39 1 4 Fe br ua ry 2 01 3 genome in 2000, numerous films with human genomic themes have been released. These are a diverse set of texts, many of which stick to traditional cloning scripts, albeit with a contemporary reworking. In addition to mass market, multi-genre films such as The 6th Day and The Island, many of them are also niche market genre films (horror or science fiction), national or independent films, and many of these assign cloning to the imaginary of horror (e.g. Blade II, Godsend, Parasite Eve). However a significant number (and this category appears to be increasing) of both mass market and niche market films explore genetic modification and human cloning in a much more ambivalent way that edges towards a more positive, if not favourable, constellation of meaning around human cloning. Some of these ambivalent or more favourable films are versions of the Marvel or DC superheroes revisited. In each instance of these remaking of marvellous mutants (Blade II, Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Spiderman, X-Men), the stories have been updated to draw on genomic sciences; genetic mutation or cloning. Where the plots illustrated in earlier decades relied on nuclear science and ideas about radiation and rays, in these remakes, genomics, (although never central to the onscreen plot), has come to the centre of the explanatory back-story. For example, in Ang Lee’s 2002 remake of The Hulk the green colour of the hulk is explained through references to green fluorescent proteins (used as a marker in genetic modification experiments), one of many distinctive references in contemporary visual languages of genomics. Likewise the X-Men are explained in terms of the ‘evolutionary’ step of genetic mutation and in Spiderman the centrality of the radioactivity in the graphic novel is supplanted by the emphasis on genetic mutation in the film. However, although ambivalent and in some cases celebratory, these Marvel films draw on a more general language of human biotechnology whilst it is the specifics of human cloning that are my concern here. Two other films that contribute to the contemporary ambivalence about human cloning in film are the niche market films Code 46 and Blueprint. In Code 46 (Michael Winterbottom, 2003) a version of cloning is normalized in the film narrative through its introduction as an assumed back-story. As the plot unfolds it is revealed that the widespread use of reproductive technologies has dislocated reproduction from kinship through the use of ‘batches’ of derived and stored embryos. Whilst one of the central characters is a clone (Maria), the ontology of cloning is mundane and lacks visual significance in the film. In Blueprint (Rolf Schubel, 2003) cloning is produced as an unusual spectacle through its representation in the story world of the film as a scientific breakthrough. The child who is cloned is a ‘first’ and a tag line of the film is; ‘The story of the first cloned human being—told in her own words’ (Blueprint, 2003). However, the implications of cloning for those involved, and the wider society, is explored in a variety of ways which do not provide closure on the meaning of cloning, as either hopeful or fearful. Ultimately the experience of being a clone is normalized through the characterization of the cloned child as she grows up and becomes an adult. However, the desire to have a clone is pathologized through the negative characterization of the mother. Thus, the cloned body is no longer the repository of horror, although the social uses of cloning—in this case the narcissistic desire to preserve one’s own talents—comes under critical scrutiny through the characterization of the mother as a selfish and negative character. However, the two films that are most central to this argument that there is a current mass-market reconfiguration of human cloning from fearful, to ambivalent and favourable, are the films Aeon Flux (Karyn Kusama, 2005) and The Island (Michael Bay, 150 K. O’Riordan D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f Su ss ex L ib ra ry ] at 0 6: 39 1 4 Fe br ua ry 2 01 3 2005). Distributed from 2005 by Paramount and Warner respectively, these two films use cloning as a central plot mechanism. In these films a visual language of genomics (I explore this ‘language’ in the next section) is deployed to create meaning about cloning, and a context where cloning is plausible and normalized. The Island is a particularly ambivalent text, at once representing a moral anti-cloning message, whilst representing clones as desirable humans, and cloning as an attractive health care option. In Aeon Flux there is little trace of horror in relation to human cloning, and reproductive cloning briefly takes centre stage as not just a health care option but a method of saving the human species from extinction. After an analysis of the ways in which cloning is visible in film more generally, I examine current visions of health and reproduction through the analysis of Aeon Flux (2005) and The Island (2005). Visual Cloning Distinctions: Bodies, and Medical Processes In film one of the most dominant visual signifiers for cloning has been that of the twin, and associations of the monstrous or the uncanny of the double also continue to cohere around this image. However this centrality is not limited to film and in both the social and natural sciences twin studies are used to derive meaning about human cloning. Descriptions of cell nuclear transfer as a scientific practice also use the language of ‘identical’ and ‘copy’ and ‘DNA matching’ to describe these processes. Human clones are represented as the physiological twin of their ‘origin’, through a number of sources. In multiple genres and across factual and fictional forms, issues raised with some frequency are those of uncanny similarity and identity confusion. Examples of films that mobilize these understandings of cloning include: The Boys From Brazil (1978); Multiplicity (1996); The 6th Day (2000); Blueprint (2003) and The Island (2005). The twin provides a key visual sign, and clones can be seen on screen because of this twinning. They are visually figured as physiological twins through the use of the same actor for multiple characters, and special effects contribute to this representation of the clone as twin on screen. However, although the twin has been the visual icon of cloning there is no evidence to suggest that SCNT derived humans would look identical. The issue of temporality seems incommensurable (i.e. a clone would not be born at the same time as the donor), and there have been multiple animal experiments that suggest that reproductive cloning is unlikely to produce visual and embodied physiological twinning. Current understandings of cloning in