Leaders of the Republic, a loosely democratic coalition of intergalactic planets, find themselves faced with the threat of insurrection and terrorist assassinations. In this situation, they are manipulated by the power hungry Senator Palpatine to acquiesce in the development, by cloning, of a million-man storm-trooper army, which will battle the rebels and serve as muscle for the few hundred noble Jedi knights.The clones, genetically identical copies of a skilled bounty hunter named Jango Fett, are subjected to growth acceleration, programmed to be obedient, and mass produced into 20-year old super soldiers. Fett vainly adopts one clone as his own son, a self-replica named Boba, who Fett allows to grow at a normal rate, keeping the child in constant tow under his close tutelage. Although the clones are created for the "greater good" of the Republic, and eventually prove their worth in battle, menacing dilemmas are foreshadowed for the third installment of the prequel series. (Internet rumors speculate that in the third film, the clones come under the control of Palpatine and are used to hunt down and kill the Jedi, bringing Palpatine to power.)
If all this sounds familiar, that's because it's straight out of The Boys from Brazil or Brave New World, with a touch of Frankenstein thrown in. Channeling these classic texts, the latest Star Wars film presents an array of motifs that pop up again and again in public discussions about the societal impact of science, and powerfully structure our perceptions of live-wire political issues like cloning. Indeed, as University College London historian of science John Turney writes in his book Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture, "fictional representations matter the science and technology we ultimately see are partly shaped by the images of the work which exist outside the confines of the laboratory report or the scientific paper."
A recent example of this occurred when Leon Kass, head of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, assigned his fellow council members an 1843 Nathaniel Hawthorne story called "The Birthmark" to help structure their thoughts about issues like stem-cell research. Meanwhile, the conservative Weekly Standard's William Kristol, generally fond of the Brave New World analogy, has already titled one of his anti-cloning commentaries "Attack of the Clones." It may sound absurd, but we must seriously ask the question: Like Frankenstein and Brave New World, what impact could Star Wars have on the human-cloning controversy in this country?
Much like Attack of the Clones itself, the present cloning debate is really "Episode Two" of a heated political battle that began with last year's struggle over funding for human embryonic stem-cell research. Indeed, the rhetoric and imagery from popular culture wielded in the current dispute over two competing bills in the Senate -- the Brownback-Landrieu bill to ban both reproductive and "therapeutic cloning" (a term used to describe the process of embryo replication for research purposes) and the Feinstein-Kennedy legislation to ban cloning only for reproductive purposes -- evolved during the 2001 stem-cell controversy.
Last summer's stem-cell debate was easily linked to issues of genetic engineering and cloning, evoking vivid images from culture and history. The relationship was not lost on various interests in opposition to research, whose talking points frequently included references to "playing God," Dr. Frankenstein, a "brave new world," Faustian bargains, and the Nazi holocaust, as well as menacing adjectives such as "evil, "murderous," and "gruesome." Journalists, often attracted to drama and familiar storytelling themes and captivated by a narrative that could be told in terms of conflict and controversy, maximized these popular culture references in news accounts. Their reporting featured the technical expertise of scientists, but pitted scientific views against those of pro-life and religious interests.
The media's ability to dramatize coverage of the stem-cell controversy helps explain why the issue received so much attention in 2001. According to a recent study that we conducted at Cornell University, although stem-cell research had been ongoing for four decades, the media virtually ignored it until 2001, when the issue could be fit into a dramatic, conflict-oriented context. Our analysis finds that in association with a sharp rise in media attention, the use of dramatic storytelling themes also increased markedly, with a quarter of all stem-cell-related articles in 2001 featuring some reference to science fiction, popular culture, or historical metaphor. Moreover, the media framed coverage predominantly in terms of political strategy and conflict. This structuring of discourse by competing political actors and journalists so as to emphasize popular fiction, drama, and conflict continues with the 2002 debate over cloning legislation -- and suggests an obvious opening for the megacultural phenomenon that is Star Wars to have a serious impact.
After all, the groundwork has been well laid by reporters. Consider the opening to an April 14 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel news article by staff writer Marilyn Marchione: "In the brave new world of biotechnology, few things are as primally frightening as the prospect of humans being churned out of laboratories like widgets from factories." Or the opening penned by staff writer Tom Abate for a February 25 San Francisco Chronicle article detailing a recent scientific meeting: "Designer babies, bionic adults and genetically 'improved' humans used to be the stuff of science fiction, but now these are not merely possible but probable outcomes of biotechnology." (The headline writer added more literary allusion to the article with the tag: "Brave new world of genetics explored at Academy of Sciences meeting.")
