The only way to keep a society from dying is to know how one dies in the first place. You have to know the signs, and then you have to look for them. It’s difficult to say whether our society is dying, but it’s hardly divisive to suggest that it’s struggling. 2020 has been a struggle year for many individuals and for the societal comforts we cling to and take for granted. The novel strain of the coronavirus, quarantine, and the safety measures it’s induced are an easy focus. The oft forgotten crisis is the ever-looming specter of climate change and environmental damage. 2020 also just so happens to be a crucial political year, with the American presidential elections fast approaching—this year’s election promises to be a historical turning point and one with wide-reaching ramifications for the future. The killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd all happened this year, lest we forget. They sparked widespread protests and increased support for the Black Lives Matter movement. They also sparked a general interest in anti-racism.
To summarize, a lot has gone wrong in 2020, and people have noticed. And it has led people to speculate upon all the other things that might be wrong, or at least not working, in society right now. Everyone’s financial struggles—from individuals to small corporations and restaurants in the midst of a new economic crisis—have made apparent just how fragile our societal economic wellbeing is. The aforementioned deaths have made apparent issues within the law enforcement and justice systems. Political apathy has increased: from Trump’s continued incompetence to McConnell’s lack of action to Sander’s loss to a Biden-Harris ticket, some have become increasingly disillusioned with the current normative mechanisms for change and progress. In Canada, Justin Trudeau’s performative joining of protests while at the head of the government has provoked a similar response.
In helmer Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 sci-fi dystopian film Children of Men, society is dying in much more explicit terms. When I say dystopian, I really mean apocalyptic. It’s just not apocalyptic in a grand Independence Day or The Day the Earth Stood Stillkind of way. That’s what’s so frighteningly relevant about it— it is apocalyptic in a way that feels far too possible, a way that’s uncomfortably familiar. In Children of Men, the world is ending because its future has literally died: there have been no new children born in almost two decades. Governments (the ones that haven’t fallen apart, that is) have become increasingly fascist; the United Kingdom, the setting of this film, in particular has become a police state with a very (emphasis on very) active military, another similarity to our present-day reality.
My focus is on a society that seems to have lost its future, and how that society reckons with that loss. Films are capable of doing many things. They often act as both a representation of reality and a re-presentation of reality: showing us the world as it is while also interpreting the world in new ways. In this way, certain genres and sub-genres have acted almost like coping mechanisms for society’s fears, existential and otherwise. It’s the cycle that details our relationship with art and/or media. These forms of media come from us and are informed by us, but we learn from them and are capable of changing due to them. We then create new art and media, and the cycle continues. Several horror, sci-fi, and apocalyptic films arise out of society’s fears about how the world might end, or how society might collapse. Fear of extra-terrestrial life? Independence Day or War of the Worlds. Paranoia over your neighbors or friends? Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Using consumer culture as a means of extracting submission? They Live. Quickly spreading viruses? I am Legend or 28 Days Later. But one of the commonalities between all of these end-of-the-world films is that society as we know it seems to be over; either we follow characters in a new society after the world ends, or we follow characters who reckon with the world’s end.
The state of the future is always uncertain and something to be worried about. It always seems like humanity is dying in some way. That’s what makes Children of Men so direct yet so subtle: by bringing the birth rate to zero, the future of humanity (and thus humanity itself) is quite literally dying. Everyone who’s ever lived has been born. The number of people alive will only dwindle. Where people in some of the aforementioned films die from aliens, or zombies, most of the people in Children of Men’s society will die of old age. The real horror is that they will leave no legacy behind—theirs is the last generation. With no future there is no hope, no reason to struggle or to fight for anything.
Which is my point—we have hope. There are a number of things that have gone wrong and are going wrong in society and in the world. 2020 has been a rough time, and the future seems more uncertain than ever, but it isn’t dead. Not yet. Through Theo, played by Clive Owen, Children of Men gives us an extremely cynical and apathetic protagonist. Former activist, Theo believed enough in change and progress to fight for it. By the start of the film, he becomes an alcoholic bureaucrat, working in a dying system he does not believe in. But he is given the opportunity to fight for his world’s future—and he almost doesn’t take it. Even when it may seem like it, the future is never really dead. It only dies when we stop fighting for it, when we allow the current mood, which can only be described as a sort of nihilistic doomerism, to fully take hold and consume us.
The title of Children of Men depicts a film acutely aware of what is at stake: the future is always on the line. As fatalistic as it sounds, we are evidently at a significant moment in history. When we remain hopeful about our future, we do it not just so we have a society in fifty years, but so that generations after us can have a future. Films like Children of Men remind us that the way this future vanishes isn’t limited to some strange, sci-fi phenomenon like aliens, zombies, or a virus, and it isn’t just when our status quo comes under threat and our political systems seem to fail. The future dies when we do nothing as we see it dying. The future dies when all of this happens and we stand back and let it.
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