Controversy description
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Controversy description
After reading my textbook on Aging: Concepts and Controversies, one controversy that has most grasped my attention is the controversy on why our bodies grow old. The author describes aging as time-dependent biological changes, which might have a single fundamental cause. The Biological Theories of aging attempt to explain the causes of aging but none of the Theories of aging explains the entire complex processes that occur in human cells. The two broad kinds of theories of aging are chance and fate but, I agree most with the chance theory that attributes aging to external events such as the accumulation of negative energies like mutation, wear, and tear that damage the body cells over time. That implies there are possibilities for a human to step in and rectify the aging body or adjust the genetic program. Among the detailed biological theories of aging, the one that I find most making sense is the wear-and-tear theory. This theory attributes aging to a chance in which the body wears out but undergoes repair. However, even after repair, the cells do not restore fully into the original state but continually weaken with time resulting in aging (Moody and Sasser, 2018).
Movie
The film, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ fits the controversy on why our bodies grow old. The film portrays a scene with a boy named Benjamin Button that is born old, but with time, the boy becomes younger, which is an ultimate fiction. The movie seems to offer a solution to the fantasy of the human attempt to reverse the aging process. Although the film does not explain really why Benjamin age backward, the scene gives an idea that may be a higher power made this possible for an unknown reason. The argument about a higher power is relevant from the symbolic blind clockmaker who appears at the beginning of the movie. The clockmaker creates a station clock that counts time backward, and that was after losing his son in the war. The station clock symbolizes the blind man's wish to reverse time and have his son live again. In the same manner, perhaps a higher power gifted Benjamin the ability to live backward, thus gaining strength and health with time instead of becoming weak (Fitzgerald and Calef, 2008).
Character Response to Controversy
Benjamin Button responds to the controversy on why we grow old by trying to oppose the wear-and-tear biological theory (Moody and Sasser, 2018). According to Fitzgerald and Calef (2008), Button being born old and aging backward rests on a mistaken premise. It depicts a man who is born old but dies an infant many years later. All the people around him grow older as one expects, but Benjamin Button passes them on the way down.
Analysis of Character Response to Controversy
The character’s response to the controversy on why we grow old to me is ultimate fiction because if we assume that Benjamin Button became younger with time, the repair processes on damaged body cells must mysteriously turn more effective, which does not happen in the real world. What the character depicts through backward aging is that through human intervention, humans can slow down the aging process by limiting the accumulation of damaged molecules and negative factors that accelerate the aging process. However, even with human intervention, physical aging is inevitable because the damaged cells finally exceed the capacity for repair and weaken (Moody and Sasser, 2018).
An alternative response Benjamin Button might have made would be on whether old age has meaning. Benjamin Button helps us to explore the way age dictates identity. That implies that how old we correlate with who we are. Benjamin Button is born old with the emotions and the mind of an old based on how he enjoys the company of older men when he is a newborn. However, his personality changes as he physically gets younger and he starts being more social and vivacious (Fitzgerald and Calef, 2008).