Feature: Everybody hates a tourist.
District 9 is seemingly many things: a thrilling science fiction adventure film, an awkward mockumentary, an innovative blend of cutting edge special effects with cinéma vérité aesthetics. But to me, District 9 is the tale of a tourist. I’m using the word “tourist” the way Jarvis Cocker used the word to describe that rich girl from “Common People” who had a thirst for knowledge and studied sculpture at St. Martin’s college.
You see, at the same time as you felt that Jarvis Cocker wanted to get in said rich girl’s pants, he really had mostly disdain for her. He knew that she didn’t really care that much about the struggles of the working class; that she was slumming it for shits and giggles; that all she really wanted was to enjoy the cool aesthetic of those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder before she eventually abandoned Jarvis for the comfort of her middle class existence.
Neill Blomkamp was born a privileged white kid growing up in South Africa, specifically Johannesburg. He witnessed the stark divide between the rich living in their gated communities and the impoverished living in shacks. At 18 years of age, he moved to Canada. He needn’t have anything to do with the impoverished masses of Johannesburg ever again. Yet he returned. His first feature would be a science fiction film set in Johannesburg about aliens who become marginalised in the ghetto of District 9.
It is impossible not to read District 9 as an allegory of apartheid. Or at least as a film designating itself as a social allegory. The title itself is a reference to District Six whose residents were forcibly moved after the apartheid government declared that area “white only”. Could it be that the kid from Joburg was actually effected by the social injustice he grew up witnessing enough that when he was in a position to make a large-scale action flick he would use it as a platform to explore that injustice?
The answer is, sadly (or inevitably), no. District 9 is completely uninterested in shedding any light on the social issues to which it allegorically refers to.
The oppressed minority of District 9 are bug-like creatures, pejoratively referred to as “prawns”. They have highly superior weaponry yet somehow they remain disempowered, allowing the South African government to bully them into moving into worse conditions. First thing to notice: black people are equated to subhuman insect creatures! This is soo much worse than the jive-talking robots of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. In addition, all the prawns(blacks) are addicted to catfood(drugs) and to make matters worse, the actual black people in the movie are idiotic, evil superstitious voodoo worshipers.
That said, it is clear that Blomkamp has sympathy for the prawns of District 9. But his sympathy is of the condescending variety, the way you feel sorry for a homeless dog with three legs. Why don’t the prawns fight back against their human oppressors? They are clearly not averse to self-defence. The answer given by the film is that the prawn leaders died leaving the prawn masses useless. Is this the best explanation Blomkamp has for the oppression and marginalisation of minorities: That they are too stupid to act in their own best interest? The only way out of this politically questionable hole is to take the director’s word that the aliens have a hive-structure society: take away the queen and the hive turns to chaos. But as soon as you decide to buy into that explanation, the film no longer operates as allegory and then you have a case where, to paraphrase Kanye West’s hilarious but understandable outrage, Neill Blomkamp doesn’t care about black people. He’s only interested in apartheid inasmuch as it lends a veneer of pseudo-reality to his Hollywood blockbuster.
Maybe it is wrong to read District 9’s prawns simplisticly as analogues for black people. Unfortunately District 9 is completely implausible as an exploration of how the world would react to an influx of theoretical refugee aliens from outerspace. The questionable logic holes are abundant: Why hasn’t the government confiscated all the alien weaponry? Why is the PR team of the evil corporation contracted to move out the aliens so incompetent as to call their company Multi National United? Why has an aggressively efficient corporation given the important job of evicting the alien tenants to such a dunderhead as the film’s protagonist? When evil scientists decide to cut up a man whose DNA might lead to a weapons development breakthrough, why isn’t he strapped down and sedated? When a prawn sees that his kinsmen have been cruelly experimented on, why does he continue to passively mope around when the army shoot rounds of ammo in his direction? Why is the army evicting the aliens populated by psychopaths with no sense of discipline? Why hasn’t a superpower like America or China intervened, given the security issues posed by the introduction of alien technology?
There are no answers to these questions because ultimately, Neill Blomkamp is less interested in the power of science fiction to pose questions about social issues than he is in making a special effects thrill ride. Far from representing an exciting new direction in science fiction, he signifies the worst of cinematic tourism, redirecting liberal white guilt into action movie catharsis. Basically, Blomkamp is science fiction’s Danny Boyle. The film wouldn’t be so offensive if it weren’t for the fact that it trades on images of actual oppression in South Africa and demands to be taken seriously as hard science fiction. It practically begs to be recognised as the next Children of Men or as an Animal Farm with aliens. As it is, District 9 might be the dumbest movie to be released this year.
