Liquid Cinematography and the Representation of Viral Threats in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men

Echeverría Domingo, Julia

Resumen: Recent cinema has been a reliable purveyor of dystopian tales that focus on the global spread of viruses. The anxiety and fascination over the end of the world and, in particular, over the invasion of infectious pathogens has turned these films into apt modes of expression of a post-9/11 context of pervasive fear that sociologists like Ulrich Beck have termed “world risk society.” This article provides a close textual analysis of one of these films, Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006), situating it at the forefront of this trend. Following Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of liquid fear, this article aims to explore how the visual language of the long take and the continuous superposition of intertextual references help to construct a liquid space and time in which viral threats, like epidemics and immunological fear mongering discourses on terrorism and migration, easily proliferate. The infertility epidemic works as a suitable metaphor of this liquid environment, representing not only the barren malaise of our globalized times but also every invisible fear that spreads across borders, invades and segregates individuals into healthy Us and contaminated and dehumanized Others.

Idioma: Inglés

Año: 2015

Publicado en: ATLANTIS-JOURNAL OF THE SPANISH ASSOCIATION OF ANGLO-AMERICAN STUDIES 37, 2 (2015), 137-153
ISSN: 0210-6124

Originalmente disponible en: Texto completo de la revista

Factor impacto JCR: 0.029 (2015)

Categ. JCR: LINGUISTICS rank: 176 / 181 = 0.972 (2015) - Q4 - T3

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.122 - Literature and Literary Theory (Q2) - Linguistics and Language (Q3) - Cultural Studies (Q3) - Language and Linguistics (Q3)

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/H12
Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MEC/AP2009-3440
Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/FFI2010-15312

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)