We have been tasked to understand and explore the content and subtext of Neil Blomkamp’s film District 9. First and foremost, District 9 is a film who bares no subtlety in their recreation and scrutiny of the Apartheid Era in South Africa, an era which most South African wish they could forget. But this film is more than that. On its surface District 9 is blatant reminder and warning for humanity of its irrational fear of immigration and xenophobia will inevitably backfire on ourselves. Of course even as I write this essay, putting on this elaborate act of a “holier than thou” is unknowingly hypocritical. Nonetheless, I will try to understand and deliver the Director’s message and intentions.
Let’s begin with its Explicit messages. Immigration. In the film, the aliens or in this case , the “Prawns” arrive in a humongous spaceship filled to the brim with their people. They come here uninvited and unannounced, but immediately their presence starts bothering people. Akin to notable migrations in human history, for example the recent Syrian immigration crisis and The Rohingya genocide. The ‘original’ colonists of the area tries to push them away despite not knowing their intentions and even their true nature. They start rioting and fighting in the streets. Slurs are called, derogatory terms are used without remorse. On the other hand, one could argue that the aliens have no right of intruding someone else’s home.
The filmmaker manages to convey the hurtful truth about immigration using direct allegory. He parallels the alien ‘prawns’ to immigrants who are often cited by critics as useless and a liability. That they don’t contribute to a Country’s productivity. The filmmaker manages to showcase the brutality of the conditions immigrants live in. Torn down homes and slum-like conditions are just tip of the iceberg. The Filmmaker even decides to showcase borderline reality which in some cases, we might consider a little too extreme. He manages to showcase the, what I call ‘False Heaven’ for immigrants and may even apply to broader context of every society .Which in all honesty has marginalization deeply embedded in our roots. Marginalized societies are often painted as drug addicts who are lazy and incompetent. He uses the ‘cat food ‘ as a direct metaphor for drugs . The aliens line up waiting for drugs they cannot afford and yet they continue to beg, suggesting an over-reliance on drugs similar to the social outcasts in societies such as Baltimore’s Heroin epidemic (USA). The only thing that might be providing them a temporary comfort from the hell that is their lives.
The Director added in a subtle detail in which most people would see past it. I for one think it takes on a deeper meaning. The aliens are described as ‘Prawns’ not only because they bare a striking physical resemblance to the crustacean but also because prawns are widely considered to be bottom feeders. The cockroaches of the sea. They pick the unwanted and they feed off stuff that people above the food chain don’t again the filmmaker uses the food chain in the ocean to describe the classism and xenophobia in which I would delve deeper into later in the essay. Prawns don’t contribute to their society, they leech of the people who actually contribute.
Another Explicit Theme the film tries to get across is Xenophobia and Racism. The filmmaker doesn’t even try to be subtle when he tackles such an issue, of course his direct parallel of Aliens to ‘Illegal aliens” in the context of undocumented immigrants seem exaggerated. But it was the inhuman aspect of the aliens that really interested me. To be honest, it might even be prediction of the near future arguably even now. We don’t even treat them as humans anymore. Racism on the other hand is more subtle almost implicit. I’m not talking about the treatment of aliens but I delving deeper onto the division of races in the side of good and evil. In the earlier parts of the film, the aliens are labelled as evil and who are the ones on their side? The Blacks (African- American) of the nation playing drug peddlers and gangbangers. Even the MNU ,an obvious bold euphemism for UN, consists of mostly white members. The Black members are all part of the lower hierarchy putting in the dirty work the upper management wouldn’t put into. In simplest sense. The Blacks were with the Aliens and the Whites with the MNU. But the film subverts expectations when its revealed that the MNU were the inhumane party . The filmmaker attempts to trick the viewers when he flips the narrative on its heads. He wants us , the audience to research and explore more on both ends of this issue of Racism because in most cases, the perpetrator would be the one that provide you with false information and that he(Director) himself a South African has actually experienced this conundrum or at least know the history of his nation.
