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.

Ramon- Week 4 Szpilman

First, this is not my first time seeing Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. It is a very well done film. However, does the film really need to be two and a half hours long? Granted, I know that Polanski knows just a little more about filmmaking than I do, but there were a few time in the film where I felt that there was no progression. One example is when he is hiding in the Warsaw ghetto and is locked in a room. Yes, it was good to see the physical struggle of lack of nutrition that Szpilman was going through. However, that was already evident in the starvation others were suffering. Namely, his brother.

In terms of the first and third person viewpoints, there is a sense of bias attached to many first person narratives. In Szpilman’s autobiography and supported by Polanski’s film, a first person bias was not evident. Rather, Szpilman portrayed a feeling of truth and reality to the reader. Dr. McCay indicated in her notes sheet how in the film, the audience was not truly brought into the situation. The example she stated and a defining event in my own reading of the autobiography was the ignorance or the lack of generosity rich Jews showed to children. In the film, Szpilman’s borderline interrogated a little boy as to what he was doing with the money he made from selling snacks in the ghetto. This two-minute encounter in a film that is one hundred and fifty minutes takes away from the first-person narrative. Meaning, this sort of injustice within the ghetto was much more evident in the autobiography.

Lastly, I had an issue/observation regarding the names of individuals in the film. Polanski of course did this on purpose. We are only given the first names of characters in the film as opposed to the autobiography. Also, the only time in the film when we are given a last name is when Wilm asks Szpilman his name. At the conclusion of the film, the audience is reintroduced to Wilm as a prisoner of war. He wants to send his remarks to Szpilman, but can not remember his name. When the messenger asks for Wilm’s name, the Russians hush him. Thus, the complete message was not sent to Szpilman. However, the memory of Wilm still lives on thanks to Szpilman’s autobiography.

Although a first person narrative can in many times be biased, a third person film is much more biased. When telling a story over again, key moments and the personal thoughts (such as the rich jews’ ignorance of the suffering) are not so much manifested in film so that the audience listens to the director’s message.

Ramon- Week 1; Night, Soviet Story, Conspiracy

Holocaust survivor and former Chairman of the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center in Washington, D.C., Henry Friedman, once said, "We are all different; because of that, each of us has something different and special to offer and each and every one of us can make a difference by not being indifferent." Henry Friedman walks earth as a free man, but as a boy in the holocaust, he still feels as if his individuality was stripped away from him permanently. As we view Night, Soviet Story, and Conspiracy, we can see three different ways politically fueled genocide completely erased the individuality of millions across Europe.

Beginning with Elie Wiesel’s Night, the most prominent way individuality was taken away from the Jews, as described in the book, was the uniformity of appearance between each member of the concentration camps. Nazis found no need to search within for tools possessed by the individuals, such as knowledge. Once separated in this manner, some prisoners are sent to work camps and some sent to death camps, such as Elie and his father sent to Auschwitz. Other instances along the journey involved the shaving of heads, stripping of clothes, and group showers. All of these create uniformity in the Nazi vision. Nazis went so far as to give a number to each prisoner. Elie Wiesel was given the number A-7713.

Moving to Conspiracy, we break away from the brutality the journey Wiesel went through and how his individualism was taken from him, and we move to how even German officials were also not seen as individuals. At the beginning of the docu-dramaticised Wannsee Conference, the members of the conference were asked by Reinhard Heydrich to introduce themselves to the other groups represented in the conference. Contrary to how we introduce ourselves, the majority of the members mumbled over their own name, put major emphasis on the division of Nazi Germany they belonged to, and pledged eternal allegiance to the fuehrer. It seemed as though even the highest ranking officials, besides Hitler’s closest officials, were purely seen as pawns moved by Hitler so that he would be able to follow through with the “Final Solution.”

Finally, in Soviet Story, we see how a person’s legacy defines his or her individuality. The difference between the Nazi extermination of the Jews and the Soviet extermination of the Ukrainians, was that the Nazi extermination was intricately planned and documented. All prisoners of the Nazis were tagged documented number and registered. When files turn up, we are at least able to somewhat gain a bit of knowledge of what concentration camp a relative belonged to or where the relative was picked up from on the train cars. In Soviet Story, the memory of millions of Ukrainians was erased clean. It is by the legacy our ancestors leave behind that defines them as an individual. The Ukraine lost 7,000,000 legacies in one year.

Individualism is defined in three different ways by these three films; appearance, personal agendas, and legacy.

Ramon- Introduction

Hey everyone, my name is Jeffrey Ramon. I am a senior Religious Studies major at Loyola. At Loyola I am involved in two major activities. I am the head basketball manager for our men's basketball team, and I am the Executive Chair of the Ignacio Volunteers. The Ignacio Volunteers is am immersion program organization facilitated by the Jesuit Center. We run immersion programs to Belize and Jamaica during the summer and winter of the school year. Interested? Talk to me :) Not interested? Talk to me so I can tell you more about these amazing programs. Outside of Loyola, I am a Sr. 4th Degree Black Belt in TaeKwonDo.

Why am I enrolled in this course? First, I declared my English minor rather late in my college career, so it's crunch time as far as course credits are concerned. However, my interest in World War II and the Holocaust has been quite high since reading Lois Lowry's "Number the Stars" in middle school.

That's everything about me. I look forward to the course!

McCay Introduction

Hello, my name is Mary McCay, and I am your professor for The Holocaust in Film and Literature. I am the Landrieu Distinguished Teaching Professor and the Director of the Walker Percy Center, as well as a Professor of English. The class will last 8 weeks, and we have a lot to accomplish, but I hope you all will enjoy the course. Please note how I have put my last name first in the blog title and my full name in the blog label. Please do not use any names like hippo32, gorgeous girl, are manly man for your blog name. Use your full name, Samantha Jones to sign up for the blog. Also note that under labels for this post, I have put my full name. Titling and labeling your blog correctly will help me immensely.
Thanks.