Finally, consider a May 5 New York Times Week-in-Review article by veteran science writer Sheryl Gay Stolberg, headlined "It's Alive! It's Alive!" Stolberg interviewed a number of scientists and research proponents who were perplexed by the emphasis on the "mad scientist" threat in cloning research. "Popular culture is replete with scientific cautionary tales: Frankenstein and Dr. Strangelove, to name two," she wrote. "And history has witnessed science put to evil purpose: the Nazi experiments on Jews, biowarfare and the atomic bomb. But does that necessarily mean science itself is to be feared?" Stolberg asked rhetorically.
Opponents of cloning research know very well that journalists are drawn to these dramatic literary conventions in formulating news accounts. They also know that many of these popular culture and historical metaphors frame biotechnology issues in ways that favor their preferred policy outcomes. By discussing cloning and biotech research in terms of Frankenstein, mad scientists, or Brave New World, cloning opponents emphasize certain dimensions of the issue over others, limiting debate to terms that marshal support for their position.
This tactic is most readily apparent in a number of paid political advertisements that have been running in Washington, D.C., and in the home states of senators viewed as swing votes on the cloning legislation (or who may be vulnerable on pro-life wedge issues come the November elections). In these radio and television spots, the pro-life groups emphasize themes of mass commodification, manufacture, and mass harvesting -- all of which pop up in Attack of the Clones. Take this radio ad sponsored by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) that began running in Arkansas last week, with key metaphors and frames in italics:
ANNOUNCER: A message from Arkansas and National Right to Life.
WOMAN: Honey, look at this story. It looks like Senator Blanche Lincoln will probably vote to allow human embryos to be cloned and then killed in experiments.
MAN: What?
WOMAN: Remember President Bush urged the Senate to pass the Brownback bill to ban human cloning, before human "embryo farms" open for business in this country? Well, some biotech corporations really want to clone human embryos, grow them for a while, then kill them for their parts. But Blanche Lincoln apparently thinks that's OK -- as long as they fill out some paperwork and make sure all the embryos die while they are still small.
MAN: Let me see that. Lincoln Sees Pluses In Cloning Embryos? My word! But look here -- at least our other senator, Tim Hutchinson, supports the Brownback ban that President Bush wants. Hutchinson said that cloning is "human beings trying to take the role of God."
WOMAN: Well, he's right. It's wrong to create human embryos and then harvest them like crops.
ANNOUNCER: If you agree with President Bush and Senator Hutchinson that the cloning of human embryos should be banned, then urge Senator Lincoln to join them in support of the Brownback bill.
These NLRC ads come on the heels of other radio and television spots that have been on the airwaves since March. These earlier ads, sponsored by Stop Human Cloning, a group chaired by the aforementioned William Kristol, targeted four undecided Democratic senators in Georgia and North Dakota and played on similar themes. Kristol was up front about Stop Human Cloning's message strategy in comments to the Washington Post back on March 5. "With these ads we're taking the debate to the American people," Kristol said, "and we're confident that they will urge their senators to close this door leading to the horrors of the Brave New World."
So has public discourse on cloning gravitated towards the Dark Side? Scientists certainly seem to think so. Researchers have long lamented the use of the term "cloning" to describe the technical procedure they prefer to call "somatic nuclear transfer." For example, in a February 15 editorial in the journal Science, prominent scientists Bert Vogelstein, Bruce Alberts, and Kenneth Shine wrote that "The goal of creating a nearly identical genetic copy of a human being is consistent with the term human reproductive cloning, but the goal of creating stem cells for regenerative medicine is not consistent with the term therapeutic cloning." The trio continued: "Although it may have been conceived as a simple term to help lay people distinguish two different applications of somatic cell nuclear transfer, 'therapeutic cloning' is conceptually inaccurate and misleading, and should be abandoned."
But though the term "cloning" may be technically misapplied in this context, there is little that scientists can do to shift the current nature of debate, or disassociate "therapeutic cloning" from Star Wars-esque interpretations. Instead, therapeutic cloning advocates would be better off adopting message strategies that promote their own preferred policy outcomes, as they have indeed begun to do. In congressional testimony and in op-eds, for example, scientist Paul Berg and former Senator Connie Mack have compared the hyperbolic metaphors applied by cloning opponents to similar rhetoric used in opposition to recombinant DNA research during the 1970s. As Mack and Berg argue, despite the harsh claims of opponents, Congress eventually allowed rDNA research to continue, leading to significant advances in biotechnology with no known calamities or disasters.
Although the current message strategies used both by opponents and proponents of cloning research might fall short of certain notions of ideal democratic discourse, they play on the realities of the political arena. The public and lawmakers alike draw upon popular culture, including the moral lessons of Frankenstein, Brave New World, and even Star Wars, as heuristics for making up their minds about cloning. Although Star Wars allusions have thus far been relatively few and far between in the cloning debate, we can expect them to pick up as the film hits theaters in the coming days. After all, to the victors in this war of literary allusion and colorful metaphor go the political spoils.
