One Child Nation is a study of:
–the capacity to dehumanize that comes from believing dehumanization is necessary for the Greater Good.
–the humanities’ role in the dehumanization process (such as: propaganda).
–how, in response, the humanities can study the face of dehumanization, by recording the dehumanizers, the dehumanized, and the complicit (three descriptors that are by no means mutually exclusive).
Like Tel Aviv on Fire and I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, One Child Nation does not divorce divest itself from its subject; we catch glimpses on screen of the filmmaker in the act of filming (like when she’s reflected in mirrors), an acknowledgment of her –and her camera’s — role, personally and politically, in shaping — and being shaped by — the visage(s) of dehumanization.
Unlike The Edge of Democracy, One Child Nation plumbs the political through the personal, presenting a sprawling portrait of a sociopolitical issues’ interconnected web propped up by systematic mechanizations.
