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District 9
Directed and Co-written by Neill Blomkamp
2009, 112 mins., Rated R (language, violence)
TriStar (in DVD)
* * * * *
What would we do if they came? What if they were a million strong, looked nothing like us, and were starving? Would we treat them like so many other “huddled masses” that washed up on our shores? Would we act out of kindness, or something more sinister?
These are among the questions raised by the superb South African science fiction film District 9. The film is set in Johannesburg, above which a large alien spacecraft has hovered for three months without a peep. Earthlings finally burn a hole in the ship and board it, where they find a million wretched, hungry creatures cowering amidst the bodies of starved comrades on an inoperable ship. The solution? You see it every day on the news—a refugee camp, the District 9 of the title.
Benevolence inexorably yields to ennui, then intolerance. After all, to human eyes the aliens are a degenerate race; they are filthy, have a habit of wandering out of the camp and engaging in crime, and their favorite cuisine is cat food. Worst of all, they breed like rabbits. Despite the high death toll in the crowded, unsanitary camp, the alien population climbs to 2.5 million. Johannesburg residents have taken to calling the aliens “prawns,” because their tentacled faces and unusually shaped bodies are suggestive of bipedal shrimp. That contemptuous label is emblematic of what residents see as the only viable solution: colonization. They want the unsavory alien brood removed from sight and responsibility.
This movie is shot as a documentary within a documentary. Multi-National United (MNU), a munitions manufacturer and wholesaler, has been awarded a contract to relocate the prawns from District 9 to a new area two hundred and forty kilometers from Johannesburg. Company high flier Wilkus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is put in charge of an operation that will fast track him to top management levels if he gets it right. Part of getting it “right” means paying attention to the demands of pesky alien rights advocates, such as getting prawns to “agree” to relocation by “signing” permission forms. If an alien swats at a form it’s considered a “scrawl” of consent and each interaction is carefully documented in a highly edited video that’s essentially a made-for-TV show starring Wilkus. All goes according to plan until a sweep of the camp exposes Wilkus to a biotech device that mutates his right arm into an alien appendage. This is just what MNU has been waiting for as the aliens have weapons that are activated genetically. MNU—led by Wilkus’s own father-in-law—stands to make tens of millions if it came provide the genetic key that activates a gun that instantly liquefies its victims. And they’re perfectly willing to murder Wilkus and harvest his DNA in the name of profit. Of course Wilkus escapes—there’s no movie otherwise—and what ensues is a manhunt through Dante’s Inferno, an alien refugee camp teeming with junk, weapons stashes, and a controlling Nigerian gang that’s running its own profit scheme by selling prostitutes and cat food to the prawns for money, metals, and objects. Like Avatar, District 9 reverses the usual good guy/bad guy formula, but its variations on Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis are more intelligently handled.
How many metaphors do you want to draw between District 9 and contemporary life? The story line is, most obviously, a parallel to South Africa under apartheid, but it would be far too easy to let it go at that. One of the reasons the film did not get the theatrical play it deserves is because it also touches raw nerves on issues such as Indian reservations, racial segregation, nativism, global racism, the treatment of war refugees, and disaster relief efforts. Indeed, replace Johannesburg with New Orleans, the MNU with FEMA, and the prawns with African Americans and you’ve still got the same story. In District 9 Wilkus starts to learn a few things about humanity from an alien dubbed “Christopher Johnson.” Chances are that this movie hurtled through your town at warp speed as its message that multiculturalism fares badly under capitalism isn’t a feel-good message. We suggest that you seek out the video and learn from Christopher Johnson.
Directed and Co-written by Neill Blomkamp
2009, 112 mins., Rated R (language, violence)
TriStar (in DVD)
* * * * *
What would we do if they came? What if they were a million strong, looked nothing like us, and were starving? Would we treat them like so many other “huddled masses” that washed up on our shores? Would we act out of kindness, or something more sinister?
These are among the questions raised by the superb South African science fiction film District 9. The film is set in Johannesburg, above which a large alien spacecraft has hovered for three months without a peep. Earthlings finally burn a hole in the ship and board it, where they find a million wretched, hungry creatures cowering amidst the bodies of starved comrades on an inoperable ship. The solution? You see it every day on the news—a refugee camp, the District 9 of the title.
Benevolence inexorably yields to ennui, then intolerance. After all, to human eyes the aliens are a degenerate race; they are filthy, have a habit of wandering out of the camp and engaging in crime, and their favorite cuisine is cat food. Worst of all, they breed like rabbits. Despite the high death toll in the crowded, unsanitary camp, the alien population climbs to 2.5 million. Johannesburg residents have taken to calling the aliens “prawns,” because their tentacled faces and unusually shaped bodies are suggestive of bipedal shrimp. That contemptuous label is emblematic of what residents see as the only viable solution: colonization. They want the unsavory alien brood removed from sight and responsibility.
This movie is shot as a documentary within a documentary. Multi-National United (MNU), a munitions manufacturer and wholesaler, has been awarded a contract to relocate the prawns from District 9 to a new area two hundred and forty kilometers from Johannesburg. Company high flier Wilkus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is put in charge of an operation that will fast track him to top management levels if he gets it right. Part of getting it “right” means paying attention to the demands of pesky alien rights advocates, such as getting prawns to “agree” to relocation by “signing” permission forms. If an alien swats at a form it’s considered a “scrawl” of consent and each interaction is carefully documented in a highly edited video that’s essentially a made-for-TV show starring Wilkus. All goes according to plan until a sweep of the camp exposes Wilkus to a biotech device that mutates his right arm into an alien appendage. This is just what MNU has been waiting for as the aliens have weapons that are activated genetically. MNU—led by Wilkus’s own father-in-law—stands to make tens of millions if it came provide the genetic key that activates a gun that instantly liquefies its victims. And they’re perfectly willing to murder Wilkus and harvest his DNA in the name of profit. Of course Wilkus escapes—there’s no movie otherwise—and what ensues is a manhunt through Dante’s Inferno, an alien refugee camp teeming with junk, weapons stashes, and a controlling Nigerian gang that’s running its own profit scheme by selling prostitutes and cat food to the prawns for money, metals, and objects. Like Avatar, District 9 reverses the usual good guy/bad guy formula, but its variations on Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis are more intelligently handled.
How many metaphors do you want to draw between District 9 and contemporary life? The story line is, most obviously, a parallel to South Africa under apartheid, but it would be far too easy to let it go at that. One of the reasons the film did not get the theatrical play it deserves is because it also touches raw nerves on issues such as Indian reservations, racial segregation, nativism, global racism, the treatment of war refugees, and disaster relief efforts. Indeed, replace Johannesburg with New Orleans, the MNU with FEMA, and the prawns with African Americans and you’ve still got the same story. In District 9 Wilkus starts to learn a few things about humanity from an alien dubbed “Christopher Johnson.” Chances are that this movie hurtled through your town at warp speed as its message that multiculturalism fares badly under capitalism isn’t a feel-good message. We suggest that you seek out the video and learn from Christopher Johnson.
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