Tran: District 9

I think if someone simply watches District 9 as a sci-fi film or have no knowledge of South African history, then the allegories to apartheid and genocides would easily be missed. Since we have in this class and learning about these issues, the connections between this film and the materials we have studied is quite clear.

One of the scenes that really set the tone for District 9 was when the humans finally cut into the spaceship and found the aliens to be malnourished, sickly, covered in filth, and overall disgusting creatures. This scene reflects similar themes of groups that were exterminated by presenting them in a way that makes them less than human and unrespectable as creatures. The film could have easily shown weak, but highly intelligent and efficient aliens, but they chose to make them seen in an unfavorable light. The humans call the aliens prawns because they resemble them and this identification dehumanizes them into a lower sector of creatures. Decades later, the aliens are still shown as cat food loving, lazy, violent, and uncontrollable creatures and they are all herded together in a slum known as District 9. They are also seen fighting with one another, getting drunk a lot, and rummaging through garbage. There are a lot of unrest between the aliens and the locals and it shows how the aliens are segregated into their own community and not allowed to use facilities as the locals do like the buses or restaurants. It becomes so much of a problem that the government to decide what they think is best for the aliens by moving them to a new district outside of the city and away from people.

These issues are also portray in like the films Hotel Rwanda and Powwow Highway, in which Tutsi and Native Americans treated in a way which made them feel less than others. In Powwow Highway, the Native Americans mainly live on their reservation land which is being exploited by the White Man when they see it as necessary or beneficial. In the film, Bonnie is framed with having drugs just so Buddy will have to come down to get her and he won’t be there to speak out about the vote for the new mining plant. The film also shows how Indians are violent when Buddy trashes the radio shop because he thought the system wasn’t working. They make the Indians out to be incapable and worthless so they feel like it is okay that they take advantage of the people and their land. In the article on “Native American Genocide,” Jana mentions two quotes about the genocide: “the death of thousands of innocent native people is often depicted as ‘inevitable’ or ‘necessary’ for Western expansion (Rawls 1984)” and “the native people, it is argued, were heathens, incapable of utilizing the vast stretches of fertile soil that beckoned to various European interests” (Castillo 1978). I think these quotes reflect the mentality that genocides have and how with the Native Americans, it was about utilizing the resources on their reservation to serve American and development needs. As in District 9, we can see how MNU are performing experiments on the aliens to see if there is anything to gain and figure out how to use the alien’s weapons for their own benefits.

During the Rwandan Genocide, there was a division within the country between the Tutsi and the Hutus. The Hutus wanted to take revenge on the Tutsi who used to be favored as the better ethnicity of the country, though it was a socially constructed divide. Propaganda from the Millies Collines radio denounced Tutsis as cockroaches that the country needed to rid itself of. In the film Hotel Rwanda, the radio station blames the assassination of the president on the Tutsi and encouraged Hutus to exterminate the Tutsi and the genocide swiftly proceeded. As we seen throughout the course of the class, there is idea of the ‘other’, as in the other that isn’t with us and has to be exterminated. Carl Wilkens who was the only American who stayed during the Rwandan genocide says “I think they start killing each other because they have ‘othered’ them. But ‘other was a part of it when it came time. I think a lot of times we don’t start ‘othering’ people until a time of crisis. And then in a time of crisis, we want to blame someone.” In many cases of genocides, when you are not with a group, then you are with the ‘others’. In order to be considered part of the group, often you will have to do what they want you to do or to hurt the ‘others’. In Hotel Rwanda, Paul didn’t want to be like the other Hutus and went against them by sheltering the Tutsi which endangered his life many times. As we seen in the film, many of the Hutus enjoy killing the Tutsi and helping in their extermination. In District 9, when Wikus begins transforming into the ‘other’, MNU and his father forces him to test out his new arm with the weapons and kill one of the aliens which Wikus tries to strongly refuse. Wikus might not want to kill an alien, but people like Colonel Venter does and says “I love killing prawns” when he has found Christopher sheltering Wikus.

Though District 9 is a science fiction movie, we can see all of the elements that resemble the process of genocide. The aliens are seen as filthy and subhuman creatures. They are seen as less intelligent a nuisance to the general population. They are segregated from the rest of the city in a confine place like a ghetto in order to prevent them from being treated the same or having the same benefits as humans. Then the government simply evicts them from their home and move to another district which is like a camp. For those who don’t compile, they are taken in, arrested, beaten, or killed. The government uses the alien for experiments and confiscates their weapon because it’s dangerous though they just want to use it for themselves. We have seen this play out again and again. Since the film is from South Africa, it reflects what has happened over the centuries in that country. Europeans have come and taken over South Africa, they put natives in certain portions of the country where there aren’t a lot of resources, they have limited their human rights and treated them less than European settlers, and have just treated the native Africans as these others that they have to rid of in order to benefit greatly in that country.