Adam C
21/08/09 - 6:39 PM
I get the feeling you disliked this film. I’m not sure why I jumped to such conclusions.
Yosh
21/08/09 - 11:08 PM
Haha, ah Brad, you’re such a sharp screen participant. All those logical flaws that you point out are so mind-numbingly obvious, yet I just don’t pick up on that kinda stuff when watching a film for the first time. Nevertheless, I could sense the film’s stupidity rising as it went along. I actually really liked the first half an hour or so – I mean, that mockumentary style is a little overdone in films, but I still thought they pulled it off pretty well. I liked all the interviews with faux-experts, and I thought the vox pops were uncannily believable. But though I kind of enjoyed it all the way through, it just gets more and more inane as it goes on.
I think it’s dead-on to say that Blomkamp personifies the worst kind of cinematic tourism, which in turn suggests that this might be not only the dumbest film of 2009, but from a certain perspective the most morally repugnant. It’s going to give millions of dumb, affluent moviegoers the sensation of having done something quite selfless and charitable – they didn’t just watch a cool action movie, thankyou very much, they understood the Meaningful Subtext, the one about Those Poor Black People.
I’m quite interested in writing something for Screen Machine about sociopolitical commentary in sci-fi films. (I basically just want the opportunity to poo-poo this film in comparison to Children of Men!) But seriously, how does a film this staid and silly get anointed an “exciting new direction” in such a rich and storied genre?
Brad Nguyen
22/08/09 - 12:56 AM
Yeah I thought that the style of the film was certainly pulled off well. Blomkamp pretty successfully made a special effects extravaganza that felt like something you would watch on the evening news.
Brad Nguyen
22/08/09 - 12:57 AM
Also digging the capitalisation used for Those Poor Black People.
Brad Nguyen
22/08/09 - 12:58 AM
I’m glad I was able to convey successfully the thoughts in my head.
Kimj
22/08/09 - 4:24 AM
I think your comparison to the similarly problematic Slumdog Millionaire is apt (right down to the unquestioning critical acclaim). I hope these subtext-laden, yet ultimately insubstantial popcorn films do not become a trend. Yosh, I agree, there is a danger of people viewing these films and thinking that in doing so they are supporting the fight against a particular injustice. Which is not new in cinema, but films with relatively unknown, or trendy filmmakers seem to be supplied with some kind of unjustified indie or arthouse cred. People are reading these films as being produced by an authoritative source, which simply isn’t the case. Or, even if they are drawing on personal experiences, does not mean the film should be approached uncritically. Cinemagoers will approach the latest Hollywood epic highlighting the plight of Minority X with a degree of scepticism, yet this new style of storytelling is being hailed as a breakthrough in cinematic activism.
Jessie
22/08/09 - 10:55 AM
Unfortunately, Those Poor Black Prawn analogies are hard to avoid if the film makers use a made up “other” to stand in for the actual “other” (as viewed from a white/middle class mainstream). It’s always – whether inadvertantly, or, um…advertantly?- going to come off looking farked.
That’s why “V” is the best sci fi show ever made- it flipped the script by casting the human race itself in the role of Poor Black Prawns if you will, and made the dominant, expansionist oppressors evil lizard people, thus forcing the audience to confront the violent, hateful impulses lurking at the heart of western “civilization”.
I’m not even joking. You’d think that once most people had seen this show, world peace would just naturally follow.
This clip features a great, totally ham-fisted analogy of man confronting the beast the lurks mere inches beneath all our skin…it’s almost perfect: perhaps judicious use of a broken mirror would have made it better…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP49-qftyuk
Steph
22/08/09 - 11:39 AM
I have been watching the Brit pop Documentary ‘Live Forever’, which has a fantastic interview with Jarvis Cocker about ‘Common people’, and the class tourism of the Brit pop movement in the 1990s, which became incapsulated by the media spin on the Blur v. Oasis smackdown. Well worth a watch if you haven’t seen it.
Brad Nguyen
22/08/09 - 12:51 PM
Similarly, I thought Star Trek would bring world peace. Disappointment.
Brad Nguyen
22/08/09 - 12:52 PM
I’ve seen that doco but I can’t remember that specific bit. I’ll have to pull it out again. It’s pretty entertaining.
