District 9 is the greatest science fiction film of all time and here’s why
Actually, I can’t make a very good argument for this. I haven’t seen any of the masses echoing the above statement make much of one either. It tends to swing between two positions. First, with great emphasis, they ask you if you really got it. You know. It takes place in South Africa. The aliens are living in a slum, their second class citizenship enforced by bureaucratic weight and military force. Don’t you get it? I feel like a man who might look at a basic equation, 2+2=4, and shrug. It is certainly what it is, but another man might grab me by the shirtsleeves and shout, “But you aren’t getting it man? Did you even see that 2? Or the other 2? And then the four? It adds up! It all adds up!”.
And so it does.
From here on in, I recklessly spoil the film where I need to. If you haven’t seen the film yet, and want to be surprised by it, then don’t read this.
That the film makes reference to the apartheid, or at least, draws on imagery and emotions associated with it is, well, what it is. What I fail to grasp, is why this association immediately adds value. Does the picture make a valuable commentary on the apartheid? I feel uncomfortable making too sweeping a comment here, because my knowledge of South Africa and its history is, alas, below the threshold of meaningful commentary. Maybe there are nuances that I am missing. The audience is certainly made to feel sympathetic for the alien cause, made to feel suspicious or outraged at the various actions of human characters. How this maps back, though, I’m not sure. The apartheid is, as far as I know (and gaps are filled by reasonable assumptions here), already viewed negatively by everyone I’ve ever met. If this film gives audiences the ah-ha! moment: “Oh my! The apartheid really was as bad as performing Nazi experiments on space aliens”… what value does this new perspective bring? Because… I don’t see it.
If the film were placed elsewhere: what would change? The story would remain more or less the same, with whatever value that has left intact, but it would lose the apartheid flavouring. Is it appropriate, then, to use apartheid as flavouring?
The second value of the film, brought up by the same people who use the first, is how totally awesome the extremely gory action sequences near the end are. Which is odd. The first premise is that the film’s value comes from bringing a message about the dangers of dehumanization. We’ve dehumanized people, and treated them abhorrently… the aliens stand in as even more easily dehumanized beings, but just as undeserving of it. Or something.
And then, gleefully, that’s exactly what they do. What exactly, on film, is more dehumanizing than inviting the audience to laugh and hoot and enter a state of general arousal, as human bodies are puffed up and exploded by space alien electro guns? The ridiculous Hollywood villain, a skin-headed nazi with exactly zero redeeming qualities, preposterously survives as all of his men are killed up until the very last moment of the story. And then he is torn to pieces by the aliens. Here, says the film. Relish in this.
So, on the one hand, the film says: look how horrible we humans can be. How casual with life and liberty and dignity. And then it says, “Don’t worry, it’s totally okay to get a boner when people are slaughtered.”
I enjoy extreme ultra-violence in films. But within the context this film creates, I really couldn’t take pleasure in it. And strangely, many of those who appeared to appreciate the apartheid imagery more than I did, seemed to find no conflict in also loving the final act gorefest.
The complete unsympathetic portrayal of the oppressors in the film has an unattractive side-effect as well. Average film-goers are going to feel they have exactly nothing in common with these awful bastards. Our moronic asshole of a protagonist, our final antagonist, the a psychotic Nazi: we are free to wash our hands of it, finding nothing of ourselves in those responsible for this terrible situation.
To take something the viewer is already familiar with, and simply dress it up in Science Fiction clothes isn’t inherently valuable. To be of value for the social reasons that the film’s cheerleaders imply, either, the science fiction perspective should bring greater awareness and knowledge where a simple production of facts would be ignored, or reframe the problem so that the audience’s presumptions are challenged. The science fiction perspective should be transformative. Does that really happen here? For most of the film’s viewers, the apartheid was a problem that occurred elsewhere, perpetuated by other people. Does this science fiction perspective really alter that position in the least? While the film certainly creates a visceral sense of this situation’s horribleness, are there really audience members who had fond memories of apartheid? Who have positive feelings about oppression and genocide? And after the film ends, I suspect that they will feel just as disconnected and without responsibility for these issues as before. But they’ll feel mighty clever at having figured it all out.
But there isn’t anything to figure out. The equation is made obvious from the start. From the start, then, it is clear who the good guys and the bad guys are. The viewer’s own positions and views are never challenged. The viewer is never seduced into sharing culpability with the villains. The viewer’s responsibility blinders are, if anything, reenforced.
I wouldn’t have written this post if people weren’t professing mad, slobbering love for this film, making declarations of its cinematic superiority. I liked it. I’m glad this film was made. I respect someone spending time and money and special effects talent to make something more intellectually ambitious than Transformers or GI Joe or Star Trek. I think Neill Blomkamp has proven here that he’s a hell of a director, but he hasn’t made the game-changer that people imagine exists here. Give him another shot at Halo, or better, a classic SF story or novel that was too technically impossible to film a decade or two ago, and he’ll have his game-changer yet.
For a speculative picture that tackles dehumanization using a similar visual grammar and pseudo-documentary structure that doesn’t in the same breath celebrate rampant ultra-violence, I would recommend Peter Watkins’ 1971 film Punishment Park.