This still released by Sony Pictures shows, left to right, Sharlto Copley, Mandla Gaduka and Kenneth Nkosi in "District 9."
(Sony Pictures/AP)Photos (1 of 1)
How real is District 9?
The movie portrays modern post-apartheid South Africa – and some very ugly habits of thought that remain in South African society, even 15 years after apartheid.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer 09.04.09
JOHANNESBURG – An American teenager walks out of the theater after seeing District 9, and is likely to consider it a rather rocking piece of science fiction.
But a South African walking out of the theater – District 9 opened in South African theaters three weeks after it debuted at No. 1 at the US box office – has a different reaction. Aliens arriving by the millions, crowded into a soul-crushing slum, then violently removed to another spot, far from town, to prevent crime. Eish, that isn’t science fiction, bru, that’s the 10 o’clock news.
This is what makes District 9 so interesting. Its special effects (and, my goodness, the violence) definitely secure it a place in the science-fiction category. But District 9 is really a piece of social commentary. It portrays modern post-apartheid South Africa, with all the modern trappings of normal suburban life for a select few, living side-by-side with a Mad Max world of poverty, inhabited by teeming millions of poorer folk, immigrants, and yes, extraterrestrial aliens who look rather like prawns.
The manner in which South African society treats these newcomers – in this movie, yes, but something also echoed in horrific xenophobic riots in May 2008 that killed more than 100 – shows that the much vaunted “Rainbow Nation” is still very much an ideal.
There are still very ugly habits of thought that remain in South African society, even 15 years after apartheid. The black majority may now have power, and the white technocrat minority seems to have found a place for itself, but both groups have teamed up to wield their power against a new enemy: immigrants.
The plot of District 9 follows a rather nerdy bureaucrat named Wikus Van der Merwe, who has been given the task of going door to door with armed guards in a slum called District 9, where the extraterrestrial prawns are scratching out an existence that Charles Dickens couldn’t have imagined. Wikus – who is followed by a camera crew, in faux documentary style – remains the quintessential South African law-enforcement agent, determined that every alien he meets must sign a paper agreeing to move out of their shacks to another encampment far off.
It is in these scenes – and in Wikus’s contacts with the violent Nigerian gangs that control the markets in District 9 – that District 9 rises above a simple shoot-em-up into social commentary.
When Wikus shows off his professional bureaucratic finesse in front of the camera, asking an alien to sign a document – with his tentacle-like hand – he’s showing that South Africa is a civilized country with rules. But when Wikus chatters, between raids, about the filthy habits of the aliens and their strange appetites for cat food, we see the racism that South Africans – black and white alike – have for Africans from other countries.
The plot twist comes when Wikus begins to transform into an alien himself.
Filmmaker Neill Bloomkamp has told reporters that the parallels between his movie and the real-life xenophobic violence that occurred in Johannesburg, Soweto, Durban, and Cape Town were merely incidental. But surely the occurrence of this violence against foreigners, or aliens, just as the film was being shot in Soweto, must have sent many filmmaker hairs a-tingling.
As a reporter who covered those xenophobic riots – where slum-dwellers literally burned their foreign neighbors with flaming tires – and as an American, and who sheltered a few visiting foreign friends in my own house, this film hit a little too close to home.
So while the bloodshed was at times a bit much, the real unsettling horror of District 9 is how closely it parallels South African society – and pockets of American society as well.
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2. sofie | 09.04.09
Whites in South Africa live in lockdown behind razor wire, security guards, and multiple fences, like moated castle-dwellers. Archaeologists read the level of threat in a society from its structures, and by this measure, South Africans deal with a high level of threat.
The Zulu people walk freely in Kwa-Zulu Natal, but their territory does not have the modern amenities, health care, jobs, well-being that the moated upper-classes enjoy. South Africa is composed of more than one society and each society is uneasy with the other.
Still another dimension is the nativist one with immigrant workers coming in from poorer countries to the north. But contemporary South Africa is still a new country, and time will tell if equality translates to security and prosperity. S.A. is rich in people, and the future belongs to a new generation that take time to be educated instead of having to fight for survival and equality.
