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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Steyn: Biggest story of our time: our self-extinction |
| 2006-12-24 |
| Suppose for a moment that the birth in Bethlehem that Christians celebrate this week never happened --that it is, as the secularists would have it, mere mumbo jumbo, superstition, a myth. In other words, consider it not as an event but as a narrative. You want to launch a big new global movement from scratch. So what do you use? The birth of a child. If Christianity is just a myth, then it is, so to speak, an immaculately conceived one. On the one hand, what could be more powerless than a newborn babe? On the other, without a newborn babe, man is ultimately powerless. For, without new life, there can be no civilization, no society, no nothing. "The world has collapsed," announces a BBC newsman in a new movie. "Only Britain soldiers on." Europe in 1940? No, 2027. Adapted from P.D. James' dystopian novel, Children Of Men is set on a planet in which humanity is barren. That's to say, it can no longer reproduce. And you'd be amazed at how much else collapses with the fertility rate. You might have a hard time finding ''Children Of Men'' at your local multiplex. It's a more pertinent Christmas movie this holiday season than ''Bad Santa 3'' or ''The Santa Clause 8,'' but Universal seems to have got cold feet and all but killed the picture. In an enthusiastic review in Seattle Weekly, J. Hoberman observed: "Universal may have deemed 'Children' too grim for Christmas, but it is premised on a reverence for life that some might term religious." Granted, he's in the godless precincts of Seattle, that last bit of the sentence -- "some might" -- seems a tad qualified. Obviously, Christianity has a "reverence for life." So too does Judaism: all that begetting the eyes glaze over at in the Old Testament, going right back to God's injunction to be fruitful and multiply. |
| Posted by:.com |
| #5 Try The Bright Companion by Edward Llewellyn |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-12-24 20:52 |
| #4 Sounds about as cheerful and uplifting as Nevil Chute's "On the Beach". Same ending, too. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-12-24 19:55 |
| #3 Read the book. Here's my Amazon review (2-star): Author P.D. James starts with an interesting thesis in this dystopian novel: due to an unexplained, worldwide infertility crisis, there have been no children born for a generation. Society begins to unravel as it ages, and in the Britain of the near future democracy has been abandoned in favor of a 'Warden', Xan, who will keep the lights on, evacuate the outlying lands and allow civilization to come to a quiet end. Sex has become meaningless and people spend their remaining time in pointless pursuits. Against this, the protagonist Theo Faron, a frustrated academic, becomes involved in a plot over a rumor that there might be a fertile woman left in the world. Unfortunately there are substantial problems with the characters. The biggest one: Theo Faron is a most unsympathetic protagonist. He's completely selfish and unlikable, and in the second half of the book it becomes clear that what motivates him in the end, similar to Xan, is possession of the woman. He's nothing more than an over-educated, pessimistic, nihilistic Neanderthal. The smaller characters in the conspiracy likewise are dull, dimwitted fools. I had much more sympathy for the Warden who was actually trying to manage an orderly implosion of the society that had been given to him. Author James is an excellent technical writer -- the descriptions of people and places sing. The pace, though moderate, never drags. At the end though you're left with wondering, "it was all about ... THIS?" |
| Posted by: Steve White 2006-12-24 13:02 |
| #2 Zacharias is surprised to discover his impending fatherhood -- "for I am an old man and stricken in years." I have aboslutely no difficulty believing this. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-12-24 11:52 |
| #1 Yes. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-12-24 11:41 |