District 9 is quite a film. A few thoughts, not so much answers as questions.
Given the obvious parallels between the aliens and, given its South African location, apartheid, as well as making the leap towards the Jews under the Nazis, a leap made less by the medical experiments and talk of genetics around the aliens, as well as parallels which can be made between the aliens and more contemporary situations of immigration (article here which runs through many comparisons which can be drawn, including in the South African context, not apartheid, but the influx of Zimbabwean refugees), I think it is interesting that other discriminations are still shown in the movie - not everything is subordinated to the aliens/us dialectic, other discriminations occur along with it and inform the "main" discrimination. For instance there is still discrimination between black and white - from the way the black assistant to Wikus is the only one not given a bulletproof vest and the patronising way he is treated in the early scenes, to the fast food joint where the whites are served before the blacks.
The other discrimination in evidence is gender. The role of women in the film is one that could probably be studied at length. A film that is shot in the shadow of the mothership yet featuring few women. Are there female aliens? The scene of the "abortion" is strangely motherless, a makeshift incubation chamber feeding the eggs. The MNU seems a place run as an old boys club, with any women being peripheral. The main female role is Wikus's wife who has no real presence of her own, she is there to memorialize Wikus and is used to entrap Wikus. The only "proper" female presence in the film is in the academic "commentary" that is interspersed throughout the film, and if I remember correctly, these academic contributions are limited to the sociological. As if this is the only "proper" role for a woman - not intervening in events themselves, but commenting on them after the fact (Wikus's wife and the academic both). And doesn't the mothership have a similar role - constantly present, yet unable to intervene. Not wishing to spoil the film I shall just say that the end can also be looked at from this perspective. It might be stretching the point a little to see in the aliens, and in particular the way that Wikus's infection is presented to the public in sexual terms to frighten the public, a certain fear of the female as other.
The fact of the academic commentaries themselves being a part of the film is in itself interesting. What is their purpose? Are they simply signposts to the films meanings? Can a film which commentates on its own allegories be considered allegorical? Does the self-contained commentary not actually serve to illustrate a certain fissure between "reality" and the academic work on that "reality?"I'm reminded of the way that Zizek suggests that liberal work on criminals is used by criminals themselves, "I couldn't help myself committing the crime, it was society's fault." For all the truth of such analyses they can not be used to absolve the individual of guilt. In District 9 we see the disparity between the commentaries of the "reality" and the "reality" itself - no amount of context can excuse/explain the action on the ground - something escapes explanation/reason. At the same time the presence of these commentaries remind us that interpretation is always a part of reality itself, not an entirely separate realm, so that if someone on the ground says, "we'll leave the explanations to the experts, we just do what's necessary/what we're told," that's not enough either. What is missing from both is an appreciation of a certain enjoyment present in the work, demonstrated in the film by the way everyone, the army in particular, take great pleasure in their work, the sadistic pleasure in killing aliens for instance, but also the relish in which Wikus goes about his bureaucratic task.
In this sadistic pleasure one can see the fact that the other as literally an alien is a simple leap from the dehumanised image of the "other", the immigrant, the Jew, etc., to an actual representation of the other as an alien. And yet this is a little misleading, because isn't the essential point not the alien-ness of the other, but our own non-human-ness? Which is to say why must something be considered human before we grant it dignity? The fact that Wikus utterly refuses to truly identify with the aliens even after the genetic change starts to take effect emphasises this. One does not have to consider oneself an alien, or consider the aliens as human to treat them with respect - despite his lack of identification with the aliens he still finds the idea of shooting one of them in cold blood to be horrific. There is a certain competition in the film between these ideas. At the start of the film we see the aliens at their worst, they are not painted as sympathetic refugees. As the film progresses there is a certain softening, we see the aliens desire for home and the doting father alien. But against this we still have Wikus's non-identification with the aliens to remind us of their utter difference.
To return to the gender theme, what I am tempted to see here is the placing of the alien into the abstract universal concept of Man. What we have is not so much a humanising of the aliens, but the aliens showing themselves as men through the second half of the film, the action half (I have seen some criticisms of the action half, as if it somehow turns the film from social commentary to generic action film, but I think the action half adds to the meaning of the film). The absence of women then becomes explainable through Lacan's "Woman doesn't exist." Humanity in the abstract is always male. Consequently, the aliens can only show themselves worthy of salvation by becoming men. Their mission? To reach the (passive) mothership.
This is further complicated by Wikus's desire to remain human at all costs. He expresses this through action, action which threatens their salvation. And yet, in the scenes with his wife after the event, we can see that it is not in his actions which he is remembered most significantly, but in the trivial objects he leaves behind, the presents he made for her. The essence of the human is present not in the (male) action, but in (female) memory.