James Douglas
22/08/09 - 6:20 PM
Wow. So I, like, totally disagree.
I feel like I’ve been seeing a lot of responses with kind of tenor, and I can’t help but think that it’s more to do with writers scrambling to be racially PC in response to any movie featuring oppressed racial minorities, rather than actually thinking thoughtfully about the film itself.
Firstly, you jump off with this: “It is impossible not to read District 9 as an allegory of apartheid. Or at least as a film designating itself as a social allegory”. In fact, it seems to me, that the whole ‘apartheid analogy’ angle is pretty clearly a dead end, and a large mistake on the part of many viewers. I only ever thought of the apartheid background as being a kind of thematic resonance, and narrative shorthand, to the film’s central concerns: which is really just to be a neat, exciting scifi action movie. You suggest that this belief entails that Blomkamp “doesn’t care about black people”, and that he’s only using apartheid to lend a “veneer of pseudo-reality to his Hollywood blockbuster”. Well, okay, I agree with you to a point. But you’re working with a couple of pretty appalling assumptions here. You use ‘Hollywood’ as a lazy catch-all for insensitive, capitalist, imperialist, American frivolity, But the film’s status as a ‘Hollywood product’ is anything but clear. The director is South African/Canadian. The production company is from New Zealand. The film was made in South Africa, with a part South African, part New Zealand crew. The cast are – largely unknown – South Africans. ‘Blockbuster’, again a term denoting large scale frivolity, is not really a suitable term for a seemingly independent, 30 million dollar production. You can’t denigrate a film for employing content you feel is inappropriate in a ‘Hollywood blockbuster’, when the term shouldn’t even apply.
Further, you casually denigrate Blomkamp for being a tourist in his own country. You suggest his move to Canada is a kind of accelerated, and deliberate, removal from the social and racial issues in South Africa. As though Blomkamp just doesn’t care. And that his immigration from his country as an adult (not the least his status as a ‘privileged white kid’) somehow prevents him having the right to ever…what? Think about South Africa? Go back there? Set his first film there? Leaving aside the incredible presumptions about Blomkamp’s childhood, adulthood, and character, it’s still strange that you wouldn’t consider that, perhaps, his removal from his country would lead him to examine his attitude towards it in greater depth, or that it could still occupy much of his thinking (as this interview suggests: http://www.avclub.com/articles/district-9-director-neill-blomkamp,31606/). Anyway, what exactly is the problem with a first time director synthesising experiences and settings from their childhood and employing them in a feature film? Apart from your judgment that these experiences and settings are somehow morally unavailable to them. Keep in mind that issues of apartheid and racial prejudice in South Africa are not ideological issues to be discussed for its inhabitants (as they can be for you and me), but rather the general background to everyday life.
You write that “District 9 is completely uninterested in shedding any light on the social issues to which it allegorically refers to”. Well, yes. But what exactly is the problem here? It’s always dangerous to criticise a film from the position of what you think it should be, rather than what it actually is. It seems to me that by halfway through its running time District 9 has established pretty clearly what it is; which is, again, a nifty, cool action/character story. I can’t really conceptualise a version of District 9 that is also an in depth investigation of South African racial history and dynamics, and I can’t stand the thought of how superficial and actually offensive such a version would be (I’m imagining Crash with alien weaponry). Perhaps you have a clearer idea.
Secondly, I find your list of objectionable plot holes to be similarly problematic. You write:
“Why is the PR team of the evil corporation contracted to move out the aliens so incompetent as to call their company Multi National United? Why has an aggressively efficient corporation given the important job of evicting the alien tenants to such a dunderhead as the film’s protagonist? When evil scientists decide to cut up a man whose DNA might lead to a weapons development breakthrough, why isn’t he strapped down and sedated? Why is the army evicting the aliens populated by psychopaths with no sense of discipline?”
I find it interesting that you are comfortable attributing the characterisation of the Nigerian gangsters as “idiotic, evil superstitious voodoo worshipers” to a racist attitude on the part of Blomkamp, but similarly idiotic, violent, senseless behaviour on the part of the white characters is attributed to a failure of logic on the part of the filmmakers. This is certainly a double standard.
Your other plot holes can be explained away, fairly or unfairly, as necessary to the film’s narrative. It’s like those people who complain that Ellen Page didn’t get an abortion in Juno. Well, that film is about a girl carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. If she gets an abortion there’s no movie. This isn’t really a problem.
