There’s a regular critique of many dystopian novels and films that argues
they tend to reduce women to secondary characters, whose function is confined
to what it is their bodies can - or can’t - provide.
I want them back! They're my property!
And that because of this, many depictions of dystopia, in film or print,
are anti-feminist - particularly when the writer or director is a man.
And while it is true that women are often relegated to secondary characters
whose function in society relies near exclusively on their bodies,
I don’t think that criticism is necessarily a bad thing.
Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 film, “Children of Men,” is a good example
of how we can look at a lot of non-feminist dystopian stories
as, in fact, feminist critique of the present-day.
"Children of Men," based off of P.D. James’ 1992 book, is one of my favorite movies.
Watching it again in 2020 left me feeling the same pit of despair
I felt when I saw it in theaters.
It’s dark, uncomfortable and seems more like it’s already happening
versus something in the future.
-Poor fugees.
After escaping the worst atrocities and finally making it to England,
our government hunts them down like cockroaches.
-The film, alongside the book, has been critiqued by some as replicating
a tired trope about women in film and print: that their ultimate worth and power
is in their ability to reproduce.
But I think the film provides a good example of how in dystopian art,
these tropes about women can still serve as a critique.
“Children of Men” the film was a radical departure, in many ways,
from James’ book – that’s her by the way, making an appearance in the film.
Like the book, the film’s plot reveals a deeply dystopic world, ravaged by
nuclear war that has wiped out entire countries.
Refugees are illegal and forced into overcrowded camps while poverty,
state violence and government-supplied suicide kits define Britain,
the primary setting of both the film and novel.
There have been no cases of anyone surviving who has taken the preparation.
-The underlying root of humanity’s quite literal doom is that women
have become completely infertile, the last child having been born
18 years before the start of the film.
The film doesn’t bother giving an explanation for why
women stopped having children.
The closest we get is a joke
told by a political cartoonist turned weed dealer, Jasper.
And he says, “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “But this stork is quite tasty isn’t it?”
[laughter]
In James’ book, the disarray of the world is similar, but it’s not women
who become infertile – it’s men, whose sperm count falls to zero.
The book, taking its name from a Bible verse,
also lends itself to a lot of explicit Christian themes,
which aren’t present in Cuarón’s film, but to which references are littered throughout.
Like in this scene, where it’s revealed to both us and the protagonist, Theo,
that the woman he is escorting and protecting, Kee, is, in fact, pregnant.
Jesus Christ.
She presents herself to him naked and in a barn,
referencing the manger birth and her
nakedness paralleling the original state of
man and woman in the Garden of Eden.
Both the film and book, despite their differences and despite being
sometimes critiqued as anti-feminist, focus on the woman’s body
as a vehicle for understanding the state of humanity.
In James’ book, humanity has fallen so far from God that infertility is the punishment.
In Cuarón's film, just like the characters in the movie, we the audience are
supposed to be concerned with the present-day implications of infertility
rather than the reasons for why it happened.
And Kee, a West African refugee, becomes
the hope for a world on the verge of collapse.
But contrasted against the stark reality of the world around her,
Kee’s plight seems, actually, tragically ironic.
In being the only woman able to get pregnant in 18 years,
she simultaneously gains an unprecedented level of importance
while also losing her own autonomy, instead becoming a vessel for a life
even more desired than hers.
She belongs here, and this baby is the flag that could unite us all.
Kee, your baby is the miracle the whole world’s been waiting for.
We need him, Theo! We need the baby, we need him!
It’s a girl, Luke.
I don’t think the exploration of women’s bodies and societal function
in Cuarón’s “Children of Men” differs that much from explicitly feminist explorations
of the same themes – especially reproduction.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” dives into a theocratic American society
where most women have become barren, without any civil liberties and basic rights.
Those who are able to have children are raped and fertilized like chattel.
As long as my baby is safe, so is yours.
The book set the standard for dystopic explorations of the female body
and reproductive rights through a feminist lens.
Books like “Daughters of the North,”
“Future Home of the Living God”
and “When She Woke” all navigate
questions of reproductive rights,
women’s reproductive function
and what it means to live in the heavily
regulated body of a woman.
I think when we watch films like “Children of Men” or "Blade Runner,"
or when we read classic dystopian fiction like “1984” or “Brave New World,”
we see an indictment of women’s mistreatment
– not necessarily a dismissal of it.
Their normalization of women’s primary functions as reproductive or sexual
in an imagined dystopian society, is I think the same as what we find
in explicitly feminist dystopias that focus on reproduction and women’s bodies.
After all, isn’t what makes any society dystopic
the stripping of every person’s humanity?
In “Children of Men,” men are willing to kill for whatever it is that a child
represents, something that they themselves lose sight of:
-I was carrying the baby up the stairs. I started crying.
I’d forgotten what they looked like, they’re so beautiful.
-Women in the film are willing to sacrifice themselves for her
- their own survival becomes secondary.
And we can make an argument there too that this is a repetition of
the same ideas that women have to sacrifice themselves for children.
But I look at this juxtaposition in the film as a
critique of patriarchy, rather than an upholding of it.
There’s this powerful scene, towards the end of the film, where the cries of
Kee’s child serve as a brief but pregnant respite from the indiscriminate violence.
Kee, alongside her child, serve as a reminder of humanity
in the midst of unfettered violence.
Cuarón made the film in the aftermath of 9/11 – he actually didn’t
read P.D. James’ book himself. He wanted to use the framework of the plot
to explore the question of, what if the dystopia we always feared
was the one we were already living in?
In later interviews, Cuarón mentioned
something that has also stayed with me:
that he went into “Children of Men” very
conscious of women’s position in society.
He said that the road to destruction and
salvation is often filled
with women’s sacrifices.
And at its core, I think that’s what a feminist critique of our present day is:
a reckoning with the sacrifice of and for
a woman’s body and being.
Speaking of dystopia, it feels like we're in
one right now. Hmm.
So what are some of your favorite works
of dystopian ficiton?
Let us know in the comments and
come back next week when we come at you
with another great episode
of Pop Americana.