In examining these two texts together, one issue stands out in comparative relevancy: embodiment. It is central to both texts, and informs nearly all of the decisions and attitudes of the characters. With Dirty Pretty Things's take on the sale of the body, and more importantly to me, some sort of distancing of body and "self" we see an estranging of embodiment, which can also be seen in the alien race of "Gethenians" The Left Hand of Darkness, with their fluid metamorphoses in sexuality.
Dirty Pretty Things is a British film, concerned primarily with the (very British) notion of post-colonialism. That is to say, how the former colonizer and empire treats "subjects" of the former empire in their relation as members of "new" (most independent former British colonies are hardly recent phenomena, however, it is clearly still a very pertinent issue in that culture) or foreign societies. First off I noted the abasement that Okwe elucidates to the illicit organ donor at the climax of the film. He describes the invisible status afforded immigrants (of any status) to London and how persecution is the immediate response to breaching that invisibility compromise. He relates the horrible conditions they live in and the terrible work that they endure. This invisibility bodily manifests throughout the film by showing lack of privacy and the habitation of tiny, cramped spaces. The most interesting thing I found was the contradiction that desperation put on the body. In that I am still considering that the mind and body are not split (Cartesian Dualism deal again; none of that please), the idea that one would sacrifice body for identity is intriguing and tragic. The sale of a kidney for a fake passport hardly seems an easy sacrifice or something that should be necessary to attain a livable life.
On the other hand is the social mentality created by an entirely different concept of embodiment. The beginning of The Left Hand of Darkness has me wondering at the connection between the anti-progressive, laconic pace of the people of Karhide. In that they have no sexual notions or desires except for a few days at a time out of a 26-day cycle, the Gethenians have a radically different structured society. I have to think, how would advertising (to us in our world/society) be different if sexual desire was not a prevalent mental condition?
Thinking about the combination of the two just leads me to believe even more strongly in the notion of intersubjectivity and the embodiment of perception. The Gethenian model seems to me to show us the way in which social constructions influence the body, but at the same time (discursively!) the body is the means on which society is crafted. (E.g. doorknobs are made to be grasped by fingers. It would be just as easy to have originally had the lever hand, which requires no dexterity.) Add to this the way in which body and the change of the body physically can change social view of someone from the film, and I like to think we have a good model of how bodies shape society, society reflects bodies and then how acceptance of those bodies by society renders the body a social object, to be accepted only by other members of that society. Like Hegel said (hate to bring up Hegel again, but hell, he's right), there is no subject without another subject. Except, you know, in German.
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