District Nein

Apartheid was a clear case of a government in the wrong. The white government of South Africa suppressed the indigenous Africans and the subsequent removal of power of these knuckleheads was a great turning point in history. Period.

Unfortunately, a good chunk of  the much younger generation doesn’t  understand what that was all about, nor even that it existed. Apartheid is as familiar or pivotal a concept to them as Harrison Ford. You know, the old guy in that Mexican alien movie starring Shia Labeouf.

So it’s no wonder they can watch District 9 and claim it is not a “racial” movie. The same audience that slept through Apartheid lessons also slept through the concept of allegories in literature class.

But as allegories go, District 9 is a mess.

Begin with the basic premise. In the 1970’s, thousands of black Africans were removed from their homes by the white Apartheid government in the infamous District 6 ghettos. In the movie, these Africans have been replaced by a metaphor: mindless, violent bug-like aliens that are addicted to catfood (drugs), robbery, murder, and prostitution…basically hella ghetto.

Depicting the negative ethnic stereotypes of another race through animal counterparts is always a questionable device, but we are asked by the film’s premise to give it a pass. We have to. The film never promises this, but we as decent human beings tolerate this race baiting because obviously the filmmakers have some ironic point in mind by the conclusion. After all, if they find the requisite message that “we are all violent, catfood eating insects who can kill people with one swipe of our impossibly strong arms”, then perhaps the film will earn the goodwill we naturally give it’s offensive set up.

Normally when it comes to this type of race badgering, it’s just polite to atleast include a token “civilized” character of the ethnic group you are condescending to.  Like a Sallah or Joe Biden. But all the real black folk held nominal jobs while all the doctors and talking head psychologists were played by bad white actors. Having worked in South Africa a couple months ago, I can tell you, this is not fair. There are plenty of bad black actors to fill those roles too.

Instead, enter the primitive black Nigerian cannibal tribe whose members are having sex with giant bugs for weapons.

WTF?

Before one argues whether this is patterned after realistic cultural behaviour, one has to ask, what the fuck is this villainous portrayal doing in a movie that takes the liberty of depicting Africans as insects? The obvious answer?

Equivocation.

Take the following interview from Dark Horizons and the film’s director:

Question: Do you feel this is a comment on post-apartheid South Africa?

Blomkamp: Well, there’s no question that there’s a hell of a lot of important topics in there. But I definitely actively tried to not beat the audience over the head with it. And rather, take all of the elements about South Africa that interest me, and the real racial history, as well as the black-on-black xenophobic stuff that’s been happening since all of the Zimbabwe immigrants have been coming into the country. And I incorporated that, also. So really, I just used all of the elements of South Africa that make it South Africa.

Question: And District 6 existed during apartheid.

Blomkamp: Yeah, in Capetown. Yeah.

Question: So if you know about history, I guess there was that parallel as well.

Blomkamp: Yeah. And the forced removals, and all that, but, I mean, yeah. It was meant to incorporate all of the elements that make up South Africa’s background, but in a subtle sort of fabric in the movie. And the personal story is in the foreground.

So essentially the specific black on black xenophobia scenes are directly related to Zimbabwan refugees, but those are a minor subplot in the movie he “incorporated”. The greater plot is the historical Apartheid allegory of South Africa and District 6’s horrible race relocation...then they equivocated it all and mixed it up, and made a shakey cam action flick out of it.

This is the major problem with the film. It spends a lot of energy mixing two separate issues of South Africa that have very different politics, and ultimately neither works. The filmmaker is either madly detatched: are South African slums nothing more than a cool place to stage action scenes? Or is this white South African reluctance to separate those two issues – white Apartheid versus modern black immigration?

Furthermore, the allegory is so clumsily fused that it creates strange inconsistancies. The reality is in Apartheid white people were the aliens, when the black people were native. In the movie the aliens simply wanted to go home, but in Apartheid they already were home. Black people are South Africa. As a Zimbabwan refugee metaphor it only works if you erase the entire history of South African Apartheid from the collective discussion. And frankly, that is impossible and stupid to do in a race allegory set in South Africa.

On a story level, it’s the reason they delibrately made the Nigerians so over the top in their evilness - to force the counterpoint that “Africans discriminate too.” But Apartheid is a specific case of white people forcing natives out of their own homeland, which is different from Zimbabwan immigrants coming into a country causing inter-tribal friction.

District 9’s point doesn’t seem to be that Apartheid is horrible. District 9’s point is that the treatment of Zimbabwan refugees is just like Apartheid. District 9 is a South African race allegory with an asterick.*

*black people are racist too.