Laquian, Jas Jansett F.

The Contemporary World

PS1B Ms. Johanna Adap

Reflective Paper on the movie, “What Happened to Monday.”

The movie was based around one of the arising problem our world is
experiencing, overpopulation. The growth of our human life has increased a great deal in
numbers that has scientists and theorists predicting the future of which we could have an
unlivable environment. Food shortage, higher rate of demand and supply, depletion of
natural resources, degradation of the environment, and an increase in the cost of living, such
factors are produced by our ever-growing population. We are becoming overcrowded, and,
in correlation to the movie, we got to envision the possible outcome if our world would not
take action to control the rate of reproduction. In the movie, seven identical twins learned to
survive in a world where only one child is allowed because they were experiencing
overpopulation. Their government issued a law that affirms a one-child policy called the
“Child Allocation Act,” where they will terminate any sibling that follows after the firstborn.
In our world, population control is the practice of artificially maintaining the growth of the
human population and it is being done by some of the developed countries. This practice
supports contraception and abortion in order to avoid any accidental or unplanned
pregnancy. From the very beginning, I never had any issue with the government
implementing a policy of giving students, or teenagers, contraceptions in order for the
person to be safe from any mistake and to also learn a decent way of acting on their sexual
desires. I have my reasons to believe in being in favor of abortion and one is that we can
never take away or override a person’s right to choose or decide for themselves. That is why
before a pregnant woman can decide that she wants to get rid of her baby, she has to go
through a process of counselling from psychiatrists and experts, and time to think about her
decision thoroughly.

If our world is as advanced (technology-wise) as the one from the movie “What
Happened to Monday,” I believe that we would have found other ways to maintain a sufficient
population growth without causing harm to our lives. In the movie, it can be seen that even
if they had an advanced lifestyle, because of the overpopulated society, there were no cars to
be seen. Except for the government, obviously, but everyone else must walk if they want to
get to their destination. Vehicles are non-existent in their world, but if you think about it, one
of the factors of overpopulation, which is pollution, can be crossed out from the list of
problems that affects the world as a whole. Gas emissions from cars will no longer cause a
headache for the society to solutionize because of its harmful effect/s to the global health of
the world. It amazes me how a movie can relate so much to what our world goes through
everyday. How it affects us to think about issues such as overpopulation and governmental
monarchy. After all of this realizations and learnings, one thing stuck to me the most from
the film. That whatever happens, whatever challenges there might be, family will always be
the foundation of our strengths, bravery, courage, and even weaknesses. Without our family,
we wouldn’t have anything to fight for. Forgiveness is always the key to building the trust in
a family. One might turn their back from them, but he/she will always be family and love is
kind to those who are grateful.