children of men

I was surprised at first by the idea of refugee camps in Children of Men. I wouldn’t have made the connection between the end of mankind and a surging politics of nationalism. I think it would be more expected (more mainstream Hollywood, perhaps) to think of the end of humanity in terms of coming together. Perhaps, however, this dystopia is more realistic. If we can think of science fiction as presenting the anxieties of the present, then we might say that our present is fixated on a fear of not going far enough with science—of encountering a disease of our own creation (of the body) that is nonetheless beyond our control (and invisible). Pregnancy is correlated with the visible and the body, like in the scene where Kee shows Theo her pregnant belly—this can only be communicated visually, and there is a tendency in the film to privilege visual over verbal communication. Meanwhile infertility is aligned with the invisible—this kind of invisible, unknowable disease that exists because something (a baby, a future) is absent. Kee’s race, then, is a visual symbol of fertility—man’s origin in Africa, the origin of the future. Is this the rupture for a new future? Starting with a new, African Eden? Of course, Theo is very much presented as the Joseph to Kee’s Mary. A hybrid, bastardized future.

There also were many reminders of the Holocaust—the prevalence of German-speaking refugees, the gates of the camps, the song “Arbeit Macht Frei.” I can’t help but think of the strange juxtaposition of concentration camps with infertility, and the idea of genomics. It’s interesting that Kee’s travels end with her deliverance into the hands of science—science here being an a-political entity, literally floating apart from the nation-state.