So the story went that I was tasked to do the show and tell for the year-end party of our branch (which included all the other units related to staff development).
I had wanted to talk about Sammi, about how I fulfilled my lifelong dream making my way to HK etc, but I thought that the Collectible Edition ‘Hope’ was too precious and heavy to be lugged to HQ, so I changed my mind and brought the special edition DVD for GATTACA with me instead.
Considering how the others who had to do show and tell presented more intimate and interesting stuff, I was apprehensive how my interest for GATTACA could interest anyone.
But who cares?
I just touched on the super summary of the film (after my usual story on how I came up with my name) and then mentioned 2 quotes.
The 1st was a conversation between Anton and the Mission Director. Anton wanted to find Vincent and he wanted to know how he got into GATTACA.
The mission director was bragging how they managed to motivate their employees to reach their potentials. Intent on unearthing the fact that Vincent could have slipped into GATTACA, Anton asked if anyone could have exceeded their potential. The mission director rebutted firmly No, but that was an irony.
The viewers all know Vincent did exceed his potential to enter GATTACA, but as we learned later, the mission director had already known / suspected that Vincent was a borrowed ladder.
I had raised this quote because this is close to the job we are doing in staff development. Have we misjudged a person’s potential? Or have we not allowed an officer to attain his full potential? These are often the questions we need to ask as we go about doing our jobs.
The 2nd quote I raised was the one near the closing, in which Vincent was telling Irene not to give up on herself, after she found out about his real identity. Irene had always suffered from self esteem problems as she was not as well-engineered as her peers and that also explained her shock when she found out that Vincent, a faith birth, had accomplished what she could only dream of.
That was Vincent’s aim: he wanted her to believe in herself.
In conclusion, he said, “They (the society) have got you looking so hard for the flaws that after a while, that is all you see.”
Our core duties involved managing people who were already judged to be flawed. This is all the more we should not be focusing on the flaws; it would be redundant for us to do so.
So… for a last minute presentation for 5 min, there is so much after thoughts in me (yes, most of what is written here was not in the original show and tell). This is how much GATTACA means in my life.
This post was republished from my previous blog. The photos were screenschots from the movie itself, while I added the quotes myself.
If you like this post about Gattaca, I also wrote a few posts about it, like my listing down of favourite quotes from the movie. I also did a personal review of Hidden Figures, which was also space-based, but touches on inspiring stories of fighting gender and racial discrimination.Gattaca: Fave Quotes