In defense of my admittedly eisegetic interpretation of the film and its title, I ask who declared that ‘traditional’ criteria (plot, characters, dramatic effect) is the default mode of filmic and literary analysis? “Children of Men” represents a good example of a text that asks to be viewed differently. In other words, if you’re looking for complex characters who are swept up in an engrossing plot, “Children of Men” will surely disappoint, as I gather it does for Mike. My problem with a strict formal analysis of a film like “Children of Men” is that it ironically misses the sociopolitical issues raised by a different formal choice of the film: its inversion of the foreground and the background. By no means am I crediting Cuaron for having created a new avant-garde strategy, but I am claiming that the real story being told in the film is to be found in the newspaper clippings in Jasper’s house, the advertisements and public addresses streaming out of and on buildings and buses, the graffiti, the extras, and the settings (especially in the film’s final thirty minutes to which I would add to John’s list that we also enter a space where the Russian Revolution is not dead—is it me and my ‘myopic’ Marxism, or was there more Leninist paraphernalia in the theatrical release than the DVD version?). The last quarter of the film drives home the point that “Children of Men” is about something other than what it appears to be (a genre-ridden ‘mythic’ journey through dystopian country).
I also want to clarify my reference to the pleasure principle. The pleasure principle is not about some unabashed hedonism or the stereotypical behavior of adolescents. The pleasure principle is about warding off unpleasure and keeping trauma at bay; it is a desire for homeostasis, a defense mechanism. People privileged enough to live within the borders of ‘civilization’ avoid two primary traumas: 1) the unexplained infertility (both literally and figuratively) and 2) the government’s promotion of a permanent state of emergency. To avoid confronting these unpleasurable realities, the film begins with a depiction of people seeking the distractions of a celebrity culture. Although the story is ‘depressing,’ it provides some sense of ‘stability.’ The people crowded in the coffee shop derive pleasure from their public grief over the death of Baby Diego.
Quietus represents a more extreme example. Quietus is not about Thanatos or Eros. The government distributes suicide kits in the name of the pleasure principle. Instead of becoming a terrorist or some other disruptive force of resistance, the British government of 2027 would prefer that you kill yourself, thus maintaining some semblance of order in a highly volatile and violent society. Again, this is where I prefer the risks involved with ‘productive misreadings’ over criticism that ‘sticks to the text.’ Often readings based on tried and true criteria are simply wrong—is “Children of Men” really so cynical that it argues that Quietus is a reasonable option for its characters? Or is it an indictment of Bush and Blair’s cynical administrative policies that are neither desirable or inevitable—preemptive military intervention, border and immigration control, the politics of fear, etc.?
Although the film does not centrally focus on specific characters ruled by the pleasure principle—Cuaron seems more interested in depicting the world of those excluded from the fenced in ‘island’ of wealth—there exists enough textual evidence to further support this reading. Besides the obvious example of the art collector who lives a life based on ‘just not thinking about it,’ Jasper represents the withdrawn, survivalist-paranoiac, former-activist who is stuck in the sixties. He spends his time concocting strawberry hashish. When he dies trying to buy time for Kee’s escape, he breaks this cycle of ‘arrested development.’ In this way, his act is a microcosm of Theo’s sacrifice. Theo develops from being a middle-class sell-out who maintains a sense of ‘balance’ in the typical anti-hero fashion of self-medication—alcohol, caffeine, weed, tobacco—to a person who is willing to die for a larger cause. So, yes, I agree that there are examples of causes beyond the pleasure principle. To its credit, the film is careful not to mistake these causes with metaphysically-motivated forms of terrorism either. Theo comes to the realization—shared by the rest of his accompanying cadre—that the lives of the “children of men” are more important than the current generation’s unconditional claims to the present (perhaps that is a better reading of the title than the first one I proffered). Are they realizing that Capital is based on inter- as much as intragenerational inequities? Is a revolutionary class consciousness reawakening after years of dormancy? If you break out in hives when in the vicinity of polemics and critical allegories, you surely hope this is not the case. But I ask, why not? Gramsci said the Left, too, needs its own forms of propaganda.
Sorry for the length of this post--I knew I was in trouble as soon as I sent the first one!
kirk
Ps: Marx and Freud believe in ‘postmodern sincerity’ and not truth?—that’s news to me!
"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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