ULTRAKILLBOT

Two weekends ago, after a long roadtrip from Toronto to Northern Texas, I had one thing on my mind: see District 9, and have a beer. I did both at the same time, because Texas is cool like that.

I was floored by it – maybe more as a fan of science fiction than as a cultural critic. It is a film on a level beyond most summer blockbusters, falling into the realm of classic sci fi and begging questions about the human condition that go far deeper than the amazing action scenes and excellent acting. It is a true classic, and it combined with films like Moon and Children of Men will enter into the lexicon of Films You Have to Watch Even if You Don’t Like Science Fiction. I truly believe this. [WARNING: Spoilers follow]

Ebert gave the movie a warm reception – but as a critic who cut his chops writing about science fiction when he was a budding film critic – he was sure to point out its shortcomings. As he noted, Does it have some? Yes. Yes it does. He finishes his review with the comment, concerning the alien race known as the “prawns”, saying

I’ll be interested to see if general audiences go for these aliens. I said they’re loathsome and disgusting, and I don’t think that’s just me. The movie mentions Nigerian prostitutes servicing the aliens, but wisely refrains from entertaining us with this spectacle.

Ebert, who would be the first to admit that he is not a specialist on the study of race and its long history of portrayal in popular culture could be faulted for his words, but he might be on the mark.

But the Internet is full of many things, and yes, and there are many a sociologist, anthropologist and dare I say it, post-colonial historians out there. And many people have voiced their distaste, or at least disappointment with, District 9 for its supposed racist over and undertones. Ebert’s particular criticism about the aliens’ dislikeability is just one of the many reasons that they dislike the movie. This is most interesting, because as many have noticed, it’s intended as an anti-racist film. How can a film that at its centre has a goal of showcasing the problems of humanity in relation to race and other binary distinctions, be inherently itself, racist?

I ran into this discussion by the way of Racialicious, and ran smack dab into the guest post that came via pageslap, titled, aptly enough, District 9 is racist. Tough talk!

The primary justifications for this argument are as follows:

The apartheid allegory is faulty – This is because the aliens are not easily “relateable” in any sense, they instead are are appalling and gross, as Ebert said, and deserve to be locked up in a giant camp. Nicole Stamp first thought of this as not being hugely offensive, but upon further thought reconsidered (based upon the knowledge that the film draws its inspiration from the forced clearings of the infamous District 6 that was in Johannesburg), and thought that this link meant that with all the “gross” depictions of the aliens, we are “forced” to agree that they aliens deserve their place in District 9. That the limited intellect of most of the aliens, despite the flourishing and human relatability of Christopher Johnson and his son, pigeonholes the entire race as a flawed stereotype.

The depiction of the Nigerian gangsters in District 9 was racist – This stems from the fact that not only were they gangsters, they also partake in consuming the flesh of the aliens, as well as humans, under the instruction of a mystical Witch Doctor. In other words Nigerians gangsters = allegory for African superstition and savage violence.

Both are pretty reasonable critiques to level, but on both I prefer to disagree with this interpretation (I say this understanding that as a white male, I might not always be qualified to make such judgements, but I still believe that it’s worth articulating). While I often am the first among my many friends to point out racism where I see it, I feel that finding the touchy or more controversial aspects of the film as outwardly racist could be folly – and lead to a slippery slope that I would hate to see extended elsewhere.

As for the first one commenter Frere Freire on Racialicious says:

Um…I may be a complete blockhead here, and I haven’t seen this remake (I did see Blomkamp’s short film _Alive in Joburg_, which District 9 is an extension of), but I think the point of the original short–and it would seem the full length feature–is that no sentient creature “deserves” oppression, no matter who they are or what they do. When you start to enter into the question of who does and doesn’t “deserve” oppression, you are automatically taking the position of the oppressor, who is the only one who has the power to make that choice. The oppressed never have that power themselves. The very logic the author uses in what would be a “correct” anti-apartheid film is the same logic used in Uncle Tom’s Cabin–that people who conform to the oppressor’s idea of “good” and “virtuous” deserve to be left alone–and those who don’t, well, deserve what they get. It’s nobodies business how someone else behaves. If there *were* humans who were disorderly, violent, considered horrible to look at by other humans, and not very intelligent, would they deserve to be put into a ghetto? Would they deserve to be exterminated? I think you know what the answer to that question is.

