Love, Loneliness, and the Channel Three News Team

Table of Contents

Introduction: Genetics and Contemporary Fiction

Analysis: Love, Loneliness, and 16 Samples of DNA
Zack: Love, Loneliness, and Superman
Samantha: Love, Loneliness, and Anti-Ghosts
Julien: Love, Loneliness, and Alien Monsters disguised as Politicians
Diana: Love, Loneliness, and Sex with no Strings
Harj: Love, Loneliness, and Anachronic Transference
Narrative, Sowing, and Recombination
Evolution, Devolution, and Genetics

Conclusion: Love, Loneliness, and Coupland's Visions

Works Cited

Genetics and Contemporary Fiction

Man is the watershed that divides the world of the familiar into those things which belong to nature and those which are made by men.To lay one's hands on human generation is to take a major step toward making man himself simply another of the man-made things.Thus, human nature becomes simply the last part of nature which is to succumb to the modern technological project, a project which has already turned the rest of nature into a raw material at human disposal. (Kass 1972)

During the development of genetic engineering, starting with Gregor Mendel in the middle of the 19th century, literature has always been a contributing part of recent progresses in research regarding new ideas and technologies. From novels like Mary Shelley'sFrankensteinover to films like Steven Spielberg'sJurrasic Parkand video games such as 2K Games'Bioshock, American popular culture has steadily accompanied as well as influenced science during their process of developing genetics as an important field of human knowledge and research. As recent discussions show, genetics has not only become a part of science and research, but also an industrial sector driven by capitalism and economic rationality. Not only do arguments exist about the palatability and the benefit of genetically modified flora to feed the Western World; but discussions in stem cell research have evolved as cloned sheep and fetuses in vitro have been cultivated. In view of this rapid advancement and progression, Kass's claim that man will become another man-made thing can be considered as nearly fulfilled. Although laws still prohibit the 'public' cloning of human DNA, the theoretical possibility is already provided and tested by science. This is where Douglas Coupland'sGeneration Abegins.

Set in a near future, the novel creates a gloomy world where bees seem to be extinct, a world where humans take the drug Solon to forget about their fears of future and transience, and a world controlled by social networking and capitalism. In this world five unconnected individuals from very different places (France, Canada, USA, Sri Lanka and New Zealand) and cultures get stung by bees and thus are shifted in the focus of the company that produces the afore mentioned drug. Being examined and held in stimulus-neutral diagnostic rooms, fed with brain samples of each other, the five protagonists are supervised by researcher Serge Duclos who tries to develop cheap basic elements to chum out Solon. After leaving those neutral rooms, the five protagonists are brought to a remote island and are forced to tell stories to each other – short narratives which slowly start to adjust and to adopt elements of each other.

Approaching this from a scientific angle, it becomes clear that an advancement^[1]ofrDNA– which isRecombinant DNA(Turney 1998: 188)–is the scientific method which lets the stories become more and more similar. Jon Turney explains rDNA by saying

that DNA molecules from different sources – even different species – could be spliced up and recombined in more or less controlled ways. Genes from a reptile or a mammal, for example, could be inserted into laboratory-dwelling strains of the common bacteriumEscherichia coli,there to replicate and be expressed. This meant that study of the organization and control of the genomes of higher organisms suddenly became possible. The gene or genes of interest could be abstracted from their normal cellular environment and transplanted into the comparatively simple and well-understood genetic milieu of a bacterium. (189-90)

Reading Coupland'sGeneration Ain the context of Turney's rDNA definition,the administered brain samples which each of the protagonists consumes instigate a genetic experiment in recombinant DNA. Thus, based on the method of narrative analysis, the purpose of this paper is to reveal how those short narratives inGeneration Avisualize an rDNA experiment on a narrative level, i.e. which parallels between narration and this specific kind of genetic engineering experiment can be found and how narration and especially storytelling itself can work as a metaphor for recombinant DNA and therefore genetic engineering.

Love, Loneliness, and 16 Samples of rDNA

To show the narrative visualization of rDNA inGeneration A, the focus of my analysis lies on the 16 short narratives the protagonists have to tell on the remote island. By reading those short narratives, it is salient that a specific standard plot pattern is used to make a certain connection of each story to the other stories evident. This pattern consists of one or more main characters which have to face a problem causing or caused by a desire for something or an addiction to something. Alongside this plot, each story contains an occurrence of death, be it the murder of an individual or the decay of a language, etc. The steady usage of thisstandard plotkeeps up the connectedness between the stories.