Finally, you write “ultimately, Neill Blomkamp is less interested in the power of science fiction to pose questions about social issues than he is in making a special effects thrill ride”. But posing question is pretty much all District 9 does. You want Blomkamp to pose questions in such a way that they’re always already answered; closed off, filed away in a box marked ‘Acceptable PC Content’. By using South African racial history as thematic background to his film (however objectionable you may find this to be) Blomkamp actually, intentionally or not, has people (fanboys! movie critics!) talking about, thinking through, and interrogating reactions to apartheid and racism. This is surely an accomplishment.
(also the film is super-fun)
Brad Nguyen
22/08/09 - 7:06 PM
“I only ever thought of the apartheid background as being a kind of thematic resonance, and narrative shorthand, to the film’s central concerns: which is really just to be a neat, exciting scifi action movie.”
Well we agree on that. We just disagree on whether it’s OK to co-opt apartheid discourse to make a couple of million dollars.
“You use ‘Hollywood’ as a lazy catch-all for insensitive, capitalist, imperialist, American frivolity, But the film’s status as a ‘Hollywood product’ is anything but clear.”
I don’t think it’s lazy – it’s a matter of definitions. Geography is irrelevant to me. Any filmmakers whose central concerns are making money and indulging in generic conventions to appeal to the lowest common denominator is engaging in Hollywood-style filmmaking.
“Further, you casually denigrate Blomkamp for being a tourist in his own country. You suggest his move to Canada is a kind of accelerated, and deliberate, removal from the social and racial issues in South Africa. As though Blomkamp just doesn’t care. And that his immigration from his country as an adult (not the least his status as a ‘privileged white kid’) somehow prevents him having the right to ever…what? Think about South Africa? Go back there? Set his first film there?”
No that was not the point I was making. I would never argue that a person has or hasn’t a right to comment on any particular thing. I was merely pointing out that the film’s interest in taking advantage of South Africa’s poverty without actuallly exploring it in any detail is probably attributable to Blomkamp taking for granted his privileged position and social mobility. Might sound harsh, but it fit in so well with Common People’s narrative.
“I can’t really conceptualise a version of District 9 that is also an in depth investigation of South African racial history and dynamics, and I can’t stand the thought of how superficial and actually offensive such a version would be (I’m imagining Crash with alien weaponry). Perhaps you have a clearer idea.”
You say that as if science fiction has never been used effectively to comment on political situations. Any fan of science fiction would know that to be false. I don’t think I need to create a list of science fiction texts that do this well.
“Your other plot holes can be explained away, fairly or unfairly, as necessary to the film’s narrative.”
If we accept your argument, then it is impossible to criticise any bad plot. I’m not that against illogical plotting per se. What I had a problem with was that District 9’s plot had a remarkable lack of understanding for how corporations, governments and minorities behave.
“By using South African racial history as thematic background to his film (however objectionable you may find this to be) Blomkamp actually, intentionally or not, has people (fanboys! movie critics!) talking about, thinking through, and interrogating reactions to apartheid and racism.”
Well this is an interesting debate: whether a simplistic film has merit merely by heightening awareness of the issue. There have been interesting debates among Holocaust survivors on whether they should embrace a film such as Life is Beautiful – a film that, while involving and cathartic for your average schmo, is seen by many survivors as manipulative and naive to the realities of Holocaust experiences. Personally, I prefer my films to create more complex understandings of political situations rather than simplistic ones.
I get the impression that you are offended that I criticised a film that you found to be fun. It’s okay to find a dumb film enjoyable (hell, I wrote a piece about my enjoyment of Transformers 2) but a dumb film is a dumb film.
Brad Nguyen
22/08/09 - 7:17 PM
On the cinematic tourism thing. I think Neill Blomkamp can be contrasted to the films of the “three amigos”: Inarritu, Cuaron and del Toro. Whatever you think of the quality of their films, they are certainly alive to the relationship between the third and first world, to social injustice and that these are the central concerns of their films even as they play with Hollywood conventions and structures.
Brad Nguyen
22/08/09 - 7:21 PM
District 9’s primary concern, on the other hand, is to entertain; to excite audiences in fairly generic ways. “Oh isn’t it exciting to see people get blown up!” “Oh isn’t it exciting to see big fucking guns and robots!”
When this logic extended to the scene where you are supposed to cheer at a child for slaughtering a room of men using the latest in military technology, I was slightly appalled.