Simply enough, this is the best articulation of the concepts that I feel were being communicated by Blomkamp – the film’s portrayal of the prawns in District 9 is that they might be living in squalor, poverty, filth and any number of other things, but that they do NOT deserve to live in such ways, no matter how much “crime” or “deviant” activities they partake in. Fundamentally, their culture, no matter how different or destructive from humanity’s, doesn’t deserve to be shoved and forced to live in a few square miles of trash and dirt. The workers might not be the smartest or most civilized like Christopher Johnson, but they are sentient beings on the same level as humans, yet treated as a sub-human species.

The Apartheid allegory stands up if we acknowledge that the Affrikaans government considered Blacks in similar terms – viewing all activities that were considered destructive and inhuman as gross, vile and most importantly, anti-social. The same terms upon which Stamp argues that we as the viewers are “supposed” to read them. Instead, could it be that we are supposed to read against this grain – to possibly see outside of our own particular views of what destructive and anti-social behaviour is? Our contemporary conceptions of what makes for “civilized” society mark our own interpretations of the Prawns in the same ways that bigots in the Afrikaans majority viewed the Black populations of South Africa.

But it seems that the most controversial aspects, and the more ambivalent, would be those that deal with the Nigerians. And rightly so! I know that when I saw the film for the first time I was immediately struck by some of the similarities I noticed to films like Black Hawk Down or 300 – which is to say imagery that denotes dark savages that exist in a cultural space that is “evil” and backward. It struck me as an interesting twist in the film’s fiction – something that was included to add significant depth to the overall story. But was it racist, or perhaps just an addition that without a detailed lecture on the history of Africa would be difficult to defend?

The imagery is touchy, but there are enough parallels with mysticism and cultural practices that fall outside of “mainstream” conceptions of civil society that could set off the racism alarms of those who are not familiar with African society. Many sociologists and anthropologists are familiar with the “the other” and how Western imagery and popular culture have had a significant influence on how we perceive the third world – often associated with theories of Orientalism. But we also must be wary of any theory or ideology that places all supposedly “negative” images depicting people of colour as being explicitly racist or reactionary in intent. Often times cultures with such a rich and storied history, such as the many nations of Africa still partake in practices that are considered backward in the Western world (and therefore to showcase them might be considered racist by some) – such as polygamy. The current president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, for instance, has two wives, and more than one fiance. While polygamy is no longer as popular as it once was due to hundreds of years of evangelicals running loose around the continent, it is still practiced and not considered out of the ordinary in many parts of Africa.

Similarly, there are many different ways of seeing the world and they vary from where people come from, and often they are fundamental views of the world that are utterly alien to those ideas which dominated Western thought for thousands of years. They might be considered “backward” and “savage” by some but are completely rational from the point of view of those who partake in them. In Kenya in 1952 the Mau Mau insurgency began, led mostly in part by the Kikuyu, and was a conflict that would last for 8 years. It also was a puzzle that British Empire had one hell of a time trying to solve; one that seemed to the colonial masters as a completely irrational action to take part in but one that inside the cultural context of Kikuyu society was rational.

Without going too deeply into the specifics, the Kikuyu fighting in the forests were fighting for something intangible, manhood and a place in society, as well as tangible, political rights, increased freedom to plant cash crops and eventual Independence. Many took specific oaths – which spiritually bound them to fight against their repressors and others who they deemed immoral, no matter where they found them, and without remorse. When the British finally won the conflict it was because they used a culturally specific method of “spiritually cleaning” the guerrillas from their actions using religious leaders to conduct the ceremonies, as well as addressing some, if not all, of their political grevences.

Ultimately what I’m trying to show is not that the Nigerians are identical to an ethnic group from a completely different part of Africa, but that African society can, at times, seem very detatched from Western norms, and when shown, can and will seem very alien to some. While I know this might sound like the traditional “well to show such savage behaviour is okay because it DOES happen sometimes,” it should be made clear that it’s not a free-pass. Maybe there was another road that could have been taken in regards to the Nigerians that made less use of somewhat tired narratives like cannibalism, but I think that it wasn’t veering into bigotry. The Nigerians were cast as a antagonist group, and any piece of popular culture that decides to have people of colour in this position will catch flack for that. Whenever a person from an outside community attempts to show their version of what the world looks like, it will always fall short of the complexities of reality, and Blomkamp’s is no exception. I don’t think the movie is racist, but it does have some problems that should be discussed.