Ramon: District 9 and Genocide as a Whole

The 2009 film directed by Neill Blomkamp, District 9, is a futuristic representation of genocide in a more humorous way than the other films we have seen in the course. I am not saying that the extermination of the aliens from Johannesburg is a funny situation, but Blomkamp purposefully placed the issues of genocide in this situation in order to remove a bit of human emotional attachment to the persecuted aliens. When a being that no human can associate to on a physical dimension is persecuted, there is a sense of ease when it comes to examining a situation. However, this leads into the point of why the simple root of genocide is persecution of the non-conformist in a society.

Now, genocide usually is not rooted in pure physical differences in peoples. The genocide of a certain race is the due to primarily the demands of an oppressive race and/or the disapproval of the cultural practices of the suppressed race. We see this in Powwow Highway. In this film and in District 9, the suppressed race is placed in reservations. The reservations are areas in the country/city that separates them from the “normal” members of the society. In the article Denial, Shadow, and Recovery, Jana Rivers- Norton says in reference to capitalist Americans as a whole, “they materialize through various forms of acting out (racism, scapegoating, national chauvinism).” In both films, the oppressive race wants to eliminate the lower race because of economic means to gain land. The case of Powwow Highway is to build a refinery, and in District 9 is to further develop the slums to benefit the city.

Secondly, District 9 and the Rwandan holocaust relate together because much of the Rwandan holocaust was based off of the face that Tutsis looked a lot different from Hutus. Paul’s wife in Hotel Rwanda is much taller than him, is much lighter skinned than him, and has a much thinner nose than he does. They do look drastically different from one another. I was reading the book Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza. She points out her own experiences of how at an early age she was taught the physical distinctions from Hutu and Tutsi. Also, she learns that no matter how similar she thinks she looks to the majority Hutu class, she is drastically different from the other students. In an interview article by Carl Wilkens, Jerri Sheperd speaks heavily of the “other” in relation to the Rwandan genocide. The aliens in District 9 were constantly viewed as “the other.” In allegory to the apartheid in South Africa and the civil rights movement in the United States, the aliens were very much treated like the “other.” The film shows a montage of shots showing different signs that separate the aliens from the humans. This is much like the signs placed in buses and on water fountains during the civil rights movement. These signs were the result of the immediate physical differences seen by the natives.