James Douglas
22/08/09 - 10:42 PM
Hmm. The ‘three amigos’ comparison is dead on, and I agree that they are a template for engaging with such social issues in a HW style genre narrative. But consider the way in which Mexican poverty operates as a sort of thematic resonance in the background of Y Tu Mama Tambien. I can’t help but think that Blomkamp’s engagement with South African social themes is of a similar order, only people are somehow primed to find him offensive because he’s telling a crowd-pleasing scifi action story, and not a finely drawn coming-of-age.
But mostly, and I’ll admit that this is a big assumption on my part, it feels like people could only really find genuine racism in District 9 if they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be South African. I have a suspicion of any attempts to accuse social groups of interior racism. Consider the white guy who complains that he doesn’t understand how hip-hop artists can call each other ‘nigger’. He just doesn’t understand what it is like to be in the black community.
It is plausible to me that, through his life as a South African (and this seems to be a categorisation of some dispute here) Blomkamp has synthesised his experience of the racial and social dynamics of his country, and reproduced them in a way that (while it may be alarming to the non-South African observer) is totally authentic, and fundamentally not racist. I recall a quote, which I can’t find now, in which Blomkamp responds to criticisms over the depiction of the Nigerian gang in District 9 by saying that their characterization would not be surprising to a South African, or to a person with extensive experience of life in South Africa. And I don’t think that’s white guy ignorance or racism, I think it comes from personal immersion in that culture. It seems to me that many criticisms that accuse District 9 of being racist, or racially insensitive, can be dealt with in this way.
I’m certainly not claiming that science fiction can’t engage constructively with social issues. I love hard scifi. It just seems to me that accusing District 9 of not fully engaging with apartheid politics is a misguided criticism, or an unrealistic one. Kind of like faulting Juno for refusing to engage fully with the pro-life/pro-choice debate, or Star Wars for not representing the social turmoil following the rise of a fascist, intergalactic empire. Such issues are, it seems to me, plausibly and appropriately outside the scope of those films. So it is with District 9. This returns to the problem of criticising plot holes. I think it is possible to identify and criticise poor plotting, but all such criticisms need to be measured against the film itself, and its nature and its aims, rather than our own expectations of what the film should be.
I still have a problem with the way you’re using ‘Hollywood’ as a pejorative term, especially in this context, but I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet. I’ll just say that, again, your attribution of particular motives on the part of the filmmakers (in this case a desire for money and a desire to appeal to the lowest common denominator) is questionable.
I don’t intend to seem like I have a personal stake in this film, or that I’m personally offended by your review. I agree that it is okay to like dumb films. I’m the guy who’s seen Charlie’s Angels at least five times. It just bugs me that District 9 is being criticised for being dumb, or racist, or insensitive in ways that seem to me to be inaccurate.
(PS. This is fun.)
Brad Nguyen
22/08/09 - 10:47 PM
Isn’t it?
Brad Nguyen
22/08/09 - 11:28 PM
I think the point I was trying to make is not that Neill Blomkamp is a racist. It’s pretty clear that it’s not. But it is interesting how he invokes the very real spectre of apartheid only to abandon the issue in the name of fun and games; that in his filmmaking he prioritises entertainment over politics.
Now – with Y Tu Mama Tambien… The “coming-of-age” narrative actually compliments the theme of social oppression that operates in the background. The shifting dynamics of the three main characters reveals plenty about their socioeconomic positions and the relationship between the classes in Mexico. (Actually that film is also interesting in terms of class tourism – that Diego Luna’s character has this romantic idea of being a poor artist but decides to study economics after the shock of his homosexual encounter…) In District 9 on the other hand, the story about being infected by alien DNA and retrieving the special fluid to power the spaceship…it’s all just nonsense. I mean, entertaining nonsense, but what does it reveal about oppression of minorities, or corporate exploitation of the third world? Sure maybe I’m asking too much of the film, but the opening scenes promise so much.
Jessie
23/08/09 - 7:47 AM
It sounds like you’re asking too much of the film!
Disclaimer: I haven’t seen it!
BUT, because I’m a closet sci fi fancier, I’m gonna lurch in here and say, that I kind of agree with James. I would even go further and say that sometimes half the enjoyment of sci fi (as my v testimony was getting at) is the ham-fisted ways they try to be socially & politically relevant, given it is primarily an escapist genre (IMO- I’m sure some one will cane me on this!).