3. Leo Horishny | 09.04.09
I saw this film and felt, ‘this is going to be a film talked about and remembered for some time’. For me, the setting of the movie could not be ignored. I’m sure some of it was ‘created’, but I couldn’t stop thinking that most of what I was watching in the background was where someone actually lives or lived, today, here and now.
4. Dan | 09.04.09
Yeh - great article scott, just seen the movie tonight myself and I thought exactly the same things that you have brought up in this piece.
“Filmmaker Neill Bloomkamp has told reporters that the parallels between his movie and the real-life xenophobic violence that occurred in Johannesburg” - I am surprised at this comment as I thought that the film was a deliberate representation of the troubles of a racist and intolerant south africa
5. hidflect | 09.05.09
The name van de Merwe in South Africa is a bit of a national joke. Instead of using Irish or Polish as the butt of “stupid guy” gags, they use a fictitious character with that name.
8. jwilson 07 | 09.05.09
Yes, if only America would take down those massive fences surrounding its ghettos and let the poor people inside come out. Take down those walls America, let those people freeeee!!!
Oh, wait, sorry. My bad, was mistaking communist countries for america for a moment there.
9. Eric | 09.06.09
“Its special effects (and, my goodness, the violence) definitely secure it a place in the science-fiction category.”
Wow, seriously? Maybe you should learn what science fiction is actually about before publishing an article concerning a scifi movie.
The fact that it is a social commentary is precisely what makes it scifi. Fictitious settings with insight on the human condition — that is science fiction.
Ray guns and CG animation need not apply.
10. Marilyn | 09.07.09
I think this review is a bit unbalanced.
Nowhere is it laid out that fear is the cause of these riots.
In a country with massive unemployment, still very unequal educational opportunities, and the inability of those without very good jobs to access basics like running water and electricity, the influx of massive numbers of illegal economic immigrants strikes terror into the hearts of those already marginalized as they realise that every new body diminishes their chances yet again.
That fear is what swiftly turns to anger and hate.
And as a Canadian, I am astonished at the (USA)writer’s surprise over the phenom of intra-continental racism. Take a little look around you at home, or look at Europe - it’s certainly not a trait that any continent can claim to have risen above.
11. Moridin | 09.07.09
I’m unsure why you’d send Scott Baldauf to review movies when he seems to have so little regard for them. Throwing around plot points and twists in an article without any spoiler warning. Couldn’t you just stay home and drown kittens like normal people?
13. asdf | 09.07.09
this movie doesn’t depict immigrants as a problem. It is trying to portray a message about how immigrants are treated because they are “different”
14. jodi | 09.07.09
There ARE walls around American inner-cities/ghettos. Tremendous economic and prejudicial walls.
15. Mona Reed | 09.08.09
Agree with poster # 9, Eric.
Scott, please do watch more sci-fi, so that moving forward you may have a better idea of what the sci-fi category/genre is made up of.
For the most part, it has ALWAYS been about social commentary, just portrayed in a futuristic setting as a statement related to where the present day is or can go…
Think:
1984 or Animal Farm or “V” for Vendetta, or the TV show “The Twilight Zone”.
16. Scott | 09.08.09
There are certainly ‘walls’, at least in the figurative sense, around U.S. ghettos. Unequal education, healthcare and discrimination in hiring among other inequalities help keep many people stuck that otherwise would have a better shot at ‘making it’. And if you dont think lots of white suburbs dont still have unofficial ‘out by sundown’ policies for poor and people of color then you’re pretty naive, I’ve seen this all myself.
17. frances | 09.09.09
I quite agree with Austin. Being a Nigerian, it does not go down well with me when i read publications or watch movies of this nature. These ideas are stereotypes and thus should be done away with since most stereotypes are not necessarily true. Being a Nigerian who has lived most part of my life at home, I have come across millions of peace loving Nigerians.
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1. Austin Obiefuna | 09.04.09
I think it’s high time movie makers take into consideration,diplomatic relationships,especially when making movies of such magnitude.Being a Nigeria,I really thing it’s absurd for Filmmaker Neill Bloomkamp to depict immigrants as a problem in South Africa.To be frank,South Africa still suffers psychologically because of apartheid which Nigeria was and is undoubtedly against,by bearing the fore front in the fight against it.
I think we(Nigerians) deserve better than being portrayed as violent people.Nigerians are peaceful people.