In particular the early part, where capitalism of course has to continue but the UK's government uses the crisis as an opportunity to do more fascism. I highly recommend you all pirate Children of Men and give it another watch. I got very different vibes watching it now then I did when it came out.
Some things that stood out to me:
The living conditions of the refugees were way too nice compared to reality's USA, so the conditions of dystopian England would be a lot worse in reality.
England would not be the sole government that survives a major pandemic.
Pretending that England isn't the only country that exists in this world, society would look like this if the pandemic was even slightly more deadly. The movie was way too optimistic on how we'd handle a pandemic, we know now that if people actually went infertile the western world would go full on accelerationist death cult. Not murdering people would make you a total wuss.
The movie takes place seven years from now, and everything looks like a shittier version of right now except that there's still newspaper stands. Even though the newspaper stand exists solely to provide exposition it's a little weird that print media is still going. Maybe it is accurate and Rupert Murdoch is a key player in the post apocalypse hellworld. Idk it just stood out.
Weird that Charlie Hunnam is in this
I watched it again last year and was disturbed by how increasingly relevant it is. Makes me think of the all the climate refugees there's going to be this century.
I like Mark Fisher's reading of the film as reflective of the cultural and political sterility of capitalist realism.
I rewatched it recently, and I have to agree. In some ways though the lack of smartphones and other portable government surveillance devices makes it look somewhat dated, as it came out in the 00s just before the cultural impact of the iphones and the dramatic cultural shift survillance capitalism had on the world. I wonder what it would look like if made today.
There's also a lot of of post-7/7 bombing sentiment in the feel of the film, even riding on that deep-seated fear of islamic terror that still pervades the culture to this day.
The one consistent criticism I've heard levied at Children of Men is that the goal Theo moves towards over the course of the film, smuggling a woman out of the country and onto a waiting boat, is vague and ill-explained. But the vagueness of Theo's goal is not just a piece of lazy plotting, it's crucial to the film's themes. Theo's mission is a metaphor for the challenge facing the first world citizen. Like Theo, we live in a world of inhumanity and injustice right outside our doors, like Theo we retreat from our responsiblities for this in cynicism. We point out that, while things are fucked up, there's no clear way to unfuck them. If the audience is meant to identify with Theo, they must also identify with his dilemma: why stick your neck out and risk your comfort or even your life fighting for a goal that you can't see and have no reason to believe will succeed? Were solutions to world problems readily apparent, there would be no excuse for inaction. In the film, Theo's cynicism is eventually overwhelmed by his awakening humanity and he pushes forward into a dangerous unknown, his only reassurance that he is acting for the right reasons. That is the sentiment that lingers as the film ends: lack of clear alternatives to injustice is not a justification for allowing injustice to continue unopposed. Not if you value humanity at least.
we know now that if people actually went infertile the western world would go full on accelerationist death cult
This is really just an aside but I do wonder about this. I've been watching Handmaid's Tale which explores a similar idea. But like, if all of the sudden people were mostly just unable to have kids, would we all really care? I mean obviously people don't want to see humans go extinct but for some reason I have a hard time buying the idea that we would collectively lose our minds if the human race was just gonna slowly die out (as opposed to dying out by a big meteor or something).
But like, if all of the sudden people were mostly just unable to have kids, would we all really care? I mean obviously people don’t want to see humans go extinct but for some reason I have a hard time buying the idea that we would collectively lose our minds if the human race was just gonna slowly die out (as opposed to dying out by a big meteor or something).
I suspect older Anglos (boomers, gen X) have seriously underestimated the effects of higher education, accessible birth control, online porn/dating, economic stagnation, social atomization, and Malthusian climate propaganda have had on millennials' and zoomers' fertility decisions/propensity to have children in the imperial core. Japan is certainly the canary in the coalmine here but the Anglosphere and western/northern Europe are at most only a generation behind. Fewer young people want to have kids and more of them choose not to when they have the choice, fully understanding that they can't possibly expect support from a broader community or rely on paid parental leave, and that their children will have little to no social obligation to care for them as they age. Young workers and lumpen look at how young parents, mothers especially, have been treated during this pandemic and recoil at the thought of taking up the enormous burden of childrearing when they know damn well those children would be brought up in worse conditions and suffer a reduced quality of life. Why would people who've been told for most of their adult lives that they're redundant by the economy, worthy only of precarious or otherwise low-paying work with few or no benefits and in some cases stuck living with their own parents, complicate their own struggles by adding a child into the equation if that's completely avoidable? Why give a fuck if the human population suddenly started shrinking as a result of infertility (as opposed to something more grisly like war, plague, famine, or another disaster), when the reduced unemployment/reserve army of labor might actually increase workers' bargaining power?
The exceptions, the people I would expect to go absolutely off the rails, are the fascist and fascist-adjacent "white nationalist" types already freaking out about current demographic trends, and some of the racist neoliberals who only want to impose Malthusian measures on other countries. These are the Evangelicals hell-bent on reversing Roe in the US and spreading anti-birth-control propaganda in sub-Saharan Africa, the tradcaths who fought ruthlessly against the Repeal the 8th campaign in Ireland, the Shinzo Abe supporters who greenlit Darling in the Franx and introduced tax breaks for married people and parents (the so-called "virgin tax"), and in some cases the racist fucks in ICE and CBP prisons continuing the American genocidal tradition of forcibly sterilizing women who can't pass the paper bag test. Some younger people thinking way ahead, who understand that social security and pensions are increasingly structured like an international Ponzi scheme where the younger working-age people subsidize the living costs of retirees, and who haven't already resigned themselves to dying in squalid conditions in some nursing home or hospital as they age, may also put their weight behind one of these pro-fertility, anti-choice, or "demographics is destiny" tendencies.
Check out volker schlöndorff's handmaid's tale if you haven't. The show takes a shit ton from this film. The film is also way less lib.
Print media is still a thing and I don't expect it to go away in just 7 years completely.
I’ve found this movie borderline prophetic. Watched it around the time it came out and since then it’s stunning how actual governments are militarizing/developing into fortified fascist domains in the face of calamities (climate crisis, refugee crisis) instead of solving said calamities, and how it virtually mirrors the events of the movie. The news segment of a 2nd American Civil War that appears on the TV in one scene is an image I’ve been thinking back on as of late as well, appearing in my mind every time there’s been political related violence or shootings in the US.
Truly an accurate depiction of how modern societies deal with impending disaster.
