As many have noted, science fiction is better imagined less as a projection of a possible future and more as a reflection of the present. In the preface to his book Connected, Steven Shaviro characterizes science fiction  as

"seek[ing] to grasp the social world not by representing it mimetically but by performing a kind of 'cognitive estrangement' upon it, so that the structures and assumptions that we take for granted, and that undergird our own social reliaty, may be seen in their full contingency and historicity."

I think this aspect  is what stuck in my mind the most after watching Children of Men. This film takes the idea of 'cognitive estrangement' to its radical conclusion and reintroduces the familiarity of the present, or should I say, its ultimate negation. I can't think of a single film that's caused me to go through such a visceral experience. I have never felt so involved in the environment of a film especially one set twenty years into the future. The passivity I can usually experience even at the most gruesome displays of violence on screen was completely ripped away from me and I felt like I was watching something happening in real time, in a future that already existed, that I would find once I left the exit doors. So what causes this 'reality effect' of this film?

I think the answer has to do with one of the most brilliant aspects of the film that to me conveys one of the most powerful illustrations of the postmodern condition I have seen. This illustration deals with a paradox. Throughout the film, I noticed constant allusions being made to contemporary media images, some more obvious than others. Of course there are the Homeland Security billboards flanking the screen throughout the duration of the film. In addition, I saw references to prisoner treatment in Guantanamo, scenes resembling footage from Iraq, and as my friend pointed out to me after, the final battle scene's resemblance to Sarajevo. Most astonishing I thought was the film's allusion to first-person shooter video games. Several of the film's action sequences were done in one long shot and as I noticed, they held an eerie resemblance to a video game in that the movement of the camera moved in concert with the protagonist's subjectivity. Of course there are probably dozens more references that I didn't notice, and that's kinda the point. Near the end of the film, I came to the shocking realization that the entire body of the film was composed of images appropriated from popular media. It had self-consciously composed the entire film without a single authentic impulse. The collage aesthetic of course makes explicit reference to a common theme associated with postmodernism. But this film assembles these images in such a fluid and totalizing way that it makes for a much more visceral experience than other collage-like films (I'm thinking Tarantino here). So in a way, the film's 'reality effect' becomes a sort of meta-theoretical device. It consciously assembles its referents not in an attempt for irony or pastiche but as a sort of self-reflexive critique of postmodern culture.

So where's the paradox you ask? It is followed by a question; how can a film that, as I argue, seeks to critique or deconstruct the reality effect not get entangled and ultimately shortchanged by its own device? Or should I say, if this film achieved its goal in conveying the sheer horror of contemporary reality as it did on me, could one not say it simultaneously achieved the goal of reaffirming the reality effect itself? By creating in myself such a viscerally 'real' experience based on a compendium of media images (images that by nature are unreal but generate reality), doesn't the simulacra in effect achieve its ultimate goal? Doesn't it create in me a reality more real than itself?

However, getting to my last point, here's where I think the film ultimately reaches its greatest success. Going back to my original overview of science fiction theory and cognitive estrangement, what this film so radically achieves is a reintroduction of familiarity through its collage of contemporary media images. I can't think of a science fiction film, novel, record, etc. that has stuck so closely and explicitly to contemporary subjects. What does this achieve exactly? Usually, science fiction tries to create a space wide enough from contemporary society so as to create the greatest room for an outside to look into. The genius of Children of Men is that it veers so slightly from contemporary experience so as to create the terror in the viewer of this future's near imminence. However at the same time, it manages to maintain enough of a futurity so as to allow for this imminence to be experienced in the first place.

With all of the calamities enveloping the world right now, it seems as though the future is increasingly collapsing into the present. Our world is catching up with science fiction to such an extent that the genre is increasingly less required to project further and further into the future. This film seems to mark the sliver of a window between the present and the ensuing destruction of the world. It achieves enough cognitive estrangement to instill in the viewer a sense that such a device won't even be necessary in the coming days.

 What most amazed me about Children of Men after watching it was all that needed to take place for these various atrocities alluded to by the film (from Iraq to Sarajevo) to achieve an apocalyptic crescendo in our own world was for them to occur simultaneously as they did in the film rather than disparately as they do in the world. It's as if all the images on the news just need to achieve a global synthesis so as to make the film a reality.