the biomedical sciences in the UK are that cloning is equal to somatic cell nuclear transfer, and that DNA matching (but not DNA or physiological mimesis) is possible. This scientific understanding has emerged through the evidence of the viability of the technology used to create Dolly at the Roslin Institute in Scotland in 1997. It was claimed internationally that Dolly was a clone and the international reaction that cast Dolly as a precursor to human cloning contributed to the current understandings of human cloning as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). The technique which produced Dolly involved cells from two different animals, as well as a succession of hosts, so a stricter model of cloning as an identical genetic copy would preclude Dolly. However, even Professor Ian Wilmut, who led the team who created Dolly, defines Dolly as a clone, and also defines cloning as the ‘copying’ of DNA. Thus, the clone as a material copy is as resonant in the scientific imagination as it is in film. However, there are a range of other images in addition to the twin, that circulate through film narratives to let audiences know that they are watching a story about genomics, and to Human Cloning in Film 151 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f Su ss ex L ib ra ry ] at 0 6: 39 1 4 Fe br ua ry 2 01 3 invite them to suspend their disbelief and imagine that the science is factual within the film story-world. These are the visual languages of the human genome map, sequences and chromosomal pairs, somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), and the alphabetical codes of the base pairs (ACGT), explicitly marked in Gattaca (1997), The 6th Day (2000), The Hulk (2003) and Code 46 (2003), where these visual cues appear on screen. The visual image of enucleation and cell nuclear replacement processes in which the cell wall is penetrated, and the nucleus removed or transferred, seen through a microscopic perspective, has become almost ubiquitous and is used widely across news media to signify stories about cell stem research and therapeutic cloning (Kitzinger & Williams, 2005; Franklin, 2005). Visual images travel across media forms and genres, and common images are found in different contexts, including film, the press, and the arts. In the film, The 6th Day (2000), the opening sequences draw on images from television and news reporting to establish the filmic cultural context. The images used are drawn from television news coverage and include icons such as ‘Dolly’ in order to produce a back-story leading to the rationale for the banning of human reproductive cloning. In this pre-history of the film a near future scenario is portrayed in which human reproductive cloning has been attempted and then banned. Television news and press images are used to create a realist aesthetic in the fictional film and this is constructed through the use of factual genre conventions. In this instance fictional footage follows documentary footage merging the two in a montage of extra filmic factual news and fictional ‘news’ in the film narrative. This provides the historical framing for a future of biotechnology gone wrong, providing a reference point for the case for legislation against human reproductive cloning made in the film and anchoring the film in a dramatic aesthetic realism. The Hulk (2003), based on the graphic novel and television series of the same name, draws on images from the press and scientific writing and notation to set the genomic scene. The alphabetical symbols reproduced in The Hulk were also used explicitly and eponymously in Gattaca (1997), referenced in Code 46, and they are used in much visual art work around genomics including that of the ‘transgenic’ artist Eduardo Kac. Chromosomes, especially shown as pairs (karyotypes), are also familiar images from fine art and ‘microscope’ shots in film, as well as from television representations of science, including documentary and news reporting. The alphabetical notation and the paired chromosomes are also common symbols which appear across multiple sites including the websites of the Human Genome Project, The Wellcome Trust, the US National Library of Medicine and biotechnology companies such as Celera. The gene sequencing represented in The Hulk is a direct reference to the human genome mapping project and this underpins the scientific ‘updating’ of the Marvel plot in this film. The science scenes of The Hulk were shot on location at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Many of the genetic experiments represented in the first part of the film involve jellyfish and sea-cucumbers. They are expressed as a series of montaged flash-backs that intersperse shots of vivisection, centrifuges, microscopes and hand written notes about genetic experimentation including repeated use of the alphabetical symbols used to express genetic codes. The green traces from the jellyfish (Green Fluorescent Proteins) are the first visible indication that the Hulk has inherited the alterations that the father has made to himself. This ‘green’ property, used in contemporary genetic experiments to ‘mark’ genetic alterations, is also used to indicate genetic manipulation in a range of other texts including Eduado Kac’s transgenic artwork GFP Bunny. This intertextuality 152 K. O’Riordan D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f Su ss ex L ib ra ry ] at 0 6: 39 1 4 Fe br ua ry 2 01 3 continued to unfold when the GFP Bunny was also visually (re)referenced in a scene in the independent feminist cloning film by Lynn Hershman Leeson, Teknolust (2002). Whilst there may be an absence of visual signifiers for the gene per se (Stacey, 2003), there are visual repertoires, which are drawn from a variety of other sources. These include other filmic representations of science, as well as images from the documentation of the life sciences, the press, television news, science communication centres and fine art. These visual repertoires of genomics link media texts, forms and genres across the discourse of cloning and contribute to the exchange of meaning and constitution of realism across different forms. They provide frameworks of signification within which factual and fictional versions of cloning can intersect. Within this visual language there are iconic images; the double helix, the clone as twin, the clone as sheep, cell nuclear transfer, in vitro embryos, green fluorescent proteins, the alphabetic notation of the base pairs, and karyotypes of paired chromosomes. Currently the processes of nuclear transfer, synonymous with cloning since Dolly, and the image of the twin, which is reinforced by the reiteration of copy and regeneration, are dominant images in contemporary visual cultures of cloning.