Surrogates

Surrogates

Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Boris Kodjoe, James Francis Ginty
Jonathon Mostow

The premise of this movie is that the human race develops “surrogates” (or alternate, controllable bodies). The idea of surrogates begins by simply creating bodies for disabled people, so they can live normal lives with the ability to feel; however, the organization’s popularity leads it to turn into a money-making scheme. They create surrogates to reflect every person’s “perfect” body and face. With this technology, people can simply curl up in a chair at home and live through an alternate beautiful body, giving them the advantage of not being harmed. No matter what happens to the surrogate, the human can just pop up out of the chair and go buy a new one.
Now I come to the issues. In this director’s opinion, when people are given the choice to have their perfect bodies, they’re a size 0. They have big boobs, perfect straight hair, and big beautiful eyes. Men, also, like abs and chiseled faces. Is this really what everyone wants? I don’t know about anyone else, but my perfect body is probably a size 10, maybe 9. That’s what I consider right for me. As the term goes, I don’t want to be a “fat girl stuck in a skinny body.” I don’t understand how this is completely unfathomable to those who designed this movie. There was one obese, nerdy scientist who refuses to use a surrogate--and he’s the only one I saw. I do realize, of course, the positive implications of the device; there are many transgendered or intersexual people who would probably prefer to mold their bodies. But that doesn’t give directors the right to assume everyone wants this size 0 body that fits the common gender roles. (As a side note, I didn’t see any gay or lesbian people in the movie--and the one person who seemed to be living his life as another gender was portrayed as a creepy overweight man getting his kicks pretending to be an attractive woman.)
I give this two vagenises.
The Goods: creative and entertaining.
The Bads: ridiculous ideas of what people consider perfect and narrow sexual views.