Aliens and strangers

Image courtesy Sony Pictures Releasing © 2009

Twenty-eight years ago an alien ship descended to earth and hovered above Johannesburg, South Africa. Eventually the government sent in troops who extracted the one million aliens hiding inside it. These aliens – now derogatorily known as ‘prawns’ – have since been kept in a slum in District 9, policed by a ruthless military corporation called Multi National United (MNU). In response to public anxiety, the government has now decided to resettle them and the MNU bureaucrat chosen to oversee this is Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley). When Wikus gets contaminated by an alien chemical and becomes a fugitive, his alliances are tested and his preconceptions unravelled.

First-time director Neill Blomkamp is the driving force behind this stunningly original fable, which is already being heralded as a sci-fi classic. Rotten Tomatoes records that, out of 227 critics, 90% have given the film good reviews. In spite of the aliens’ intricately designed insect-like bodies, their clicking language and the unadulterated carnage caused by their weapons, the special effects never steal focus away from the story. As Christy Lemire puts it, District 9 ‘dazzles the eye with seamless special effects but also makes you think without preaching. Like the excellent Moon from earlier this summer, District 9 has the aesthetic trappings of science fiction but it's really more of a character drama.’[1] The film discusses refugees, racial prejudice and humanity, but in such a subtle way that the viewer is as much at risk of being transformed as Wikus himself.

Blomkamp subversively used certain filming techniques in order to obscure the lines between fantasy and reality, and between reality and the public perception of reality. He used hand-held cameras, surveillance cameras, authentic news footage, a fictional official video for MNU in which Wikus addresses the camera, and mockumentary interviews – some dialoguing with ordinary people, others with actors. The publicity surrounding the film sought to blur these lines as well. It included anti-alien propaganda billboards and a teaser trailer that allows you to believe the film is about unwanted asylum seekers, until at the last moment it announces that these refugees are not human. Allusions to apartheid are evident. Official policy dictates that the aliens are segregated from the rest of society just as apartheid law segregated those they termed as ‘blacks’, ‘indians’ and ‘coloureds’ from ‘whites’. The MNU has the freedom to forcibly displace the aliens by whatever means necessary, just like the National Party government, who famously removed 60,000 from their homes in District 6. The film also draws on post-apartheid xenophobia towards illegal aliens. Sharlto Copley who, like Blomkamp, was born in Johannesburg, said, ‘In South Africa, we have to deal with issues that generally people around the world try to sweep under the rug.’[2] The film continually brings to light situations people would rather have kept hidden. It deliberately unmasks and undermines personal prejudices – not just those found in South Africa, but those found everywhere.

District 9 exposes inhumanity at every level, although ironically all of the most devastating examples of it are carried out by humans. The brutality of MNU remains hidden from public view. Their primary concern is discovering how the aliens’ advanced weaponry works, and they will do anything to get it. When Wikus gets infected by an alien chemical, his DNA changes and he is able to activate alien weapons. MNU quickly convey him to their underground laboratory to conduct experiments on him. Wikus is prodded with an electric rod like an animal to make him fire an alien weapon, even at live aliens. Overcome by the agony of the shocks, Wikus consents to pressing the trigger himself. They continue shocking him anyway. They plan to finish their research by stripping his body of all its tissue, which they justify with astonishing ease, saying, ‘what happens to him is not important.’ This encounter would look normal alongside an alien abduction account, but it is conducted by humans in a legal organisation. Their behaviour and reasoning are undeniably inhumane.

District 9 is also home to Nigerian gangs who have invented several ways to exploit their alien neighbours, including selling them cat food for extortionate amounts, pimping out human prostitutes and buying or stealing their weapons. As soon as the dominant gang lord,  Fundiswa Mhlanga (Mandla Gaduka), realises that Wikus has been altered by the alien substance, he has him captured with a view to chopping him up and eating him so that he might ingest his power. Those living outside District 9 are cruel in a less blatant way. Like the MNU, they let their self-interest supersede every other concern, and their lack of morality makes them appear more like animals than humans. The vast majority of the people interviewed in Johannesburg speak of the aliens as a threat, endangering their homes, jobs and even their lives. They believe that aliens don’t deserve the same rights as humans. Most are unaware of the exploitation the aliens are experiencing and so cannot be blamed for that, but they are culpable for discrimination. They are nonchalant about the welfare of the ‘prawns’, resentful about the public money spent on their survival and happy about their segregation. This fictional example of prejudice overriding basic human principles such as equality reflects the reality all over the world.

Wikus is never endowed with the potential or inclination to be an alien freedom fighter. He often gives in to fear and chooses to protect himself rather than help others. It is only as Wikus is exposed to the brutality of the MNU and the gangs that he begins to identify with the aliens. He is courteous and affable, and he seems to be ignorant of MNU’s underlying motives and goals, but he is not free from bigotry. He defends the term ‘prawns’ despite its negative connotations: ‘You can’t say they don’t look like that.’ He praises the new settlement in the official MNU video, but later confesses that it is ‘more like a concentration camp.’ When destroying a shack full of alien eggs, Wikus gleefully comments that the process sounds like making popcorn.

Wikus is being filmed for a MNU video when he approaches Christopher Johnson (Jason Cope), an intelligent alien, to sign a form consenting to resettlement. Wikus is more interested in the camera than in Christopher. Christopher politely refuses, explaining that it is his legal right to stay, but Wikus treats him like a deviant child. Christopher exceeds Wikus’s expectations of him again and again. He is a protective parent and a loving friend. At the beginning of the film we see Christopher foraging with his friend and his child for a liquid of some kind. It transpires that he has been working on a complex piece of technology for twenty years, which uses this chemical as fuel. Unfortunately, after Christopher finds it, Wikus raids his shack and confiscates the chemical, after accidentally contaminating himself with it. In spite of Wikus’s condescending behaviour and confiscation of Christopher’s most valued possession, Christopher proves his humanity by later taking pity on Wikus and helping him hide from the MNU. In one scene, the camera cuts between a shot of the MNU violently interrogating Christopher for information on Wikus, but to no avail, and a shot of Wikus sprinting in the opposite direction, having decided not to save Christopher. Their responses to the sight of an alien carcass that has been stripped of all its flesh are telling: Wikus justifies himself, saying, ‘I did not know they were doing this to you guys,’ while Christopher surrenders his original plan in favour of rescuing his race. Christopher takes up the position of benevolent hero that Wikus continually pushes to one side in favour of self-preservation.

Watching District 9 is not a comfortable experience. This is in part due to the gore, in part due to Wikus’s emotional turmoil, and in part because it creeps dangerously close to home. Justice, selflessness and compassion seem so intrinsic to our human make-up that, when the corporations and individuals in the film forgo these qualities, it dehumanises them.

What would humanity in its purest form look like? Do we reflect it and if so, how brightly? The film unveils the fact that Wikus, the MNU and District 9 hold many dark secrets, but – free from such investigation ourselves – we know that our own areas of prejudice and moments of selfishness remain hidden. Jesus had an extraordinary response to injustice, even the injustices committed secretly within every human heart. Unlike the scheming MNU, which disguised its guilt and covered its tracks, Jesus exposed injustice and evil. Far from Wikus’s desire to protect himself at all costs, Jesus saw the penalty every person needed to pay for their unjust thoughts and actions and paid it for them, even though the penalty was death. Like Christopher, he offered the whole human race a second chance. District 9 urges the human race to hold on to its humanity; could Jesus’s radical response to injustice be the answer to this call?

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