What I Can't Let Go After Seeing Never Let Me Go
I've been trying to find time to read Never Let Me Go for a while. I decided to start out with the movie instead. It looked good and presented the story mostly the way I expected. I had an idea what it was about from the first time I read the blurb. It wasn't as mysterious as it hoped to be. There was a big blow up on the possible ways human cloning could be abused at that time so it was all too easy to fill in the blanks.
So I watched the movie and it all looked good and the acting was great and it was touching and all that but at the end I was let down. I'm often disappointed when I watch a movie based on a book I've read and loved. That wasn't the case here. I was disappointed because the story wasn't quite what I expected.
Spoilers if you haven't seen the movie or read the book from this point forward. Proceed at your own risk. :)
The young people in the movie are all clones. I knew that. But I expected they were clones especially manufactured for the people they were cloned from. New and improved versions, in other words. After all, there weren't that many children in the school. I thought they had been commissioned by people whose children had an illness as custom organ replacement providers. This makes more sense to me than creating a race of general organ donors. Granted, the premise is that the clones are not considered truly human. But it's hard to see that given that when they are adults they are permitted to live mostly normal lives. If they really didn't think of them as human, then why give them that much freedom? Human rights should not be an issue then, so it would be easier to keep them as confined as they were as children. Since most of them don't seem to have real jobs, they are probably even more of a drain on finances when allowed to roam than if they were just kept in an institution.
Of course letting them have a measure of freedom allowed Ishiguro, I understand from http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/boo..., to explore the issue of brainwashing and psychological control. Certainly it worked to some extent in real-life slavery, but not really that well. Judging by the many and severe punishments for slaves who attempted to escape back in the day of Uncle Tom's Cabin, many slaves came to hate their chains. In the movie, the characters are implanted with trackers. Still not enough of a preventive, in my opinion. When they were in school, meek compliance was understandable. After all, it was the only world they knew. But once they were outside and saw how much freedom other people had, and even got to experience being treated like ordinary people, wouldn't they yearn to live like everyone else? Wouldn't they want the chance at a longer life for its own sake and not just to be with someone they love?
I had a vision of the characters as being more enslaved and pathetic, as raging more dramatically against their imposed fate. Instead they accept it almost as calmly as the servants in The Remains of the Day but with less plausible motivation. Those servants were not only raised in a different time with a different mindset, they had the rewards of security and a purpose in life without the consequence of getting their organs ripped out. In the modern setting of Never Let Me Go, it is just harder to believe that people should be so docile in allowing themselves to be restricted and used. It's especially ironic given these children grew up at a time when people were growing more vocal about promoting the rights of women and minorities. There were clearly some bright and insightful people among their number so why didn't anyone openly rebel? I don't know of any case like this in the modern world. Not in the last forty years.
I imagined that they were living their lives unaware until their donation time came that there was another person out there who is just like them but older (because the clone was made when the disease was diagnosed) and living as a free human being, normal except for their organ-damaging illness. And then maybe the issue of why the originals are valued more than them is explored. Well, perhaps the book does deal with that. I'll have to read it to find out. But if it doesn't then all these ideas were mine first and if you are tempted to write a story using them, remember I am the original and you are my inferior clone. Mwahahahahahaha!
So I watched the movie and it all looked good and the acting was great and it was touching and all that but at the end I was let down. I'm often disappointed when I watch a movie based on a book I've read and loved. That wasn't the case here. I was disappointed because the story wasn't quite what I expected.
Spoilers if you haven't seen the movie or read the book from this point forward. Proceed at your own risk. :)
The young people in the movie are all clones. I knew that. But I expected they were clones especially manufactured for the people they were cloned from. New and improved versions, in other words. After all, there weren't that many children in the school. I thought they had been commissioned by people whose children had an illness as custom organ replacement providers. This makes more sense to me than creating a race of general organ donors. Granted, the premise is that the clones are not considered truly human. But it's hard to see that given that when they are adults they are permitted to live mostly normal lives. If they really didn't think of them as human, then why give them that much freedom? Human rights should not be an issue then, so it would be easier to keep them as confined as they were as children. Since most of them don't seem to have real jobs, they are probably even more of a drain on finances when allowed to roam than if they were just kept in an institution.
Of course letting them have a measure of freedom allowed Ishiguro, I understand from http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/boo..., to explore the issue of brainwashing and psychological control. Certainly it worked to some extent in real-life slavery, but not really that well. Judging by the many and severe punishments for slaves who attempted to escape back in the day of Uncle Tom's Cabin, many slaves came to hate their chains. In the movie, the characters are implanted with trackers. Still not enough of a preventive, in my opinion. When they were in school, meek compliance was understandable. After all, it was the only world they knew. But once they were outside and saw how much freedom other people had, and even got to experience being treated like ordinary people, wouldn't they yearn to live like everyone else? Wouldn't they want the chance at a longer life for its own sake and not just to be with someone they love?
I had a vision of the characters as being more enslaved and pathetic, as raging more dramatically against their imposed fate. Instead they accept it almost as calmly as the servants in The Remains of the Day but with less plausible motivation. Those servants were not only raised in a different time with a different mindset, they had the rewards of security and a purpose in life without the consequence of getting their organs ripped out. In the modern setting of Never Let Me Go, it is just harder to believe that people should be so docile in allowing themselves to be restricted and used. It's especially ironic given these children grew up at a time when people were growing more vocal about promoting the rights of women and minorities. There were clearly some bright and insightful people among their number so why didn't anyone openly rebel? I don't know of any case like this in the modern world. Not in the last forty years.
I imagined that they were living their lives unaware until their donation time came that there was another person out there who is just like them but older (because the clone was made when the disease was diagnosed) and living as a free human being, normal except for their organ-damaging illness. And then maybe the issue of why the originals are valued more than them is explored. Well, perhaps the book does deal with that. I'll have to read it to find out. But if it doesn't then all these ideas were mine first and if you are tempted to write a story using them, remember I am the original and you are my inferior clone. Mwahahahahahaha!
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