On Anamorphic Adaptations and the Children of Men

Abstract

In this article, I expand upon Slavoj Zižek’s “anamorphic” reading of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006). In this reading, Zižek distinguishes between the film’s ostensible narrative structure, the “foreground,” as he calls it, and the “background,” wherein the social and spiritual dissolution endemic to Cuaron’s dystopian England draws the viewer into a recognition of the dire conditions plaguing the post-9/11, post-Iraq invasion, neoliberal world. The foreground plots the conventional trajectory of the main character Theo from ordinary, disaffected man to self-sacrificing hero, one whose martyrdom might pave the way for a new era of regeneration. According to Zižek, in this context the foreground merely entertains, while propagating some well-worn clichés about heroic individualism as demonstrated through Hollywood’s generic conventions of an action-adventure/political thriller/science-fiction film. Zižek contends that these conventions are essential to the revelation of the film’s progressive politics, as “the fate of the individual hero is the prism through which … [one] see[s] the background even more sharply.” Zižek’s framing of Theo merely as a “prism” limits our understanding of the film by not taking into account its status as an adaptation of P.D. James’ The Children of Men (1992). This article offers such an account by interpreting the differences between the film and its literary source as one informed by the transition from Cold War to post-9/11 neoliberal conceptions of identity and politics. To articulate the terms of this argument and its implications, I turn to another narrative depicting the identity and politics at the end of history, Francis Fukuyama’s infamous The End of History and the Last Man (1992), published the same year as James’ novel, both offering meditations on the Cold War and speculations (albeit on different registers) on its aftermath. Incorporating these two texts into Zižek’s anamorphic paradigm contributes to our understanding of the film’s message regarding the “state of things” during the post-9/11 era, as well as the Cold War era that preceded it, as perceived through the eyes of Theo adapted to suit the respective dystopian conditions of the novel and film.