What Happened to Democracy?

The Netflix original movie, What Happened to Monday, portrays a dystopian world where the government, to combat overpopulation, enacts a single child policy. The government supposedly freezes the children for a later age of prosperity, but Terrence Settman rebuts this and instead raises his seven identical granddaughters with a single identity. This Netflix original covers a wide variety of interesting ideas and topics, but what interested me the most was the portrayal of the European Federation and the Government structure imposed. In the movie’s first few minutes it explains how and why the one child policy, called the, “Child Allocation Act,” came into effect. It explains that Nicolette Cayman, a scientist, head of the Child Allocation Bureau (C.A.B.), and a candidate for parliament, created the legislation to ensure the prosperity of the human race. Throughout the movie, it is revealed that the government has reinforced military checkpoints and that the city that the Settman sisters live in has a strong military or police presence to find and apprehend non-first born children, or siblings. Many of these displays of government power would appear as critiques of authoritarian rule, but the character of Nicolette Cayman running for election proves that the government is actually some sort of democracy. This begs the question, why would people elect representatives that oppress citizens, break apart families, and use tremendous force to enact order? It is shown that many people are unhappy with the government early on in the movie, but yet the movie states that the one child policy has been enacted for an extended period of time (at least 30 years). On one hand the lack of change in government policy proves to be an intriguing premise. This shows that the government has oppressed the people to such a degree that while they may disagree with the major life changing policy, the people carry an apathy towards change. This could be due to propaganda, suppression of information, or countless other aspects. I personally think that the government was oppressing desenters and had a very successful misinformation campaign. This stems from the fact that throughout the movie we see a clip of film where a doctor tells the viewer that siblings are cryogenically frozen for a better tomorrow. We also see an elite military force try to kill the seven sisters with precision and accuracy that leads to the idea they may often perform similar operations. These observations would fit into the narrative of this dystopian world, but seem somewhat unrealistic. The other argument discussing the state of government, would argue that this is unrealistic. Having a government that is a democracy with this level of oppression and dislike from the populous seems very unlikely. In one of the film’s first scenes a child is shown being taken away from her parents and thrown into a van by C.A.B. agents. This is met with disapproval from the crowd. This along with the number of cases discussed where siblings must be found and dealt with leads me to believe that there is not large public support for this kind of policy. Common sense and an understanding of contemporary politics would dictate that disapproval at the level the movie suggests would lead to massive change in the other direction by some level of government. This, in fact, is even shown at the end of the movie. After some negative information comes out about the process of enforcing the one child policy, the government quickly overturns the policy. The outrage grew, of course, due to the information but was already at extremely high levels beforehand. It is hard to believe that a government would go from no action to full repeal on a policy never well liked or received. Overall the portrayal of the government in What Happened to Monday? was foggy. I believe it was an interesting, albeit unrealistic, portrayal of a dystopian democracy trying to ensure the future for its citizens. This being said I think the movie should have pursued a route where public approval for the one child act was higher, or allowed for a government that was either non-democratic or was democratic in name only. This would have, in my opinion, allowed for stronger world building and helped the story with some of its most glaring plot holes.