A quintessential loser, an out-of-job puppeteer, is hired by a firm, whose offices are ensconced in a half floor (literally. The ceiling is about a metre high, reminiscent of Taniel’s hallucinatory Alice in Wonderland illustrations). By sheer accident, he discovers a tunnel (a “portal”, in Internet-age parlance), which sucks its visitors into the mind of the celebrated actor, John Malkovich. The movie is a tongue in cheek discourse of identity, gender and passion in an age of languid promiscuity. It poses all the right metaphysical riddles and presses the viewers’ intellectual stimulation buttons.
A two line bit of dialogue, though, forms the axis of this nightmarishly chimerical film. John Malkovich (played by himself), enraged and bewildered by the unabashed commercial exploitation of the serendipitous portal to his mind, insists that Craig, the aforementioned puppet master, cease and desist with his activities. “It is MY brain” – he screams and, with a typical American finale, “I will see you in court”. Craig responds: “But, it was I who discovered the portal. It is my livelihood”.
This apparently innocuous exchange disguises a few very unsettling ethical dilemmas.
The basic question is “whose brain is it, anyway”? Does John Malkovich OWN his brain? Is one’s brain – one’s PROPERTY? Property is usually acquired somehow. Is our brain “acquired”? It is clear that we do not acquire the hardware (neurones) and software (electrical and chemical pathways) we are born with. But it is equally clear that we do “acquire” both brain mass and the contents of our brains (its wiring or irreversible chemical changes) through learning and experience. Does this process of acquisition endow us with property rights?
It would seem that property rights pertaining to human bodies are fairly restricted. We have no right to sell our kidneys, for instance. Or to destroy our body through the use of drugs. Or to commit an abortion at will. Yet, the law does recognize and strives to enforce copyrights, patents and other forms of intellectual property rights.
This dichotomy is curious. For what is intellectual property but a mere record of the brain’s activities? A book, a painting, an invention are the documentation and representation of brain waves. They are mere shadows, symbols of the real presence – our mind. How can we reconcile this contradiction? We are deemed by the law to be capable of holding full and unmitigated rights to the PRODUCTS of our brain activity, to the recording and documentation of our brain waves. But we hold only partial rights to the brain itself, their originator.
This can be somewhat understood if we were to consider this article, for instance. It is composed on a word processor. I do not own full rights to the word processing software (merely a licence), nor is the laptop I use my property – but I posses and can exercise and enforce full rights regarding this article. Admittedly, it is a partial parallel, at best: the computer and word processing software are passive elements. It is my brain that does the authoring. And so, the mystery remains: how can I own the article – but not my brain? Why do I have the right to ruin the article at will – but not to annihilate my brain at whim?
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