Facing Apocalypse: Climate Mobilities and the Cinematic Child

Abstract

This article engages with the representations and meanings of child figures within US films about environmentally induced displacement. At the intersection between film studies, childhood studies, and the emerging scholarship on climate mobilities (Boas et al., 2022), it explores the ways in which three contemporary apocalyptic films—The Road (2009), Take Shelter (2011), and Greenland (2020)— mediate the relationship between mobility and environmental collapse through child characters. It argues that the functions attached to the child in these films—those of seer, victim, and carrier of hope and futurity—work to depoliticize climate mobilities, obscuring the varied aspirations, sociopolitical factors, and power structures that shape mobility choices in the context of environmental threat. As imaginary projections of an upcoming climate collapse, these films provide fertile ground for an exploration of the cultural ideals underpinning the construction of child characters, and the influence these have in the articulation of climate mobilities.