by Bernard Ozarowski
District 9 is the feature film debut from South African director Neil Blomkamp. Blomkamp grew up in South Africa under apartheid, which was, simply put, the legally enforced racial segregation system that subjugated the black majority of the population beneath the white minority. Of particular note in South African apartheid history was the ordeal of District Six. District Six was an area of Cape Town largely made up of a Muslim populace. The government decided that the populace needed to be moved, forcibly, for a variety of reasons. The government stated that the close proximity of the races developed tension, that District Six, which had once been rather well cultured, was a slum, that it was full of vices, such as prostitution, and that it bred criminal behavior. Over the course of about a decade the majority of the District Six population was moved to Cape Flats and their homes were bulldozed and the property seized by the government.
District 9 takes place in present day Johannesburg, South Africa and deals with the arrival of alien visitors to the planet Earth. (I should note at this point that if you have not seen the movie, which I would heartily recommend, there are many spoilers from here on out.) Upon arrival the aliens ship stops over the city and simply holds there. When the South Africans enter the ship they find that the aliens inside are sickly and on the verge of death. For a number of years, the ship had arrived in 1982, the aliens are allowed some form of freedom and are allowed to move around without restriction. Gradually, however, social pressure and racism lead the government to first segregate the aliens to District 9 then losing the right to leave the area at all. Blomkamp shows interviewed citizens blaming the aliens from everything from economic failures to their wife leaving them (because, of course, the aliens abducted her).
The citizens go further even, derogatorily deeming the aliens ‘prawns’ after their vague resemblance to Parktown prawns, an insect that had plagued South Africa. Blomkamp shoots all of this in documentary style, integrating faux-news footage with expert interviews and archive footage, to give the film a steeped in reality appearance. Almost organically, Blomkamp shifts the focus of the movie to Wikus van de Merwe who will be our protagonist. Van de Merwe is something of a nebbish pencil pusher, with a racist streak to him, working for Multinational United, the alien task force. He is completely blind to the plight of the aliens and sees them as inferior to himself. He is assigned with leading the relocation of the aliens in District 9 to a new camp called District 10. This is a character who, clearly, has minimal field experience and is uncomfortable even speaking to military types.
In the course of clearing District 9, van de Merwe ignores even the most rudimentary laws in place to protect the aliens. The MNU operatives are required to get signatures from the aliens acknowledging the need to move, or at least inform them they will be forcibly moved in 24 hours if they will not sign off. One alien knocks the clipboard from van de Merwe and he remarks that smashing the clipboard will suffice as a signature. He pressures another alien to acquiesce into moving by threatening to have his child taken away and killed. He also performs a series of in-the-field abortions, burning an alien breeding house where their eggs develop. Van de Merwe’s actions are a symbol here for the politics of the situation trumping the legal protections and those legal protections trumping any sort of moral protection for the aliens. Clearly, based on the fact that they have an intergalactic means of transportation, advanced weaponry and mechanized suits, the aliens are intelligent and culturally developed. But the political situation has not allowed the aliens a voice, they are subjugated because they are different and make an easy scapegoat for any societal ills because they have no voice.
It is not until van de Merwe is exposed to a chemical that begins to turn him into one of the aliens that his views change. He is captured by the government, to be experimented on and dissected and escapes. The government uses propaganda to turn him into a pariah. After his escape, van de Merwe retreats to District 9 seeing it as his only hope to find somewhere the government will not hunt him down. Back in District 9, van de Merwe forms an uneasy, self-interested, alliance with one of the aliens and many action scenes ensue. It is not until near the end of the movie when van de Merwe realizes he has formed a bond with his alien ally. He sees the alien attempt to explain to his son that they must move to District 10, and van de Merwe admits that the new location is “like a concentration camp.” By the film’s climax, van de Merwe has had his impediment, his blindness to the aliens’ plight and the aliens’ culture, has been corrected.
It is interesting, if tragic, that the end of the film sees massive celebration by South Africans about the departure of the alien mothership. Wikus van de Merwe, part and parcel of the problem, is the only one who begins to see the plight of the aliens – and that is only because he began to become one. There is no growth in society after van de Merwe’s ordeal, no change. Blomkamp’s recognition of notions that the political trumps the legal world and the legal trumps the moral is left fully intact and reflected in South African society.
