"Never Let Me Go," a sorely-underseen film from
2010, can be easily read as an allegory for the exploitation of animals. The
dystopian romance, based on what I hear is a masterful novel, stars Carey
Mulligan and Andrew Garfield as a couple who belong to a class of humans raised
to be forced organ donors. While the story could serve as a specific metaphor
for xenotransplantation, in a broader sense it mirrors the plight of all
domesticated animals, whose entire existence is predicated on their use by
others.
The film, which I will necessarily spoil, begins in the
1970s at Hailsham, which appears to be an idyllic British boarding school,
attended by Mulligan and Garfield's characters, Kathy and Tommy. A
guilt-wracked teacher tells them they're fated to die as young adults, after
their bodies have been harvested for medical purposes. When they turn 18, Kathy
and Tommy are moved to a group home for future donors, where they hear a rumor
that loving couples can seek a temporary deferral from their duties. Despite their long-held
feelings for each other, Kathy and Tommy do not share a romantic relationship.
This changes after Tommy starts the donation process. Seeking further time
together, the couple pursue the rumored deferral only to discover it's a myth.
Tommy dies as a result of harvesting. The film ends with Kathy scheduled to
begin the same process.
In discussing the movie, it should be mentioned that Tommy
himself explicitly compares the lot of his kind, who are the product of
cloning, to the victims of animal agriculture. "I suppose you both heard
that Hailsham is closed. The only schools left now — you hear they're like
battery farms," he says, suggesting other institutions treat donor
children exceptionally poorly. "I'm sure that's an exaggeration
though." The comparison is apt. Like farmed non-humans, Tommy and Kathy
are brought into the world solely so they can be objectified in a very literal
sense.
If other schools in the story are akin to factory farms,
Hailsham is the equivalent of a more 'humane' operation, such as those
championed by locavores like Michael Pollan. Without the proper context, a
viewer could be forgiven for thinking the posh Hailsham was filled with
privileged children. And yet like these gentler forms of agriculture, Hailsham
ultimately raises its wards so they can be killed and dismembered. When the
headmistress castigates students for smoking, it's not for their own benefit,
but rather because they are damaging bodies which are seen as belonging to
others. "Never Let Me Go" reminds us that regardless of the
conditions provided on 'humane' farms, animals exist in such places to be
exploited.
Like speciesism, which emerged to justify human
exploitation of animals, an elaborate ideology exists in Kathy and Tommy's
world to rationalize the violence done to clones like them. When the couple
visits their retired headmistress as adults, they wonder why their artwork was
saved at school. "You have to understand," she replies,
"Hailsham was the last place to consider the ethics of donation. We used
your art to show what you were capable of, to show that donor children are all
but human. But we were providing an answer to a question no one was asking...We
didn't have the Gallery to look into your souls. We had the Gallery in order to
see if you had souls at all." It should be pointed out that despite this
deep-seated enmity to clones, the organ-harvesting process seems to have
existed less than fifty years into the film's setting. In contrast, speciesism arguably
originated with animal domestication and thus is infinitely more entrenched in
our culture.
Ultimately, "Never Let Me Go" is the story of a human
couple reduced to the status of animals. It's a heartbreakingly sad film. But
it's the exploitation that's sad, not the species of the victims.
by Jon Hochschartner
