EngineeringEthicsBlog: Tesla and the Secret of "The Prestige"

EngineeringEthicsBlog: Tesla and the Secret of "The Prestige": "The job of the artist in a culture is not so much to solve moral problems, although they can sometimes help, as Harriet Beecher Stowe tried to do with Uncle Tom's Cabin, which she wrote explicitly to expose the horrors and wrongs of slavery. The artist should bring our attention to things we either do not see out of familiarity, or out of unfamiliarity, or for some other reason. The recent debates over so-called 'therapeutic' cloning and embryonic stem cell research, frankly stated, involve the question of whether we should duplicate existing human beings and kill them for some purpose of our own. That is exactly what Angier did with his duplicated magicians. In the movie's system of justice, he died for his wrongdoing at the hand of his enemy. "