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“Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

bbc.com

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Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#61

Post by trevyn »

huehehue wrote: post #51
Laforet wrote: post #20

On a lighter note, I had a good chuckle when the article mentioned that the director deliberately avoided depiction of cellphones to avoid creating an unintentional period piece[0]. The last movie I watched in the treatre is Clint Eastwood's "Sully" and I distinctly remember the main character using a chronologically appropoaite Samsung flip phone and that single prop instantly dates the movie to the first decade of…

Reminds me of "It Follows". David Robert Mitchell made some pretty interesting prop choices specifically to avoid dating the movie. From his AV Club interview: > There are production design elements from the ’50s on up to modern day. [...] if you show a specific smartphone now, it dates it. It’s too real for the movie. It would bother me anyway. So we made one up. And all of that is really just to create the effect o…

Great reference. The shellphone is one of my favorite parts of that movie.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#62

Post by hsitz »

numbsafari wrote: post #42
Laforet wrote: post #20

On a lighter note, I had a good chuckle when the article mentioned that the director deliberately avoided depiction of cellphones to avoid creating an unintentional period piece[0]. The last movie I watched in the treatre is Clint Eastwood's "Sully" and I distinctly remember the main character using a chronologically appropoaite Samsung flip phone and that single prop instantly dates the movie to the first decade of…

The first season of Law & Order is delightfully full of these sorts of anachronisms. My favorite is when they bum quarters off passerersby to make a call on a pay phone. This horrible plot device, the phone call, is so entrenched in their writing, they've brought it fully up to date in SVU with everyone carrying iPhones.

The pay phone definitely reveals you're dealing with an old Law & Order episode. But it's not an anachronism. Law & Order doesn't purport to display a period of time different from the one in which it was made. When you watch a 1990's Law & Order you see the world as it was in the 1990's. For it to show a scene where someone bums quarters for a pay phone is no more anachronistic than it would be for a film/tv-show depicting a scene from the 1890's to show people riding around in a horse and buggy.

Much different when you're watching a 1990's film that purports to display life in 2020, 2050, or 2100. Then the use of 1990's technology in the film is a true anachronism.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#63

Post by gojomo »

I love this film and at a certain level, it is plausible (and even natural) that in times of existential fear, societies lash out against outsiders/immigrants.

And yet I have economic quibbles!

In an actual fertility collapse, a highly-developed country like the UK would have an immense surplus of infrastructure, housing, machinery, etc – capital – compared to the dwindling number of new, young workers. Immigrants (of all ages, cultures, and skill levels) could become incredibly economically valuable. In comparison, reliable 'guard labor' to try to hunt and confine immigrants would become very expensive.

Compare, for example, the depopulation of the 'Black Death' in Europe in the 1300's. For those who survived, wages and opportunity grew, and attempts to enforce older rules which bound people to undesirable situations collapsed. Wikipedia suggests that "[p]lague brought an eventual end of Serfdom in Western Europe":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Deat...

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#64

Post by StanislavPetrov »

mcphage wrote: post #4

There's one scene in it—and I think people who have seen the movie know the one I'm talking about—that's possibly the most powerful, intense scene I've ever seen on screen. Absolutely worth watching.

Pull my finger!

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#65

Post by duaneb »

iiiggglll wrote: post #59

> The one aspect of the film that doesn’t seem to be coming true is its central premise. The idea is that no human beings have been born in the last 18 years, so when Theo meets Kee, an African woman who is miraculously pregnant, he has to protect her from the various groups who want to exploit her condition. Obviously, we know that this infertility pandemic hasn’t happened: in Children of Men, the youngest person on…

> It's not really about population -- it's about having no future, which is something a lot of people constantly worry about.

One thing the movie (unintentionally) got right was how absurd this is. It really ruined the movie to me, TBH, because it was laughably implausible. Reproduction is what life does best.

I'll obviously have to watch again for the world building....

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#66

Post by DavidAdams »

joelmichael wrote: post #27

It says fertility isn't an issue today, but it's a little out of touch with today's anxieties; most of Europe and Japan have such low fertility that their native populations are in decline.

The anxiety from the film is very close to Europe's anxiety, I think. In the story, England is relatively stable and prosperous in a world full of chaos, but there's a sense that if refugees were allowed in, the stability would be upended and the limited resources of the country would be unable to support the onslaught. Sure, in the world of the film, the English are trying to enjoy the last decades of human existence while clinging to their privilege, whereas in real-world Europe there's a feeling they'll be demographically out-competed by immigrants. Without the pressure from low fertility among natives, European countries wouldn't feel so threatened by immigration.