One word. Apartheid. A word most South Africans try to forget. District 9 is taken from District 6. A former inner-city residential area in Cape Town, South Africa. Over 60,000 of its inhabitants were forcibly removed during the 1970s. The Apartheid regime was infamous for its institutional segregation which allowed the South African Government to implement laws that discriminated against blacks and minorities. They separated their homes from the ‘whites’ who were considered ‘better’ and more advanced than the ‘coloured’. The coloured were forcefully removed from their homes and sent to much more terrible place mirroring the film’s key plot point of transferring the aliens from District 9 to new internment camp. The aliens as the ‘coloured’. They had no choice but to leave, fed with lies of a better future despite not knowing where they are headed. They weren’t allowed to vote, paralleling the disenfranchisement of coloured voters in the 1950s when the government restricted the voting rights of the coloured people. This symptomatic meaning detailed the conditions of the Apartheid era had deeper subtext when our main character Winkus was tasked seek ‘permission’ from the aliens to leave District 9 but they had to sign. Now what if they didn’t? That question brings me to another theme in this film
Over-reliance and secrecy of bureaucratic corporations and companies. In my opinion , the film tries but struggles to deliver this implicit meaning mentioned above. Simply because it hides this agenda smartly. I may be diving deep into the rabbit hole when I say the extreme subtlety was intentional. The director may have purposely done this to simulate the current reality of this bureaucratic organizations and to the normal audience, the idea isn’t advertent enough to have a lasting impression. But that’s the beauty of this film , the nuances are so abstract and indirect, that when you finally get it. It truly becomes an ‘WOW’ moment and it leaves you thinking for days. MNU the corporation that is at the front and centre of this conundrum is shown to the public as saviours and heroes, that they will save the day. But the truth is often found in the current reality. As said before MNU is just UN but with an extra letter. MNU , a two-faced organization who claims they put the people’s need first when in fact they care more about profit than anything else. They put up fronts, propaganda spreading throughout the streets. The worst part, we are cheering them on when they profit of the less fortunate. They use the alien weapons against the aliens themselves. They do this for greed but it backfires in the film through. In reminds me of a recent event in American history, the Dakota Access Pipeline Leak. To summarise the event, Native American were forced off their land by the authorities to build a pipeline. Now the government continued to build the pipeline despite backlash from both experts and the natives. After the pipeline was finished, it leaked. This exact irony is displayed in the film beautifully in the story of Winkus.
Winkus, our main character is self-deluded man who’s ambition ultimately leads to both his downfall and unseen rise which bares poetic meaning I will discuss later. In all honesty, the best subtheme of the film often shown implicitly is Humanity. When Winkus starts turning into the creature he hated so much. The creatures he beat up, the one he called disgusting and useless. He starts growing as character, the flaws he had starts to blur and the humanity in him starts blooming. The filmmaker does this because there’s a certain poeticism in the tragedy. The act of physically changing into something so inhuman yet growing more humanity subverts Propp’s and Levi-strauss theory. In modern cinema, the hero usually grows and his physical appearance usually improves ,etc Batman, Spiderman. But the film flips in on its head. Propp’s theory determines a character through classical archetypes that are often pre-determined and one dimensional. Levi-strauss theory decides that binary opposite create a intriguing and conflicting film . But with Winkus, the conflict occurs externally in the form of physical appearance but the resolution comes internally. As a character at face-value, Winkus is dying throughout the film but his degeneration is paused when he grows as a human. In this case both theories are evaded creating a narrative so inviting and creative because of its ignorance of Good vs Evil in classical literature.
Critics were harsh when discussing the meaning behind Winkus’s character. They thought the filmmaker was lazy and decided to re-use an already cliché trope in film. The White Saviour. To me the film actually deconstructs the white saviour. In its purest form the white saviour, is white male who has to sacrifice himself to save the world. But the filmmaker does this differently, instead of saving humanity through the act of sacrifice. Winkus does the exact opposite. In most cases, the whole world knows of the saviour’s sacrifice and they love him for it but the film ends on a sour note. Winkus victory is never celebrated, the people continue to hate him and label him as a traitor because he deserves it. When he saved the world, he didn’t save “our” world like Jesus did. He saved the world that hated, the aliens. They were part of something much bigger but he doesn’t know it. Unlike Jesus whose sole purpose to me was self-congratulations . Winkus did it for himself out of spite of the human race who turned against him, if anything he becomes the opposite of the ‘White Saviour”
The Film Reviewer 