We struggled to identify the target audience for Children of Men - probably because it isn't a straight forward genre film. Would fans of Sci-fi like it? Possibly, possibly not. Fans of War films? Again possibly, possibly not. You can see the issue!
I suspect that it was a aimed at a fairly broad target audience in demographic terms - both men and women from the ages of about 15-44 and straddling social class demographics too.
Of course, we can also think about audience in terms of audience reception too - i.e. the ways in which audiences 'read' and respond to texts. Children of Men is an open text in that there is plenty of scope for audiences to form their own view about what is being put before them. Cuaron has stated that he hates expository narratives - what he means by this is stories that explain absolutely everything to the audience and therefore require little thought or interpretation. Audiences are left to make up their own minds about possible causes for human infertility. More significantly there is the slightly controversial ending with the death of Theo. Kee and her baby, Dylan are picked up the 'Tomorrow' boat. Cuaron says that if you are optimistic then you see hope in the resolution and if you are pessimistic then you see little but more despair. What he is referring to here is audiences 'negotiating' their own reading of the text. We did quite a bit of work on this at AS - think back to Silent Witness and the representation of ethnicity. We'll re-visit it this year too! How exciting!
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