To start from the premise that this constant standard plot builds the foundation of the rDNA experiment, – meaning that the assumption of a mutual plot can scientifically be the administration of a dose of somebody's DNA to another subject – it can be said that the use and reuse of different ideas and reasonings from the protagonists depict the expansion and progress of the experiment and therefore the spread of external genomes, proteins, and DNA infused into a subject. These ideas and reasonings are elements which reoccur randomly in the short narratives, e.g. the motif of loneliness which appears in 14 of the 16 stories, or the motif of love seized in 7 stories. By looking at these elements along the story time ofGeneration A,it can be observed that each of these elements issownby one of the protagonists, e.g. loneliness by Zack, and love by Samantha, in one of their short narratives and then is adopted by the others, e.g. Julien mentions (or seeds) seasickness and Harj reuses this element in his own story. Resulting, there is an rDNA foundation (the standard plot pattern) and there are elements (ideas, motifs, etc.) depicting the progress of DNA recombination alongside the novel's story time and plot. “The storytelling chemical,” (Coupland 2009: 344) which is mentioned at the end ofGeneration A,hence can be considered as an essential basic module which allows the DNA of one subject to be injected in other subjects without rejection.

Finally, another distinctive feature can be noted along a) the five last short narratives of the rDNA subjects, and b) the short narrative “The Gambler” told by Serge Duclos: The awareness of the presence of evolution, biomedicine, and genetics. Those short narratives start from very vague allusions on Darwin's and Spencer's “Survival of the Fittest,”^[2]over to the discovery and advancement of biomedicine, ending up with explanations of how genetic engineering, DNA recombination, and the isolation of micro proteins help to fabricate and to produce the drug Solon. Together with the analysis of rDNA parallels in the protagonists' short narratives, the consideration of allusions as well as obvious statements about genetics bring closure to how genetic engineering, i.e. recombinant DNA is depicted inGeneration A:

16 short narratives told by five narrators form a unit by telling various stories, each of them following the same sequential plot pattern. Alongside this pattern each narrator introduces new ideas, thoughts, and reasonings which can spread into other stories by one of the other narrators. Additionally, progress in evolution and genetic engineering is depicted in the last 5 short narratives and in “The Gambler.” Considered in the context of recombinant DNA, it can be said that this structures can metaphorically be seen as the progress of an rDNA experiment. By administering the narrators a dose of each other's DNA and micro proteins, a foundation for the development of common properties and characteristics is set. While the injected materials spreads in each of the subjects' bodies and minds, this progress, the connection of new genomes with old ones, as well as the discard of unimportant or useless genomes, is portrayed as the interlink of the different story elements mentioned afore. Finally, the awareness of having developed into something new – here the implementation of genetics in the plot of the short narratives – finishes and concludes the recombinant DNA experiment. The following analysis shows how this pattern works concerning the 16 short narratives ofGeneration Ain respect of which elements are introduced in each story and how they are visualized. Additionally, the connection between the short narratives and genetic engineering is elaborated to placeGeneration Ain the context of genetics and fiction.

Love, Loneliness, and Superman

Beginning with Zack's first short narrative “Superman and the Kryptonite Martinis” the reader is confronted with a frustrated and desperate Superman, who is tabooed by society and asked by the United Nations to please never help them again since all super villains got defeated. From this problem his addiction develops as he starts drinking Kryptonite Martinis in a bar owned by Yoda.^[3]As his drinking problem evolves into alcoholism and therefore becomes his addiction, his attempts to take in money to pay for his debts degenerate into mass killing. First, death happens to people Superman crushes into diamonds but after a while, when he has lost his last powers he gets shot by police because of his murders. The demise of Superman – or for further analysis, the demise of the individual hero is the first parallel to later stories. Other motifs that reoccur later are loneliness (Superman has no one in his life anymore), alcoholism (he is addicted to the Martinis), and the allusions to science fiction (a barkeeper talking like Yoda).

Completely inverse to Zack's first story which features a comic book hero in a real world is his second one “Yield: A Story about Cornfields,” which lets the real world becomecartoonified^[4]and be saved by a non-comic hero. As well as in Zack's first story, again a problem for the main character (which is in this case the complete mankind) occurs as the world becomes a cartoon with no reason. Out of this, again, a desire develops because of the existence of and attraction to see the last place on Earth which is not a cartoon. After saving the world and restoring it back into a real environment, the superhero Coffinshark the Unpleasant gets murdered. With the occurrence of death in the end of the story, it takes up again the motif of demise of the individual hero. Directly linked to the first story another allusion to science fiction is made by introducing James Earl Jones'^[5]voice as the one of the villain who has turned Earth into a cartoon. Other parallels – to stories told by the other 5 characters – are the motifs of belief/disbelief^[6]and the appearance of the Channel Three News Team.^[7]

[...]

^[1]I use the termadvancementbecause of a future setting in the novel. It has to be used because rDNA experiments nowadays are not conducted with humans on such a high level, yet.

^[2]This phrase was actually coined by Herbert Spencer in a correspondence with Charles Darwin. Darwin adopted the phrase finally in his third edition ofThe Origin of Species.

^[3]Star Wars

^[4]Cartoonification: Turning something real into a cartoon. (own definition) (Coupland 2009: 224)

^[5]James Earl Jones was the voice of Darth Vader in the first three Star Wars movies.

^[6]“People gasped in disbelief […].” (Coupland 2009: 226)

^[7]“[...] he could easily pass as a member of the local Channel Three News Team.” (Coupland 2009: 226) “[...] his new looks to become a successful TV newscaster.” (228)