Ironically, of course, the only workable solution to the demographic crises in Europe and Japan is immigration. Otherwise, pension responsibilities will overwhelm the working-age population and the whole society will collapse.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#67

Post by vidarh »

xor1 wrote: post #41
lobster_johnson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, in William Gibson's Neuromancer, there are no cell phones, despite being set decades into the future. Gibson knows a thing or two about seeing their scifi becoming dated, of course. The famous opening line, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" no longer resonates with anyone born the last 20 years or so (although for a number of years, many digital TVs would displa…

>There's also some fun stuff about people physically carrying information (this also happens in short story "Johnny Mnemonic"). For a world where there's a highly connected, super fast worldwide computer network available, people sure travel around a lot. Sneakernet isn't an irrelevant concept in any sort of context where data transferred through a computer network can be intercepted.

But carrying a concealed micro-sd card with encrypted data would be a lot more convenient. Heck, you could fit many times as much data as in Johnny Mnemonic (40GB, I think?) inside your head too by shoving a micro-sd card up your nose or into your ear.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#68

Post by ramzyo »

djsumdog wrote: post #34

Ssh. Quiet. Don't rock the boat man. The reality is that the US et. al. allies have caused the war in Syria. Not just funded it or supplied the rebels with weapons. The CIA most likely started all of that, to create the distraction we now have. When I mention this to Americans, they act like I'm all crazy. The CIA caused the 1973 coupe in Chile. There's the Bay of Pigs, the Iranian Contras, MK Ultra, The School of th…

It's no secret that foreign intelligence agencies of all nations, not just the CIA, can't fully decouple their charters (effectively to simply gather information to paint a clear picture of what's going on in the world to help inform national security decision makers) from the reality that their directors are appointed by partisans with agendas. This has been a contributing factor to bad things happening in the past, many of which you mentioned, many of which involved the CIA, and many of which occurred during the Cold War. But to suggest that the policies and practices of that time are standard operating procedure now, and that the CIA is orchestrating destabilization efforts in Syria for profit, is to disregard public information concerning the evolution of the role of the CIA in US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. That nations back certain players in international conflicts to advance their own agendas (like the proxy war in Syria now) isn't equivalent to intelligence agencies of said nations deliberately destabilizing regimes for profit or other nefarious ends. That nations (at least the military industrial complex within nations) generally profit from war does not necessarily mean that all war is started for profit. I will concede, however, that I believe this played an outsize role in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#69

Post by SmokyBourbon »

iiiggglll wrote: post #59

> The one aspect of the film that doesn’t seem to be coming true is its central premise. The idea is that no human beings have been born in the last 18 years, so when Theo meets Kee, an African woman who is miraculously pregnant, he has to protect her from the various groups who want to exploit her condition. Obviously, we know that this infertility pandemic hasn’t happened: in Children of Men, the youngest person on…

The fact is overpopulation isn't an issue, it's a myth.

World population is decellerating at a rapid pace and will begin decreasing within decades. It's painfully obvious to anybody who looks at the numbers. But science fiction has convinced everyone otherwise.

Just look at all the countries with programs trying to entice their citizens to start families and make babies. Governments know its going to be a catastrophe.

Our governments spend money at a rate that only a larger population in the future can afford to pay for. If families aren't producing above the replacement rate, we're doomed.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#70

Post by tetraodonpuffer »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #23
Laforet wrote: post #20

On a lighter note, I had a good chuckle when the article mentioned that the director deliberately avoided depiction of cellphones to avoid creating an unintentional period piece[0]. The last movie I watched in the treatre is Clint Eastwood's "Sully" and I distinctly remember the main character using a chronologically appropoaite Samsung flip phone and that single prop instantly dates the movie to the first decade of…

Conversely, in William Gibson's Neuromancer, there are no cell phones, despite being set decades into the future. Gibson knows a thing or two about seeing their scifi becoming dated, of course. The famous opening line, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" no longer resonates with anyone born the last 20 years or so (although for a number of years, many digital TVs would displa…

> "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" no longer resonates with anyone born the last 20 years or so

when reading that my mind conjures a gray sky, but then again when I was young TVs displayed static if you turned them to a dead channel, not solid blue...

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