Given the obvious parallels between the aliens and, given its South African location, apartheid, as well as making the leap towards the Jews under the Nazis, a leap made less by the medical experiments and talk of genetics around the aliens, as well as parallels which can be made between the aliens and more contemporary situations of immigration (article here which runs through many comparisons which can be drawn, including in the South African context, not apartheid, but the influx of Zimbabwean refugees), I think it is interesting that other discriminations are still shown in the movie - not everything is subordinated to the aliens/us dialectic, other discriminations occur along with it and inform the "main" discrimination. For instance there is still discrimination between black and white - from the way the black assistant to Wikus is the only one not given a bulletproof vest and the patronising way he is treated in the early scenes, to the fast food joint where the whites are served before the blacks.
The other discrimination in evidence is gender. The role of women in the film is one that could probably be studied at length. A film that is shot in the shadow of the mothership yet featuring few women. Are there female aliens? The scene of the "abortion" is strangely motherless, a makeshift incubation chamber feeding the eggs. The MNU seems a place run as an old boys club, with any women being peripheral. The main female role is Wikus's wife who has no real presence of her own, she is there to memorialize Wikus and is used to entrap Wikus. The only "proper" female presence in the film is in the academic "commentary" that is interspersed throughout the film, and if I remember correctly, these academic contributions are limited to the sociological. As if this is the only "proper" role for a woman - not intervening in events themselves, but commenting on them after the fact (Wikus's wife and the academic both). And doesn't the mothership have a similar role - constantly present, yet unable to intervene. Not wishing to spoil the film I shall just say that the end can also be looked at from this perspective. It might be stretching the point a little to see in the aliens, and in particular the way that Wikus's infection is presented to the public in sexual terms to frighten the public, a certain fear of the female as other.
The fact of the academic commentaries themselves being a part of the film is in itself interesting. What is their purpose? Are they simply signposts to the films meanings? Can a film which commentates on its own allegories be considered allegorical? Does the self-contained commentary not actually serve to illustrate a certain fissure between "reality" and the academic work on that "reality?"I'm reminded of the way that Zizek suggests that liberal work on criminals is used by criminals themselves, "I couldn't help myself committing the crime, it was society's fault." For all the truth of such analyses they can not be used to absolve the individual of guilt. In District 9 we see the disparity between the commentaries of the "reality" and the "reality" itself - no amount of context can excuse/explain the action on the ground - something escapes explanation/reason. At the same time the presence of these commentaries remind us that interpretation is always a part of reality itself, not an entirely separate realm, so that if someone on the ground says, "we'll leave the explanations to the experts, we just do what's necessary/what we're told," that's not enough either. What is missing from both is an appreciation of a certain enjoyment present in the work, demonstrated in the film by the way everyone, the army in particular, take great pleasure in their work, the sadistic pleasure in killing aliens for instance, but also the relish in which Wikus goes about his bureaucratic task.
In this sadistic pleasure one can see the fact that the other as literally an alien is a simple leap from the dehumanised image of the "other", the immigrant, the Jew, etc., to an actual representation of the other as an alien. And yet this is a little misleading, because isn't the essential point not the alien-ness of the other, but our own non-human-ness? Which is to say why must something be considered human before we grant it dignity? The fact that Wikus utterly refuses to truly identify with the aliens even after the genetic change starts to take effect emphasises this. One does not have to consider oneself an alien, or consider the aliens as human to treat them with respect - despite his lack of identification with the aliens he still finds the idea of shooting one of them in cold blood to be horrific. There is a certain competition in the film between these ideas. At the start of the film we see the aliens at their worst, they are not painted as sympathetic refugees. As the film progresses there is a certain softening, we see the aliens desire for home and the doting father alien. But against this we still have Wikus's non-identification with the aliens to remind us of their utter difference.
To return to the gender theme, what I am tempted to see here is the placing of the alien into the abstract universal concept of Man. What we have is not so much a humanising of the aliens, but the aliens showing themselves as men through the second half of the film, the action half (I have seen some criticisms of the action half, as if it somehow turns the film from social commentary to generic action film, but I think the action half adds to the meaning of the film). The absence of women then becomes explainable through Lacan's "Woman doesn't exist." Humanity in the abstract is always male. Consequently, the aliens can only show themselves worthy of salvation by becoming men. Their mission? To reach the (passive) mothership.This is further complicated by Wikus's desire to remain human at all costs. He expresses this through action, action which threatens their salvation. And yet, in the scenes with his wife after the event, we can see that it is not in his actions which he is remembered most significantly, but in the trivial objects he leaves behind, the presents he made for her. The essence of the human is present not in the (male) action, but in (female) memory.
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