allow me to ramble for a moment about iron lung. it may make zero sense i’m just very passionate.
Iron Lung and dehumanization. what happens when you are seen as something “other” because of your actions? something evil, or lesser? how do you define yourself? how do you distinguish yourself from the monsters in that blood ocean? how can you *know* you’re anything different? the themes of how we dehumanize perceived criminals could very well be used in any setting, but it is specifically the sci-fi world that i feel makes this theme soar. our protagonist has been deemed as an “other” by the only known humans left in the world. his existence is considered worthless, nothing more than a tool to use and throw away when it breaks. he is completely, utterly alone. there is no one to tell him that he is human, that his existence has meaning. it’s just him and the monsters in the ocean.
that dehumanization is such a fascinating thing. forgive me if i’m going off the rails a bit here. in our society, we so often stop seeing convicted criminals as human. and that isn’t to say that it’s without reason—who the hell wants to see a murderer or predator as human? but the point is that once we perceive a group as one thing, we don’t allow any exceptions. suddenly all people charged of a crime are deemed “other”, no matter the severity, nor whether or not they are guilty.
it brings up the question: do you have to be good to be human? is your humanity determined by your morality, or in this case, perceived morality? simon, responsible for enough deaths to warrant the nickname “butcher,” is an apologetic, painfully hopeful man. it feels like a direct contradiction to what we, and the COI, expect and *want* him to be. he is a murderer, so he is not human. he is not human, so he is not sympathetic, he is not apologetic, he does not feel or care in the same way we do. but he does, because he is just as human as the rest of them.
the monsters in the ocean mimicking voices and luring simon in also tie into this theme, i believe. symbolically, they are that temptation of accepting the label of “other,” not because of personal fulfillment, but because of that anger to get back at those who deemed you other, to prove them wrong. that temptation to be the monster they claim you to be.
there’s also the subject of ava. what a beautifully nuanced character she is, might i say! ava partakes in the dehumanization of simon, but if you look a little deeper, i’d say it was never out of malice. it was out of a desperate attempt at *disconnecting.* if she disconnects with the idea of the convict being as human as herself, she can make the hard decisions of sacrificing him for the greater good. she *wants* to stop seeing the convicted criminal as human, but as the story progresses, it becomes obvious that she can’t. if i were to make an extended metaphorical poem about it, i’d compare it to putting down an animal deemed vicious.
ava and simon, as characters, break me into a million pieces. how can you say one is more morally “correct” than the other? is ava’s desperation to save humanity wrong? is simon’s want to a life outside of the crime he committed wrong? they are both human, painfully so. simon is forcibly dehumanized by the society around him, while i’d say ava dehumanizes herself and simon to help her push through impossible decisions. they both have blood on their hands. they both can be seen as monsters for what they’ve done. but they aren’t.
like i said this might just be a nothingburger post, but this movie is an excellent shell to crack open if you ever want to consider the question “what makes you human?” and ask yourself if you can truly make a line between “good” and “bad.” it’s quite interesting.
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