ENG240: Film Theory & Practice

To begin working with Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men I decided to start with what seemed most important to the entirety of the film.  The title alone suggests that gender will become an important element that will affect the plot and characters throughout the film.  Much theory has been written on gender film studies, and there are many writings on the traditional masculine and feminine roles within films.  What I found in Children of Men (and in Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River) is that these traditional gender roles are reversed; men take on characteristics that are considered feminine, and women take on masculine attributes.  Molly Haskell’s From Reverence to Rape examines the traditional gender roles in film as well as the tremendous male focus that film, and fiction in general, has had throughout history.

The removal of these traditional gender stereotypes and expectations is a recent occurrence in film.  Within Beginning Film Studies, Dix discusses the transformation of male roles: “Susan Jeffords points out that, where previous male icons offered intimidating displays of action and physical prowess, later screen men have sometimes been equally dominant in the realms of nurturing and sensitivity” (Dix 242).  Clive Owen’s character Theo is comfortable in these realms of nurturing and sensitivity throughout Children of Men.  Though seeming isolated and disaffected at the beginning of the film, the viewer begins to understand Theo’s emotions through uncovering information about his past.  In a world with no children, he is still mourning the death of his young son.  His emotional vulnerability is atypical of a “normal” Hollywood leading man.  Emotions and sensitivity have been previously considered specific to female characters, but the transfer of these onto male characters is what Dix writes can be seen much more in recent films: “Thus qualities culturally coded as ‘feminine’ – at least in the West – may float away from female bodies themselves and be appropriated be men as part of an expanded masculine repertoire” (Dix 242).

Dix continues to write that the same expanding of gender roles can be seen in female characters as well, which is apparent within the character of Julian, played by Julianne Moore.  In the film, Julian is a leader of the Fishes, a terrorist organization looking to improve the conditions of illegal immigrants.  The group uses violence, and Julian herself is not afraid to be physical.  Her actions within the film, and her name, represent traditional characteristics of male behavior, and demonstrate the female adoption of masculine qualities: “Of course the opposite process may also occur, with the cultural stock of masculinity open to female adoption (as by the gun-toting Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 or Sigourney Weaver in Alien)” (Dix 242).  Julian can also be as what Molly Haskell, in Film, Theory, & Criticism, calls the “superwoman”: “a woman who, like the ‘superfemale,’ has a high degree of intelligence or imagination, but instead of exploiting her femininity, adopts male characteristics in order to enjoy male prerogatives, or merely to survive” (Haskell 505).  Julian is not the seductress in the film simply because she is a woman instead her character resembles more of an action hero, as she adopts traditionally “male” characteristics to survive within Cuarón’s chaotic dystopia.

Theo and Julian’s past relationship is alluded to within the film. The couple met at a protest and later had a son, Dylan, who died in the 2008 flu pandemic.   Julian is the impetus that wakes Theo up from his comatose state, forcing him to act instead of simply go through the motions of life without feeling anything.  Though Julian is the reason for his involvement with Kee, the Fishes, and the first human birth in eighteen years, ultimately the film is focused on Theo, after Julian dies early on.  The male specific focus in film is something that feminist critics have noticed for years.  Molly Haskell’s From Reverence to Rape, describes the overwhelmingly male focus within popular films of the 1940s, which is still apparent within contemporary films: “The preoccupation of most movies of the forties, particularly the ‘masculine’ genres, is with man’s soul and salvation, rather than with woman’s.  It is man’s prerogative to follow the path from blindness to discovery, which is the principal movement of fiction” (Haskell 501).  Theo’s own salvation and discovery is witnessed throughout the course of Children of Men, as he is suddenly forced to feel something again, instead of remaining numb to the world around him.  He is also called upon in a time of need, and becomes useful to Kee because of his knowledge of childbirth and children.  A feminist reading of the film will note that it is Julian, his former lover, who reignites his compassion for others and desire to fight, yet in the end it is Theo’s death that viewers mourn and Julian is long forgotten.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Andrew Dix, Beginning Film Studies, Children of Men. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.