Allegorical Landmines: Aliens & Race in ‘District 9′
Posted By The Editors | August 31st, 2009 | Category: Hot Topics, Year in Review | 4 comments
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By Tananarive Due
The aliens have come to Earth, but this time they’re in Johannesburg—and they’re not getting along with their new human neighbors. That’s the premise of summer blockbuster District 9, produced by Peter Jackson and directed by 30-year-old South African special effects whiz Neill Blomkamp.
As a speculative fiction author who has been to Soweto, and who shouted myself hoarse during college anti-apartheid rallies, I was electrified by the trailer’s gritty, documentary-style sequences of a spacecraft hovering over Johannesburg. Ultimately, I felt moved to tears by District 9. My husband and I recommended it to friends.
But a debate among some filmgoers about the depiction of District 9’s black characters is an example of how allegory can be rife with landmines.
"District 9" from Sony Pictures
District 9 topped the box office the weekend after it opened Aug. 14. The computer-generated imagery (CGI) is state-of-the-art, and the apartheid allegory added depth rarely found in a summer blockbuster. (“Do you have a permit for that child?” an alien is asked during a shack-by-shack raid, ringing with the mistreatment of blacks under apartheid. In another scene, the white hero insists the he is required by law to be served in a fast food restaurant run by blacks.)
District 9 is directed and co-written by South African-born Neill Blomkamp, who is white and came of age during apartheid. His family moved to Canada when he was a teenager. As Blomkamp said in the August 14 issue of Vanity Fair: “You [would] also see all of the army vehicles …going into the townships when stuff was really flaring up in the late ‘80s. I remember that pretty clearly.”
In District 9, a plotline where aliens are forcibly removed from their shanties mirrors the forced removal of residents in District 6 outside of Cape Town in the 1970s, when more than 60,000 nonwhites were removed. Blomkamp’s movie shows black South Africans in positions of authority as newscasters, police officers, national bureaucrats and lab employees.
But District 9 is also about South Africa’s post-apartheid woes.
Enter the Nigerians. In District 9, Nigerians are portrayed as witchy, warlike thugs who will have sex with aliens—derisively called “prawns”—for the right price. Nigerians also have the highest mortality rate, and get more screen time than any other black characters in the movie.
Nnedi Okorafor, a Nigerian fantasy author who has been awarded the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, was giddy with anticipation when she and her sisters went to see District 9 in Chicago on opening weekend. By the end of the film, she was outraged.
“The character Obasanjo in the film was essentially a cannibal, for the aliens he was eating were more on the level of human beings than other animals no matter how poorly humans treated them,” says Okorafor, author of The Shadow Speaker. “This might have been a poorly thought-out reference to the ritual killings that happen in Nigeria. I think. Or, maybe it was just another racist depiction of Africa,” Okorafor said.
William Jelani Cobb, an author and commentator who teaches history at Spelman College in Atlanta, couldn’t stomach the film. “I walked out shortly after the scene with the Nigerian hustlers eating ‘prawn’ body parts and drinking their blood,” says Cobb, the author of The Devil and Dave Chapelle & Other Essays. “I suspected that the filmmakers were so smug about their allegory that they have overlooked the ways in which the film ultimately echoed old stereotypes in itself.”
In interviews, Blomkamp has defended his depiction of the Nigerian gangsters. In the August 12 issue of Salon magazine, he said, “I know those buttons are going to be pushed. Unfortunately, that’s the reality of it, and it doesn’t matter how politically correct or politically incorrect you are. The bottom line is that there are huge Nigerian crime syndicates in Johannesburg. I wanted the film to feel real, to feel grounded, and I was going to incorporate as much of contemporary South Africa as I wanted to, and that’s just how it is.”
Characters in District 9 are intentionally broad. The hapless white hero, named Wikus van der Merwe, is saddled with a surname made famous in South Africa’s version of Polish jokes, but about Afrikaners (hint: van der Merwe isn’t known for his brains)—and moviegoers root against him at times. The head Nigerian gangster, Obasanjo, is named after Nigeria’s controversial former president, who was accused of corruption. Most of the aliens are filthy, not terribly bright, and violent neighbors. And many of the whites seem to have been inspired by Dr. Josef Mengele’s Nazi science experiments.
But the movie’s Nigerians stand out in a science fiction movie born in Africa.
With increased immigration and criminal activity attributed to Nigerians, tensions against Nigerians in South Africans have grown in recent years. In June, during a commencement address in Nigeria, South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu apologized for violence against Nigerians in South Africa, calling it “a shameless act.” Xenophobic violence in South Africa against immigrants from Malawi, Zimbabwe and other countries has also gained international attention—and has not escaped District 9 ’s notice.
