Reluctant Heroes and Petty Tyrants: Reproducing Race in the Global War on Terror in Children of Men and District 9

Abstract

Through a comparison of two science fiction films, this essay traces the workings of race and racism in the U.S. War on Terror as it has spread to other parts of the world (postcolonial England and postapartheid South Africa, respectively). The essay argues that the films’ dystopias are structured upon a contrast between cinematic spectacle and the banality of white supremacy, a central logic of sustaining racism, and suggests that Hollywood cinema is one crucial site of formulation and negotiation of the cultural workings of a new, twenty-first-century global racism.