Zizek on Children of Men

Just watched this clip of Zizek discussing Children of Men. I find his reading of the film very compelling, and it would be interesting to think of in relation to Simon’s more specific and textured reading, but I just want to comment on the final statement he makes. He seems to offer a kind of meta statement on the significance of the rather grand reading he’s just recited, saying, “This is [the] future. Only films like this can guarantee that cinema as art will really survive.” What’s striking to me about the statement is that it seems to presuppose a kind of autonomous world of artistic production (in this case, film), which we ought hope will survive, but in doing so it seems to advertise a disbelief in the reading that led to this conclusion. More specifically, if the film asks us to think about the degeneracy, the violent unraveling, the erasure of history, etc., wrought by late capitalism, then a question like, “Will cinema survive or not survive as an art form?” seems at best rather hollow and, more likely, simply irrelevant.