Says Cobb: “My main problem with the film was the seeming moral equivalency of the recent xenophobia among South African blacks and apartheid. But you simply cannot compare the actions of random anti-immigrant thugs with an organized, decades-long governmental effort to ensure that one group remain at the bottom of society and another at the top.”
But Jenn Brissett, a former bookseller who now writes science fiction while pursuing her MFA at the Stonecoast Creative Writing Program at the University of Maine, said she gave District 9 high points for its good intentions.
“There were some very upsetting images in the film—that being said, I think that it was a valiant try,” Brissett says. “The movie was trying to say something about one oppressed group turning around and oppressing another. We Jamaicans experienced this in my youth when African Americans were known to call us names and treat us shamefully. When the Haitians arrived, it seemed like it was their turn. Awful, awful, painful stuff.”
Àdisà Ájàmú, a writer who lives in Washington, D.C., believes District 9 ’s point was conveyed better in the works of writers like the late science fiction author Octavia E. Butler. “[Butler’s is] a vision that affirms our humanity, even in villainous moments, while offering hope that there are minds fertile with possibility,” he says.
My husband, author Steven Barnes, loved District 9 overall, and he’s a veteran of social science fiction. His novel, Lion’s Blood, is social science fiction—an alternate history in which the Americas were colonized by Africans bringing European slaves.
“For the movie to have been enlightened, it would have needed balancing imagery of the Nigerians,” says Barnes, an NAACP Image Award-winner. “But this movie was not about race—it was about humanity. When you realize that the point of this film was the way human beings discount each other, it did that job fine.”
District 9 excited me. But District 10 will launch the franchise even higher if it rejects overused images—and carves room for a more fully fleshed black character.
District 9 laid a strong foundation.
Now it’s time for all of us to build.
Tananarive Due, author of Blood Colony, is an American Book Award winner and NAACP Image Award winner. She co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights with her mother, Patricia Stephens Due. (www.tananarivedue.com)
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I found this movie disturbing. It contained attributes of Totalitarianism, Capitalism, Racism and Authoritarianism. Of all places, it takes pace in Johannesburg, South Africa. I did not like the way the Nigerians were portrayed and stereotyped. Its crazy how some governments can force their policies on others. I give this movie 2 Middle Fingers Up. You would think if we came across beings of superior intelligents, we would trying to learn from them, not turn them in to refugees and/or slaves. There was no mention in the trailer that the aliens were taken off the ship against their will, sounds familiar?
blame the white man i say
@ Tyrone – I think the point of this film was clearly to highlight these issues in a perhaps exaggerated way. I doubt any use of racist themes were intended negatively, as though the writers supported these views. To attack the film directly is to stand for all forms of censorship suppressing the discussion and mitigation of such prejudice. You may like to believe yourself that we would approach extraterrestrials peacefully and with understanding but of all else and event such as this would generate mass terror more rapidly than ever before, provoking militaries to prepare for the worst. I’m not saying it’s right, at all, it’s just the harsh reality in the corporations similair to the MNU depicted in the film have obscene amounts of power in situations such as these and the ability to abuse this power at will in order to attain what they want, that being A) Comprehensive knowledge, and for it to be gained as quickly and cost effectively as possible and B) the ability to exploit such knowledge in order to generate money, in this case advanced weaponry with interest from global military powers. Ethics plays a very insignificant role in exceptional cases where a large amount of money or technological advancement is involved. Also it isn’t fair to accuse any form of warped perception of Nigerian people by the filmmakers based on the context of the film, as the only intended inclusion of them in the plot were those noted to be part of a criminal organisation and in no way representative of upholding Nigerian citizens.
I regard District 9 as an affirmation of motion pictures as a worthy
segment of the humanities. It is a film,exciting,unpredictable and
satisfying on first encounter, yet filled with deeply human values
and moral conversation, optimism and much subtle literary convention
of a religious and historical character. First, I believe the racial,
social commentary of the film is obvious and well appreciated by any
casual viewer, these issues reflect known problems in South Africa and
are anything but mysterious or subtle nor need they be. I regard this
material as the canvas upon which the deeper story of the film is played out.
