Shakur 1

Seattle Shakur

Professor Laursen

Global Citizenship

26 November 2016

How Far can They go?

In the 2010 film Transfer, Hermann and Anna Goldbeck decide to transfer their

personalities into two young African's bodies. Anna only had a few months left to live after being

diagnosed with cancer, and the transfer was the only option to keep her alive. After the procedure

is done, Hermann and Anna get control of consciousness for twenty hours a day, while Apolain

and Sarah, the young Africans, have consciousness for four hours (Lukacevic). This fictional

procedure looks a lot like plastic surgeries that are being done today. When people change

themselves physically, they then alter themselves mentally. The more and more surgeries one

has, the less they resemble their former selves, and no longer possess the same personality they

had before all the surgeries.

After Hermann and Anna had the transfer, they not only looked like different people, but

were in completely different bodies then they lived in for the majority of their life. When one

first gets plastic surgery, they may still have the same personality as before. However, this

changes by the way their friends treat them, altering the way they define themselves. For

Hermann, his friends were used to his seventy-eight year old white self, and treated him

differently when he changed to a young African man. A lot of them made racist remarks about

his new body. One friend stated, " My God, you are black!" when he first saw Hermann after the

surgery. Another time, his friend would not allow him to go in a club that he visited regularly

because of the way he looked. He said that members of the club are bother by "people like him"
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(Lukacevic). These types of reactions start to change the ways one with plastic surgery views

themselves.

One may not realize, but the way they look, all the flaws and imperfections, are a part of

how they define themselves. With the old features gone, their self-definition suffers and they

have to change their personality to go alone with the new look (Fleming). Anna went through an

identity crisis after the transfer into Sarah's body. Hermann told her she had the prettiest nose and

Anna replied, "Who are you complimenting? Me or her? (Lukacevic)" This shows that Anna did

not see her physical appearance as herself anymore. Also, Anna dreams were altered after the

transfer, telling the audience that her body was not the only part of her that changed after the

procedure. People with plastic surgery need to alter their perception of themselves internally, in

order to mirror what they look like on the outside.

Plastic surgery not only changes how one sees themselves, but also how they see the

world around them. With a different appearance, people notice things they have never paid

attention to before. Anna realized that the grass around her smelled different than it normally did

before the transfer. Also, since her skin was now black, she started noticing racism all around her.

Hermann kept using the word Negroes around her, and she did not realize how offensive it was

until that word was targeted towards her. The procedure made her more accepting of people

outside of her race, and made her notice racial inequality that was happening right where she

lived.

To end with, plastic surgery does alter people's personalities. They began to see

themselves in a different light, think differently about their friends, and change their perception

of the world. There is no clear line on how much plastic surgery is too much, where one becomes

a completely different person than before. However, one surgery is enough to change one's
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thought's. This change, whether positive or negative, would have never happened without the

surgery.

Works Cited

Dosoretz, Elizabeth. "Does Plastic Surgery Change Your Identity." The Huffington Post. 11

October 2012. Huffingtonpost.com. 8 December 2016.

Dovey, Dana. "I Think Therefore I am: Epigenetics and How DNA Can Change From Just the

Experience of Living." Medical Daily. 23 January 2015. Medicaldaily.com. 5 December

2016.

Fleming, Olivia. "Can too much plastic surgery change your personality? Excessive cosmetic

procedures could lead to identity crisis, warn psychologists." Daily Mail. 9 April 2012.

Dailymail.com. 6 December 2016.

Transfer. Director Damir Lukacevic. Schiwago Film, 2010. Film.

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