Tregre: Week 8, District 9

I have seen "District 9" before and never saw the allegory of apartheid in South Africa. It makes complete sense now. This was a great way to end the course with a summary of the root of genocide. Genocide is not just about the murder of an ethnic group, but also about the murder of souls, spirits, and wills. It has been clear through the course that genocide is not just scary because of the mass killings, but the hatred and immense terror involved in these systematic plans. 

In "District 9," the "Prawns" were the others. They were identified as a derogatory term after their spacecraft landed on Earth. Prawns were the others that deviated from the norm. At first they are labeled as inferior and then confined to District 9. They were excluded from the humans to live with others like them. This made it known that being a Prawn would set them apart from the human population. The steps to a genocide starts with identification and identifying the ethnic group who do not belong and are inferior to the rest. Then the exclusion. This creates isolation where, psychologically, the gap between the two different species starts to grow and become larger. This can also aid in depersonalization. When it is one unit of something unfamiliar, such as the unfamiliar aliens, then it is easier to amass them as one group instead of individuals. This makes it easier to start to exterminate the mass. As the steps begin to progress to exclusion, that is when tension starts to become stronger. It is the calm and waiting before the storm. Then sometimes usually happens to make it snap. This was when Smit and his father-in-law start to relocate the aliens again with eviction notices. This is to separate the Prawns even more from normal life. They were the invaders that did not deserve to live a normal life. Then the extermination begins. When the Prawns, or suppressed people begin to feel the need to rise up in order to feel alive and having a life again, that is what sparks the hatred which usually boils over. In "District 9" it was when Christopher's (an alien) friend was killed by a xenophobic soldier. This started a series of events. It gets really tricky when lines start to get blurred, like when Wikus turns into a Prawn. When it is realized that this situation is no longer black and white and a Prawn and human can be interchangeable, it fuels the fear in the genocide and getting rid of the aliens. From here on in the movie, more and more deaths occurred. It also changes the viewpoint of the people or Prawn who was transforming. When Wikus transformed into a Prawn, he saw their point of view. The less human he became, the more humane he became. It was an irony like one sees in many of our previous assignments. When one would see that everyone bleeds red and that they are not all that different besides the color of one's skin or different beliefs, no one is really inferior after all. 

The same things happened in the movie, "Hotel Rwanda" and the "Conspiracy Theory." The Jews and the Tutsis were known that they were the inferior race. They were labeled as outcasts. Then they were separated from the "norms" in society. The Jews were sent to ghettos and then extracted and put into concentration camps, while the Tutsis were separated from their families who were non-Tutsis and the white people. They were set apart and not around the normal people. When people are confined to one place, it is easier to kill masses and to individualize people, therefore one cannot get emotionally attached. Next the killing occurred. The Jews and Tutsis were just slaughtered. It did not matter if they were female, had children, or pled for their life. It was the end for them simply because of their ethnicity and culture. Both films had people on the "supremacy" side who did not agree with what their own kind was doing. When a man did not believe that all Jews should be killed in "The Conspiracy Theory," he was threatened with a concentration camp himself. Then in "Hotel Rwanda" the main character had to risk his life in order to save his family. He felt their isolation and these characters felt torn. 

Important articles to reflect this methodology is the Elie Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech and the Rwandan Genocide Lessons Learned article. Both of these knowledge the tragedy, but how to learn from these mistakes. This genocide method is clearly explained and then how to learn and stop it. It is so important not to classify people in a hierarchy and to exclude others. That is how genocide starts. Wiesel believed that if more people spoke up and indifference was not shown, lives could have been saved. The Lessons Learned in the Rwandan Genocide article explained that awareness to serious problems must be answered to. The identification of those less desirable in a given society is what fuels the fire and is escalates from there. It was seen in each movie the identification. One was a Jew, a Tutsi, a homosexual, a Prawn, etc. All of these names enabled hatred and fear from the different grow into a full-blown genocide. Their personalities did not matter, nor did their family, status, etc. It was their label. Then they were excluded from the rest. This made the outcasts and made it easier for one to go along with the crowd and hate the less desirable humans and then go as far as killing them. Each genocide could have been stopped if one looked past the surface of a person and into their hearts (not to be cheesy!) Every person has an innate desire to belong to a home and function in a society. Disrupting this need can be detrimental to a race.

This was a great wrap up assignment for the course.