In early times authors used allegory rather clearly to produce lessons of a
religious and moral nature in ways which the reader (or viewer) can absorb
comfortably without feeling preached to. Nowadays writers and film makers
incorporaate Allegory (usually christian allegory but often other themes)
to lend texture, weight and a moral or sometimes amoral flavor in addition to
the direct presentation. Obvious religious allegory films for example are
“The day the Earth Stood Still” “Eddie and the Cruisers” “The year of
living Dangerously” “ET” and there are many more. Use of these ideas can be
artful, interesting, fun, pretentious, stupid and worst of all added baggage
to a bad film to begin with. In the case of District 9 it is my view that
the main story of the transformation of the central character is an inspiring
morality tale which has a thrilling, compellingly urgent and contemporary
theme of human spiritual or ethical development evolved within the
forge of great crisis and challenge. This is a story worth both telling
and hearing. It is no comic book quest for a magic trinket but a tale of
a flawed mans growth under fire. Onto this story, i beleive the director
writer has woven very subtly but intentionally a large well crafted
system of historical and religiously allegorical elements. I feel myself
somewhat unschooled enough to lay all the thematic ideas clearly out because
as I write this I am still working through the threads of symbolic reference
I see in it, some clearly, some less so. I am however convinced that this
film maker has painted a gospel like image on a blank jigsaw puzzle, and
sewn the pieces randomly but truly and effectively and elegantly into the
film from beginning to end. When I first saw District 9 I wondered about 4
significant elements. What does the ship mean? It is after all the 500 lb gorilla
in the room and if this film has echo of subtext it has meaning certainly.
The transformation of the lead character is a fundamental element in
the film, of primary importance. The VERY strange dual nature of the black
fluid is deliciously puzzling as a symbolic element and must (if I am correct
about the allegorical nature of District 9) have meaning. and I was struck
immediatly by the central character’s enduring love. Now, I feel I am just
scratching the surface of this very literary work, but here are a couple of
ideas which lead me strongly to feel that there is plenty to muse over
under the surface of the admittedly wonderful surface. (Heh) What the heck
is this fluid allegorically. Half the answer hit me like a brick falling.
The contact with this fluid began the transformation of Wikus van der Merve.
His transformation was an essentially positive one from a moral and ethical
point of view. It was a BAPTISM! Symbolically speaking. Im still mulling over
the fluid as the motile power of the Ship. The Nigerians are in my view a
rather uncomplimentary reflection of the Roman Catholic Church. Eating the
flesh of the aliens (here percieved symbolically as divine) echoes the
mass. The acquisition of weapons which are useless to them seem much like the
accumulation of holy objects so widespread in Catholicism. The intense exploitation
of the aliens (now percieved symbolically as the populace) seems
to be a commentary on Catholic abuse of the laity for its own purposes.
I believe the return of the ship may be viewed as the resurrection, either as
the ship itself returning in three years or the return to humanity of
Wikus which Christopher promised he would effect. Wikus himself takes on a
Christlike character by becoming one of the aliens, just as God became one of
the humans. Clearly this is all loosely assembled but the parts are all
here unquestionably and this inner playground of symbolic life gives the film
a wonderful suggestion of deep moral direction viewed as it must have been
as a subject worth the andornment of so many spiritual themes. Ive only touched
on a few ideas here but I have no sense that I am grasping for meaning where
there is none. This movie is well made at every level and I am not ashamed
to admit that the maker is more subtle, skilled, clever and intelligent
than i am in chasing out his little bits of added material. This movie is
worth the trouble and I hope to be able sometime soon to describe it
very coherently in this way, because I believe District 9 deserves a
thoughtful, complete appreciation of its inner and outer life.
–
Ok, so I have had a few insights into District 9 but obviously there
were a few things ive overlooked. What the does the ship mean and
then…the fluid… baptism, clever, yes, but what is the black fluid as
fuel for the ship mean? I believe this director wants EVERYTHING to be
meaningful. He has such a rich creativity that he has it all
under total managmement. I believe ive figured it out.
This film maker is not only making a religious allegory, he is
commenting on our civilisation.
What is the ship? It is US! Huge, technologically advanced, capable of
amazing things but…..what if this magnificent engine of ours, this
modern society runs out of……………………….OIL! That black stuff
symbolises just what it looks like. OIL. Imagine us in the future, our
giant infrastructure and big machines. All rendered inert because we are
out of oil. weve destroyed ourselves. This movie is a sobering comment on the future of
mankind if we allow ourselves to come to the point where our entire modern
miracle comes to a grinding halt. Those million starving aliens in the immobiised
ship? Thats US! This movie maker has created a sobering look at so many
parts of human life. our misbehaviors, our capacity for redemption, our
headlong flight into self destruction. and all played out on a backdrop of
the sociioligical madness actually existing in South Africa.
District 9 is startlingly rich in content, a wonderful film from any point of view.
I believe that the ship, in its inscrutable huge mystery is not only symbolic of
human civilisation, but additionally symbolises the God of the old testament.
The control module falling to earth in this idea is symbolic of Christ and its return to the ship, the ascension of Christ. I find the dual nature of many of the key elements of the film almost magically adept as expressions of symbolic religious echoes and historical ideas. This is no trivial movie but a rewarding treasure of enjoyment at every level of observation. If this is not brilliance, what in the world is? Exciting, refreshing utterly and at its core, deeply human.
Kramer