(no subject)

[trinityvixen]

Great quote from wellgull today after seeing Children of Men. I mentioned it was time to go home and watch something with sunshine and rainbows and unicorns because they'd counterbalance the depressing stuff from the movie.

wellgull: Unicorns are rapists!

I could explain it, but why ruin it? Also, before I left him and moonlightalice on the platform, I called over my shoulder "You're a pervert!" like right into the face of a girl getting onto the train with me. Said woman kept giving me a silly grin whenever I looked over in her direction. She looked alarmingly like a hotter Princess Astra/Romana II, for reference (for the two, maybe, of you who will understand that). Oh yeah, smooooooth.

For the record, Children of Men is very good, well performed, and a bit bleak. Like Pan's Labyrinth, the violence in it was meant to shock you with both how gruesome it could be but also how real. In particular, the scene towards the end, there are people in awe of one of the heroes, and as you watch them bow and reach for the hero as divinity, there's this whole pause in the violence, but there isn't at the same time. One of the people bowing and looking on in awe is shot in the head, people go back to killing each other, only a moment for peace. Of course, the violence was intentionally referencing the situation in Iraq, both by association, homage, and just feel. As the main character runs around, the government shoots at anyone who isn't the government; factions shoot at one another and the army troops; people trying to surrender to one or another side are cut down; hiding space/cover is sparse and people bunch up cowering behind one another. Nothing makes sense. For no reason, off of no allegiance, no betrayal, people are murdered. People who determinedly stay out of it...can't. I find that more heartbreaking and compelling than the duplicated image of the prisoner from Abu Gharib standing with his arms out and a bag on his head. We get it, trust me.

Comments

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Actually I was the one who said that.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

LIAR!

But possibly you are correct. Meh, too lazy to correct it. Just tell people if you want to really take credit.

[teneda.livejournal.com]

When I saw Children of Man and that scene came up, it reminded me of your post a while back about how Silence speaks worlds. No sound, no music, just silence.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It definitely does. The power of the absence of a thing we consider omnipresent--it grips you, pulls you along until you're inside. When you take away color, you focus on movement, and then movement and actions become all the more important (which is why a film shot in black and white on purpose has to make sure it's extracting killer performances from everyone). When you take away sound, you take away your means of referencing your world; humans don't echo-locate or anything, but we do place sounds as a means of assuring the size and distance of places (also, typically, sounds convey safety status, as when, before you go to sleep, you listen for sounds around you to be sure all is well).

In that scene, I was just terrified alongside the main characters because there was no way to hear the very imminent threat of bullets and bombs. The thing Julian said about the ringing in Theo's ears being cells dying? Creeped me the fuck out.

[teneda.livejournal.com]

It's true. Everytime your ears ring, it IS that one frequency that is no longer going to be heard. Luckily our minds fill in the blanks. It's only when lots of them have been destroyed that you go deaf.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Guess I know a few frequencies I won't be hearing then. I've definitely come home from a few concerts with ringing that persisted. If only the bands could agree on which frequency was okay to burn out of my brain!

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Well, if your favorite band were named Dialtone...

(hey, that joke could've been worse. Ask me how!)

I found Children to be simultaneously less and more terrifying than Faun's (I refuse to follow a stupid translation). Because Faun's DID happen, while Children only COULD happen -- and yet, approximates what IS happening and what HAS happened in many cases.

I don't know why, but I'm partially comforted by the institutionalization shown in the violence in Children. In Faun's it was driven by purposeless cruelty and brutality, which everyone should have seen through as purposeless and sociopathic -- he finds the rabbit, and still feels no guilt, acknowledges no self-blame. In Children people were sincere, and sincerely believed they were doing the right thing (even when they were utterly crazy). Nothing was wilfully crueller than was deemed necessary. And yet, once "necessary" has removed the moral imperative, they still felt not guilt, and acknowledged no self-blame...

I was also led to believe that perhaps a massively reduced fertility would be a good thing for the planet, even if a bad thing for humanity. But that's a side issue.

Darnit, I still want an ending though!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I hear you on the depression point of "something that happened" vs "something that could happen," but I think violence perpetrated with a moral objective is scarier than anything else. Julian said it--they stopped bombing because it wasn't working a, and b, was wrong. In that order (actually, I'm not sure she ever phrased it as "wrong," though she certainly said they stopped because that tactic wasn't working to get people recruited to their side). And she was the one who wanted to do things the peaceful way. And she got killed for it by people possessed by ideologies of violence being necessary for success. Nothing "willfully crueler than necessary" is all well and good, but there was no way to bargain with that kind of enemy. The Captain isn't much better, I grant you, and he's definitely scary as fuck, but people who believe something so much they kill for it always are.

Long way of saying moral imperative doesn't have to be removed for it to be creepy-as-all-get-out.

Massive infertility would destroy the planet. That much, I agreed with. Because it would start somewhere. Somewhere with good medical coverage, probably, like with the doctor in the film. It would be a terrorist plot (since it takes place near enough in our future for that to still be the mindset, unfortunately), and some country would suffer the wrath of the first world countries for it. That's before taking into account the normal racist shit that would go down within America. The joke I made about the gays getting married = the infertility of humanity? Not really a joke with enough people that we should be afraid.

In that way, I guess that's why Men creeped and disturbed me a lot more than Pan's, for exactly the same reason you can came to the opposite feeling: Pan's has happened, Men could happen. Seeing as the Spanish Civil War isn't really a threat to me, the potential of a bunch of fatalistic shitheads killing me or putting my world into a police state because ZOMG NO BEBBIES is much more freaksome for me.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Massive infertility would destroy the planet.
Perhaps. I'm still not sure I buy that -- I feel like in the absence of any explanation at all, we wouldn't be able to find an excuse to go to war, especially when we see that it's happening to all the target countries too, and when people realize that if their sons die in combat or from IEDs, the family is gone. I feel like we would be more protective of our children if we realized we could never have any more. But I would predict that this would destroy human society, not necessarily the planet itself.

Anyway, that aside -- if massive infertility would destroy the planet, it's also the case that our present massive fertility probably will. Longer lifespans + having too many bebbis = desertification, soil depletion, water resource drain, and trash pileup, not to mention the whole global warming thing, all of which spells big big problems not just for human society but for the rest of the biosphere, too.

As for the bombings thing -- that was another of my issues with the movie's premise. It seems like enough native Britons are dying that they'd practically *need* the suggested level of immigration to replace the folks blown up in the bombings or killed by the rampaging hordes...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I feel like in the absence of any explanation at all, we wouldn't be able to find an excuse to go to war
I don't think it would have to be war at first. There would be surging anger, rising levels of depression and frustration, lowered patience and tolerance. You'd start with people on the edge and the ones more prone to provocation and instability would spark off something. It's way too easy to get weapons, and then the government would roll out to protect the peace, and someone somewhere would get itchy with "the button," and yeah, so on and so forth. Seeing what infertillity and disppointment over not having children can do to normal people under normal, non-global-problem-related stress is convincing enough for me.

it's also the case that our present massive fertility probably will
That, I doubt anyone disagrees with. It's just that this movie was focused on the people, and people don't care about the planet, as we've proven. A better movie/book for you would be The Stand, which actually does mention how, with nine-tenths of humanity eliminated, nature starts to take back hers (and good for her!).

they'd practically *need* the suggested level of immigration to replace the folks blown up in the bombings or killed by the rampaging hordes..
Who knows in fantasy sci-fi? I think the xenophobia towards the