Becasue I view the film as largely an allegory of several contradictions of the contemporary capitalist system, I like the second reading Nathan offers. Since there are no children, there are no adults. I think this reading resonates with Zizek's use of Nietzsche's 'last men.' The world of late capitalism is a world of last men who do not believe in any great Cause and just live their lives based on the pleasure principle. The phrase 'Children of Men' signifies that the people living now and in the near future are 'permanent adolescents' in comparison to their forbearers.
-kirk
"Freud doesn't bullshit. This is what gives him this sort of priority he has in our day. It's probably also what makes it the case that there is another who, as we know, survives fairly well despite everything. What is characteristic of the two of them, Freud and Marx, is that they don't bullshit." - Lacan, Seminar XVII
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> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:26:06 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: simple minded answer to simple minded query
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> I guess I'm having a hard time being puzzled by the title's relevance
> to the film. Can you say why you are puzzled? Are you wondering why
> it is "children of MEN" rather than something else? I guess I take the
> "men" to be generic, meaning "humans." But the film could also be
> addressing questions of paternity as I think another poster suggested.
> Apart from being the title of the novel on which the film is loosely
> based, it seems to have several layers of sense, none of which pops out
> as profound or exclusive but all of which seem relevant. (1) there is
> the biblical phrase appropriate for a story of mythical proportions
> having to do with future generations (or the lack thereof); (2) it is a
> story about adults who have to think about themselves as children and
> not really as parents, and they all in this circumstance end up acting
> like adolescents (playing the game of authority figure, as the "fascist
> pig" does, or the game of rebel) -- there is a kind of futility to
> everything they do, because, like children they have the feeling that
> nothing they do will have any real consequence or impact (because for
> them there is no real future) but not for the same reason as children
> who feel their parents can solve every problem they create; (3) it is a
> story about the longing for children, the hope we invest in children,
> and to speak of the "children of men" is to speak of future generations
> in which we invest this hope; (4) at its simplest level the title just
> reminds us of these expectations to set us up for a situation in which
> they were taken from us, and then potentially recovered; (5) the film
> draws upon imagery from contemporary situations to raise the question
> what kind of world we are creating for our children, since even if they
> exist we may think that we have not made for them a decent future. I'm
> trying to think of titles of other recent films and can't think of any
> with titles that are equally appropriate on an immediate level that
> also have several layers of significance.
>
>
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