And- I’m not saying it can’t be done & done well, but sometimes the stoopidness of a film can almost be predicted in direct proportion to the ambitiousness of the film maker’s aims (or perhaps, delusions).
I mean, is sci fi really the most appropriate genre for a discussion of Apartheid politics? To what degree, as a viewer, can you even take that seriously? And to what degree do you think Blomkamp expects you to- like, how delusional is he? Is it not just pretty wallpaper against which to stage the special effects?
I mean scifi can definitely be subtle, and nuanced and layered and show complex viewpoints- and it’s great when it does, but you wouldn’t say that’s what you’re expecting every time you go see a sci fi film, would you? (Even when the director is taking that burden on himself, as Blomkamp appears to be)
Do you think a general audience does, any more than you do?
And do they really expect that this film (for example) is going to be some kind of detailed political analysis, from which they will come away so much the wiser?
Personally, I believe the majority of viewers know exactly why they are there- to see a movie. If they wanted to be educated, they would be at home watching the 7.30 report or something, not sitting in a cushioned chair in the dark with a tub of popcorn on their lap bigger than their head.
Kimj
23/08/09 - 12:05 PM
I think sci-fi, perhaps more so than many other genres, is able to critically engage with sociopolitical issues in a very creative and allegorical way. I think sci-fi is able to force the viewer to reconsider the way our society operates without confronting them with “real-life” scenarios that many people will be predisposed to read a certain way due to their existing ideological position.
Of course there is merit in the popcorn, action/adventure sci-fi film like Transformers, that asks you to invest in its storyline because it is exciting and mindlessly entertaining. However, I disagree that any attempt to be socially and politically relevant is going to be invariably “ham-fisted.”
Most of my favourite sci-fi texts have, at least to some degree engaged me in their sociopolitical commentary. Star Trek for instance is able to encourage the viewer to question the nature of peace, justice, hatred, violence, sexuality, culture, morality, religion etc. If presented in a contemporary context, many of the concepts would be rejected based on the dominant capitalist ideology. However, presenting these concepts in an abstract reality allows average viewers to critically consider these issues, even if they are unwilling to engage in similar debates about contemporary society.
D9 seems to encourage such an engagement, without actually following through on its promise. I can think of an endless number of texts (Robocop, Children of Men, Total Recall, 1984, Iron Man… hell, even the first Matrix film) that are able to force us to consider our social, cultural or political environment, whilst remaining conventionally entertaining. In fact, forcing us to engage in abstract thought is part of the appeal.
Brad Nguyen
23/08/09 - 12:52 PM
Hey y’all. Thanks for the debate. If this quality of discussion continues with subsequent posts from other people then I think this will be a really cool space.
Yosh
23/08/09 - 2:47 PM
Especially agree with what you mention in your last paragraph, Kim, about D9 seeming to promise such an engagement without following through. This, for me, was the key disappointment of the film. The opening sequences seem to promise a genuinely critical and thought-provoking text, but the rest of the film is just a run-of-the-mill (well, to be fair, a somewhat above-average) action sci-fi movie. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of movie, but it’s hard not to feel that they could’ve done more with it.
Zoe
30/08/09 - 2:03 AM
I know the discussion for this film has kind of wound up, but I was putting off reading this until I’d seen the film. Now that I have, I find that pretty much everything I thought about it has already been discussed. Serves me right for being a Johnny-come-lately.
Having already heard wildly conflicting responses to this film I was very curious to finally see it for myself, and I having done so I am firmly in the ‘pro’ camp.
Perhaps I am simple minded, but the idea of the ‘Prawns’ as straight substitutions for black South Africans under apartheid simply didn’t occur to me. I know it’s obvious, but I agree that it seemed much more a cultural calling card than a true allegory. And I don’t have a problem with that.
I felt was that the parallels to apartheid were more broadly referencing the status of refugees, displaced groups and victims of social upheaval than only apartheid in South Africa. For me, the film worked because it was quite simply calling on the audience to react with empathy to people (and I include the Prawns in my definition of people) who, through no fault of their own, have been made homeless.
The film was set in South Africa, but it could just have easily been set in a Woomera-like camp in South Australia. I liked the South African setting because it’s not something I’ve seen a lot of on screen, but in many ways I think the setting was incidental.
As for the portrayal of the Nigerian gangs, well, I know you’re going to accuse me of being facetious (and I am being) but are you implying that black Africans can’t be bad guys? I thought the balance of white baddies, black baddies, white goodies and black goodies was pretty unremarkable. In fact the issue didn’t even occur to me until I read this review.
