Dr. Nilgun Bayraktar
HUM 102, Spring 2014
Dystopian Imagination in
Children of Men (2006)
Dystopia=dys-[u]topia
• First recorded use by the British
philosopher John Stuart Mill in 1868
• Dys: Greek dus: bad, abnormal,
diseased
• topos: place
• “An imagined place or state in which
everything is unpleasant or bad,
typically a totalitarian or environmentally
degraded one. The opposite of Utopia”
(Oxford English Dictionary)
• Dystopian elements in
Utopia?
• Utopian impulse or desire
in Dystopia?
Gulliver's
Travels (1716)
by Jonathan
Swift
direct response to the utopian
visions of early scientific
thinkers such as Francis
Bacon
traditional utopian
model
• Plato’s Republic (380 BC) and Thomas
More’s Utopia (1516) are primarily
centralist and authoritarian in
orientation
• A dream of order in a world of disorder
Dystopia in the 20th
century
•
“Dystopian narrative is largely the product of the
terrors of the twentieth century. A hundred years
of exploitation, repression, state violence, war,
genocide, disease, famine, depression, debt,
and the steady weakening of humanity through
the buying and selling of everyday life provided
more than enough fertile ground for this fictive
underside of the utopian imagination” (Tom
Moylan, Scraps of Untainted Sky, xi)
dystopian imagination
• the idea of totalitarianism
• the idea of scientific and
technological progress (used in the
establishment of dictatorships)
problem of definition
dystopia: anti-utopia?
• anti-utopia: directed against Utopia and
utopian thought; refuses all utopian
hope and effort.
• dystopia: works not to undermine
Utopia, but rather to make room for its
reconsideration and re-functioning in
even the worst times.
classical form of dystopia
• E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (1909)
• Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924)
• Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932)
• George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949)
• Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
• Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
(1986)
Zamyatin’s We
(1924)
• A critique and a
warning of the
Stalinist totalitarian
regime’s potential.
• Anxieties, fear and
disappointment with
the Russian
Revolution and the
new utopian society
it was supposed to
bring.
Huxley’s Brave New
World (1932)
•
•
•
satirizes capitalism, bourgeois
society, and an all-powerful
totalitarian state
at what human cost social
stability is attained
how what appears to be a
perfect utopian paradise--at first
glance--can turn into a hellish
dystopian nightmare
Orwell’s Nineteen
Eighty-Four (1949)
•
•
society under a brutal
dictatorship with secret
surveillance, never-ending
wars and horrible living
conditions
individuality is considered a
thought crime and people
live in constant fear and
misery
dystopia in utopia
• These (classical) dystopian works
describe and warn against utopias
that at first appear to offer a
perfect life with ideal governmental
organization and living conditions,
but later start to reveal its ugly
dystopian face.
dystopian
film
• Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang
• Alphaville (1965) by Jean Luc Godard
• THX 1138 (1971) by George Lucas
• Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott
• Brazil (1985) by Terry Gilliam
• The Matrix (1999) by Watchowski
Brothers
• V for Vendetta (2005) by James
McTeigue
Metropolis (1927) by
Lang
•
•
•
Silent film set in the year
2000 in a futuristic city
Depicts a dehumanized
urban population enslaved
to the machines they tend
under the rule of a tyrant
Very important for its striking
visual images of modern
anxiety over technology and
urbanization
THX 1138 (1971)
•
depicts a dystopian
future in which the
populace is controlled
through android police
officers and mandatory
use of drugs that
suppress emotion,
including sexual desire
The Matrix (1999)
• Portrays an
illusory,
constructed reality
that is inhabited
by people who are
deliberately kept
unaware of the
artificial nature of
their world
humans as batteries for
machines
Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of
Men (2006)
Children
of
Men
• dystopian science fiction film
• set in 2027
• portrays a bleak future after the
nuclear and environmental
destruction of the entire world
outside of Britain
• imagines a future world where
human reproduction is no longer
possible
•
•
•
•
•
Visualizing the Dystopian
Present
Children of Men as a “critical dystopia” of our
present
Its vision of the future is linked to contemporary
political, economic, and environmental
concerns.
Numerous references to contemporary
geopolitics
A dense network of high-culture and popular
cultural citations
It offers a critique of post-9/11 global politics as
well as a meditation on cinematic aesthetics.
the central thematic
elements
• self-reflexive emphasis on an omnipresent
media in the global age
• military violence and anonymous terrorism
• a nationalist, totalitarian state and
xenophobia
• a disastrous biological and ecological
reality
cinematic techniques
• borrowing from or referencing to
contemporary social and political themes
and visual images/symbols
• an utterly realist style achieved by the
use of long takes and hand-held camera
• wide-shots that activate the background
• reversal of the background/foreground in
the world of the film
Cinematic Technique I:
References to contemporary reality
• Post 9/11 era
• “War on terror”
• Abu Ghraib prison
• Guantanamo Bay detention camp
• Severe immigration laws (militarization of
borders)
• Ecological disasters
Dystopian future is
now!
• “Unlike the traditional utopia, dystopian
fiction posits a society which is clearly
extrapolated (derived) from that which
exists. Where utopian fiction stresses the
difference of the society it depicts ... the
dystopian writer (filmmaker) presents the
nightmare future as a possible destination
of present society” (Chris Ferns, Narrating
Utopia)
Cinematic Technique II: Widescreen Activating the background
• The camera constantly asks the viewer
to look beyond the plot’s white male
protagonist (Theo), who is blind to the
disturbing images of police violence and
social unrest that occupy the dynamic
backdrop of the film.
• Long, wide-shot takes constantly frame
the characters against an equally
detailed and significant environment.
Billboard: “Avoiding Infertility Test is a Crime”
Billboard:
“Suspicious?”
“Report it!”
Picasso’s Guernica
The Arc of the Arts
Guernica in the background
Guernica in the
foreground
References to Abu Ghraib prison and
Guantanamo Bay
Cinematic Technique III: Long
Take
The Illusion of an unmediated
Reality
• The long takes, such as the opening
explosion, make the viewer believe the
movie was shot in real time (when actually
these scenes were shot over several
days).
• Similar to documentary footage or a
newscast
clip: long-take
Hope?
• Is there any possibility for hope in a
dystopian world?
• Is there any possibility to escape the
oppressive political, social, and
cultural tyranny of the dystopian
future?
• Would such an escape institute a
Utopian turn (or return)?
Critical Dystopia
• Children of Men can be defined as a
critical dystopia.
• The film “offers new Utopian trajectories
against a seemingly overwhelming world
system that is striving to achieve its
historical goal of total external and
internal exploitation of humanity and
nature” (Moylan, Scraps of the Untainted
Sky,105).
Is Utopian kinship
possible?
• The Utopian kinship that emerges in
the film replaces blood ties with
collectivity
• This voluntary kinship leads to a
subject who can show us a radical
new potential for the human
Human Project: Utopian
desire?
The boat Tomorrow
Utopia: undefined,
unknown