Between Reels and Reality: Notes on Child Soldiers in contemporary Cinema.

By Olivier J. Tchouaffe, PhD, University of Texas at Austin
#512-495-9053.
Email: jolit77@hotmail.com

This paper reads Lord of War (2005), Invisible Children (2005), Blood Diamonds (2006) and Children of Men (2006) as cinematic manifestoes against the use of children in violent armed conflicts. It calls for a rigorous analysis on the paradox of regimes of terror, its modern scientific projects of mastering populations and natural resources only to substitute sovereignty into privatized violence and self-interest governments. By the same logic, Children of Men (2006) takes beyond, powerful techniques of violence and technologies of control, to engage regimes of terror as the ultimate vessels of sterile regimes hampering the democratic evolution of society. It becomes a powerful reflection on the uses and abuses of technologies of control and terror, namely, its self-interests, its simplistic psychology, Manichaeism and rhetorical strategies manipulating the specter of evil, only, to reproduce forms of peace taking profiles of wars without ends.

This author, consequently, relies on former child soldiers, such as Ishmael Beah and Ocia Jacobs, as a pretext to argue for children social utility through pacifist politics as a strong response against regimes of war and terror, because pacifist politics do not consider subjectivities such as national identity, race, class, education or gender as justifications for extreme policies. On the contrary, pacifist politics consider them as limitless potentialities for mutual progress. Consequently, the argument is that peace not wars best serves the interests of security and the rule of law and order must be made to supersede any forms of pre-democratic anarchic violence.