Ultimately I thought District 9 was a small, and in some ways amateurish effort that certainly felt like a first film (I would rate bad dialogue as it’s greatest crime), but it is innovative, and fun, and has clever ideas, and looks good, and feels original in a lot of ways, and it made me want to hang out with the Prawns. Most importantly it made me feel empathy and compassion for beings dramatically unlike myself, and I think that’s a strong achievement for any film.
Brad Nguyen
30/08/09 - 5:26 PM
Zoe! Look who’s late to the party!
Look – I don’t want to be a blanket pro or against person. I can appreciate Blomkamp’s achievement (which I suppose is making a modestly budgeted sci-fi film that is designed to feel like it is happening in a gritty reality).
But here’s a fun analogy: Imagine that Paris Hilton released a song about fucking Robert Mills. The promotional clip is filmed in Africa and mainly consists of Hilton cavorting around in an outfit that is half army fatigues and half bikini. The clip is intercut with footage of starving African children, their stomachs bloated from malnutrition, their eyes fluttering doe-like at the camera. “You are my desire, you set my heart on fire,” Hilton sings while she bends over, baring her derriere and looking back at the camera coquettishly. At the conclusion of the clip she looks at the camera and implores the audience to “think about all the children starving in the world”.
When it comes to music, we are more likely to take a nuanced stance: “Man, those Neptune beats are mad and the song is insanely catchy but filming in Africa is in pretty bad taste.”
So in District 9, instead of a vapid heiress you have this filmmaker whose professional dream is to turn a videogame into a movie. Instead of selling sex, Blomkamp is selling violence. Cos seriously, Blomkamp’s main interest is getting his protagonist into a mech-suit and blowing shit up. Everything else is reverse engineered.
“Why is the mech-suit there?”
“Um, Aliens?”
“Why aren’t the aliens using their own technology?”
“Um…because they’re drone aliens.”
“But some aliens must be able to use weapons and think strategically.”
“Um yeah…all those aliens died.”
“Why didn’t the government take all the weapons?”
“Only the aliens can use the weapons.”
“How can that be?”
“Uh…the weapons are activated…by DNA!”
A smart writer would start with the concept of a shipload of aliens arriving and think seriously about how the world would react in such a situation. Because of the plot holes I’ve outlined, this clearly wasn’t the interest of Blomkamp.
(Another couple of holes which occurred to me: Why are humans prostituting themselves to aliens? Even the most desperate prostitute would be unlikely to resort to this and what exactly are they getting in return? Alien weaponry? Cat food? Why couldn’t the government find that fallen spaceship when it first fell? Wouldn’t a metal detector do the trick? Why did the evil scientists test weapons on a prawn that according to the film’s narrative has attained human rights? Why wouldn’t they test on a cow instead? Wouldn’t that be preferable in light of the legal/PR consequences of people finding out?)
Oh god too much stupidity for me to handle.
Daniel Golding
13/09/09 - 5:05 PM
Sorry to jump into discussion well after it has wound up – by my calculations, I’m a full 14 days late after everyone has moved on, which is a record even by my lapsed standards – but I just had to make one small comment which I hope you consider.
I felt that the major crime of District 9 was not in using the Apartheid setting as a background theme, but in dehistoricising it. What I mean by this is that the film used Apartheid as a reference-point in a curious way: sure, we’re meant to get that what we’re seeing here is a replaying of Apartheid, but we’re not meant to take away any point about Apartheid itself. The points being made are all being made about the oppressor, not the oppressed. It’s a handy sci-fi setting, but what District 9 is really talking about is the ability for those on top to completely desert any principles or values in order to keep those below, below. It’s crime, therefore, is to treat Apartheid in the same way Star Wars treats, say, the Roman Empire, or even fascism. We see the connections, but we aren’t really meant to take anything away from it: it’s dehistoricised.
This is why the film didn’t interrogate the flaws you mention in connection with the prawns, and why the the voodoo-loving Nigerians were paper-thin. It’s because the film simply isn’t interested in what makes them tick; it’s interested in what powers the society that condemns them. It’s interested in the corporations, the government, the people, even the poor people of the on-top society.
Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t love District 9 either. But I think you’re picking at it on the wrong tack.
Daniel Golding
13/09/09 - 5:06 PM
By the way, great site. I hope to participate in debates here in a more timely manner in the future.