In fact, I found myself absolutely relating to the alien ‘prawns’. They have families, they try to make the best of a situation, they react the same way we would in the same conditions, and above all, they seem to care about taking care of their families in a good home. I empathized with their situation, and was able to draw many similarities between them and myself (and humans, for that matter). To me, this is a large-scale version of an anecdote about someone driving home, whose car happened to run out of gas. Add a little Bates Motel twist to it, and you seem to have a rough idea of this movie. Besides, why are we arguing over whether or not they have a ‘right’ to live in District 9? Are we forgetting that they didn’t want to be there? Like I said: a car run out of gas.

And the aliens are unintelligent? How did we come to this conclusion? Here we have a species that has mastered intergalactic travel, has weaponry far more advanced than human weaponry, and were able to learn and understand a vast majority of the English language after 20 years of living on Earth, while the humans were unable to understand the prawns ‘click’ language. So because they are subject to these slum conditions of living, they are unintelligent? THAT is a racist comment. Let’s remember that it’s the aliens who are the more intelligent race here.

As for the witch doctoring, aside from the FACT that these kinds of beliefs HAVE existed in cultures like this, it’s only because the characters were black that people think it’s racist. If they were white and felt that consuming the alien flesh would give them powers, would that be racist? To me, the fact that they have these beliefs and the fact that they are black are two completely separate and unrelated points, and in no way have any weight on the other.

Not once in this movie did any hint of racism cross my mind. Is this because I’m ignorant, or just too stupid to see it? I don’t think so; rather, I think it’s very easy to play the racism card on a movie like this, especially when you have your feelers out looking for any tiny thing to criticize. If this movie was set to take place in, say, Chicago, there wouldn’t be this much arguing over racism. Nor would there be if the Nigerians were, instead, Americans.

What the people arguing the presence of racism in this film need to understand is that it is absolutely possible for two things, while perhaps sometimes known for being related, to exist on completely separate paths. If I am rich, and I employ a butler to help around the house, and he happens to be black, does that mean I’m a racist and he is my slave? No. He just happens to be a black man, and was looking for work as a butler. Sure, slaves used to exist, but that doesn’t mean that every black butler is therefore a slave. I’m reminded of simple IQ test questions along the lines of;

If some apples are oranges, and some oranges are bananas, are some apples bananas?

The answer is ‘not necessarily’. Just because some A are B, and some B are C, doesn’t mean that this A is also C. So, while it’s very easy to jump on that and say, “Hey, you mean that this A is C”, it’s more likely that the two are just co-existing but not related.

So let’s stop this middle-school essay-answering, sycophantic-attempt-at-impressing-the-teacher racism argument already. Besides, as many people from the NAACP will likely tell you themselves, it’s the abuse of claims like this that HINDER an organization’s goals, not help them.

To call racism on District 9 is to sheepishly resort to a later apology of, “Well I was only trying to help.”

Eating body parts for magic (muti) is unfortunately a part of the African (from South Africa north) experience. Children are discovered wandering the bush with their genitals cut off, you can buy pieces of human brains and other organs in Johannesburg which have ben stolen from mortuaries. This is all well documented, it’s Sunday night investigative journalism TV. Blomkamp, in D9, used his own history, what he knows, to make an interesting and resonant film. All the details are lifted from real events, like the “1 prawn 1 bullet” which was “1 boer 1 bullet”. The locations are real shanty towns. The interviews with normal people talking about “aliens” are most likely answering a question about Zimbabweans. You don’t have to make Africa savage. Africa is savage. Jacob Zuma who you mentioned has two wives was acquitted on charges of raping a woman with AIDs. He still had sex with her without a condom though, apparently a shower washes way AIDs. Yes, that’s the president of South Africa who wears a western suit, deals with international trade issues and firmly believes in magic. It is not the West.

Nigerian gangsters do keep Hyena’s as pets and they do run most of the drugs and weapons in SA and they do believe in magic (although not all of them, admittedly, eat prawns). Who better to play an interesting set of gangsters?

I’m with your interpretation of district 9 as well. I saw the movie with some friends enjoyed it. However my one friend commentated that he would have had more sympathy for the prawns had there not been just a few prawns (out of a population of 30 million or so) that apparently had the drive and the intellect to fashion a plan to get off earth.
Fair point, really. But than I thought that if that ship contained the population of say…Canada…and we arrived in the same conditions as the prawns (starving, no immediate hope of returning home) how many people would have accepted living as refugees and how many would become like the lead prawn and have the ability to undertake a 20 year long plan that might suceed. I’m going to say it’s not a very high percentage. So its easy to say the prawns are loathsome, lazy or stupid but if the shoe was on the other foot….what would we do?