your racism, let me show you it

[extemporanea]

So, District 9 - voted Film Most Likely To Resist Coherent Review For Anything Up To Weeks. I've found it extremely difficult to formulate a response to this movie, not only because of its own political and narrative qualities, but because there's such a buzz about it. Everyone seems to have seen it; everyone has some sort of reaction, either

Comments

[wolverine_nun]

< typed while covering eyes so cannot see the District 9 review >
(well, sort of)

Have you seen this? The "ideal" Bowie song

I wot not Bowie but thought you might find this fun

[extemporanea]

You should actually be fine reading the D9 review, it doesn't spoiler too badly on account of being mostly vague and abstract.

Fascinating article. Haven't had the courage to click on the actual song, but I have to say that the phrase "Heaven's energy and an elegant charm" is absolutely Bowie.

[strawberryfrog]

To read this film without its South African political subtext is to impoverish it beyond belief, and I'm amazed it stands up.

Er, yes. I'm still bemused by what, if anything, non-South Africans make of it. Something, apparently, but not the same thing.

And, yes, the Nigerian gangsters are stereotypes, cardboard-cut-out "local colour" with all the orientalist trappings of cannibalism and muti.

Except that's not totally fiction. Sure it's exceptional, but if you accept that a film takes place in a coherent reality, it will focus on exceptional individuals and events.

[extemporanea]

Um, no. The line between extreme stereotype and fiction is a strangely shifty one, but you cannot say that D9's Nigerians offer a true representation of either Nigerianness or reality. It's the exaggerated, distilled, unbalanced view of Nigerians as monsters from an extremely xenophobic viewpoint. I don't know if it's a fiction, exactly, but it's certainly a construct cobbled together of disparate extreme instances. There's more going on here than an "exceptional individual."

[strawberryfrog]

Hm. What I find more interesting/disturbing is how the prawns (no polite name for them is ever given) are an "exaggerated, distilled, unbalanced view" of dirty, ignorant, poor, leaderless, shiftless, helpless, hopeless, violent, fecund "others". That seems to be what they are down to a genetic level. If you take what you're shown as true. Which is how black African were portrayed not too long ago.

It seems to be the interstellar equivalent of a bakkie-load of day-labourers abandoned at the side of the road.

[extemporanea]

I think you're confusing things by bringing in ideas of "reality" and "true". I'm arguing that Nigerians and prawns alike both represent extreme racial stereotypes which are about ideas of racial identity, not the reality. The "reality" of the film is not about the "reality" of race in Africa, it's about the idea of race in Africa. To say that the film-makers are representing black Africans as dirty ignorant etc others is a radical over-simplification which leaves out all the complex layering.

"bakkie-load of day-labourers" right on, though.

[veratiny]

I felt very torn...while conceptually and in a lot of ways it was very strong. The story started big with huge conceptual potential and engaging technique and then ended as sci-fi mash up. I felt the cherry picking nature of the plot detracted somewhat and for me left in languishing in the realms of good as opposed to excellent. But I am still percolating

[veratiny]

Things I have learnt: it is very hard to know how to feel about this film when one is a stranger in a strange land!

Thank you again for the review...very helpful...I think given another week I'll be almost ready to have a considered opinion!

I might have to watch it again though :-)

[extemporanea]

I'm happy if my wurblings on the subject were helpful, they're fairly personal wurblings so it's good to think they have more general applicability. As to being an exile - you're really in exactly the same position as the director, the film is probably more relevant to you than to me on a basic level!

I think the difficulty in coming to terms with it is that it's meant to be disturbing and complicated and difficult, so a failure to grok it in a holistic sense is actually about the film, not about any failure in the viewer.

[herne_kzn]

Most of the forn reviews I've sen have focussed on the Apartheid analogy to the exclusion of the xenophobic, which is probably understandable but to me much of the experience of the political side of the movie was the complex interplay of the two.
Likewise I haven't seen too many people comment on the identification of the Nigerians + muti murders with MNU + killing Wikus and the aliens for biotech. International capital spending the health of its employees identified as muti killings.

[extemporanea]

Ooh, good point on the muti killing parallel. Barbarism is barbarism wherever you find it, apparently. Yet again otherness is about being the same under the skin, Wikus/prawns, MNU/Nigerians.

The film works in both directions surprisingly often, actually - the other thing no-one comments on much, alongside xenophobia and apartheid parallels, is the basic operation of Wikus himself as a nasty, derogatory Afrikaans stereotype which we are initially encouraged to laugh at. Everything's a stereotype, and it's all eventually undercut.

[herne_kzn]

Hmmm, you know I hadn't noticed that Wikus business.
Making the audience complicit in every way...sneaky move Mr Blomkamp.
It's such a pity that that side of Wikus may be the hardest thing to explain to furriners, they also deserve to feel as dirty as I do.

[ext_208140]

This movie splooshed my mind! I loved it. Wikus was the perfect anti-hero, naively bad at first and then developing into something slightly more than a cut-out. Enough anyway to satisfy my need for character depth. It tread very beautifully that thin line between humour and discomfort, as it echoed the bad ol' days. Technically, it was brilliant. I am No Fan At All of shaky cameras, but the editing was spotless, the pacing perfect and the shaky cameras, yes, bloody effective. Oh boy, did I love those alien weapons... I had to laugh out loud at the flying pig! And for a plot line that is in effect quite linear, I feel it took enough detours to keep me guessing how this was going to pan out. My favourite movie to come out of South Africa? Yes! One of the best movies I've seen in a long time? Indeed, yes! I do wonder though whether I've just been particularly susceptible to all the South African signifiers. It was just (a) such a good movie and (b) so South African - I don't think I've ever put those two together in one sentence. I'm

[extemporanea]

Hey, as an unrepentant fangirl more often than not, who am I to diss the gushing? It was a very good film, and where it wasn't strictly very good it was very interesting. (I loved the documentary feel, and wish he'd had the courage to sustain the idiom throughout). Definitely one of those overwhelming emotional experiences - I did the same thing of gushing madly when I'd first seen it, it took me a bit of time to get critical distance, but my feelings are still very positive.

v. happy to see you here, too!