Hanna, never let me go

Art often deals with the definition of humanity.

Who is human? Who shows human characteristics? How much "difference" can we accept?
These are central concepts that (like so many other things) seem to be revisited time after time, in movie after movie, in book after book.

Hanna is such a story. Born "special" due to a secret American CIA program, Hanna is raised like a killer, ready for when Uncle Sam comes looking. Unaware of her being "different", she fleetingly tries to blend in. Yet, Hanna looks and very much acts like a girl her age. Is her difference really significant then? Isn't she human?

In "never let me go" the characters are raised in a dubious school, where all their lives they feel something is not exactly as it should be. When they finally figure out their fate, they try to reverse it by appealing to the people that they think might classify "humans" as "beings who can love". They, too, want a "normal" life, a chance in normality.

Why would we even care about what defines humanity?

I guess because of what being human implies.

If an embryo is classified as human, you cannot abort it, it's considered murder.
If a clone is considered human, you cannot use it to take it's organs, it's considered murder.
If a genetically modified kid is classified as human, you cannot use it like a killing machine, it's considered "inhumane".

The world's most important definitions are nothing but a big fat slippery slope. No-one really knows (or agrees) when an embryo starts being human, or when it is just a collection of cells. Any attempt to define it is arbitrary at best.

No-one known if someone eating shrimps is really a vegetarian.

In short, millions of years down the line of human civilization, we are not so sure about how to define many important things.

Definitions are futile. Philosophy has failed.

Art, with all its ambivalence, is all we have to debate and discuss these important things.

As always, then, art saves.