Similarities Between Running Wild And Mcewan

‘Child hood innocence is never live – by the child – as innocent, but constructed as such afterwards’.
Innocence is given a curious examination in both J.G Ballard’s Running Wild and Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time, with each text set against the backdrop of a dystopian English society, close enough to reality to be considered allegorical in reference to the state of the nation. It is within the discussion of society that the idea of innocence is represented as a constructed and therefore unattainable notion, a quality that no longer exists in its true form. Both authors present the message that the state, with particular allusion to the Thatcherite government, has taken the concept of innocence and exhausted it through aggressive capitalism
The presentation of the child characters in the novel as less likely murderers than ‘visitors from outer space seeking young human specimens’ underlines the sacred link between childhood and innocence in public discourse and thought. This is despite evidence placing the children at the scene of the murders, ‘extensive scuff-marks, bloody handprints and shoe impressions that match the children’s… indicate almost all were present’ . One could argue that this seemingly obvious incident of parricide not only highlights the loss of innocence but, equally shows how the public, so fettered by their own notions of innocence ‘fail to recognise the obvious’ . Baxter refers to this as a prevailing cultural logic of denial, something Ballard conforms to by presenting society’s most innocent as simultaneously the most evil and bloodthirsty. This is captured in his portrayal of eight-year-old Marion Miller the leader of the Pangbourne children and her clichéd image of virtue, ‘blond curls… a dreamy infant scarcely off the breast’. Parodying Marion’s archetypal innocence, Ballard illustrates that real innocence does not exist beyond Thatcher’s idealised image of the child, and that government policies have led to innocence becoming a state constructed
Both texts chose to fixate on the idea of a missing child, a facet of British culture that has been obsessed over in public discourse and by the mass media. This is something Colebrook refers to as ‘cultural pornography’ , a phenomenon that has left the public completely fixated with the idea of captured or stolen innocence. When Kate disappears in the supermarket McEwan describes how ‘the lost child was everyone’s property’ , something which poignantly describes the feeling of a shared desire to recapture innocence. This is also particular prevalent in Running Wild where ‘millions’ are have said to have seen extracts from the film ‘in numerous documentaries’ emphasising the intense public fascination and what Colebrook terms ‘a false fantasy about our own lost innocence’
Ballard’s description of the children’s photos ‘smiling out of their school speech-day portraits and holiday snapshots’ arguably fulfils this notion of cultural pornography. The children are captured within their pictures pure and perfectly innocent and it is this almost nostalgic element of the photograph that simultaneously compels people to want to find the missing child but equally to recapture their own former