Armond White reviews District 9

[khad]

[FONT=Courier, Monospaced]http://www.nypress.com/print-article-20206-print.html
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Note the reactionaries and racists in the comments section voting this review down. They seem offended that a black man dares take offense to white racism. Be sure to even up the vote some.

From Mothership to Bullship District 9 trucks in trash and South Africa’s apartheid history

By Armond White . . . . . . .
District 9
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Runtime: 112 min.

HOVERING OVER JOHANNESBURG like a CGI outtake from Close Encounters or Independence Day, the Mothership of District 9 looks like a far-off hallucination, something unreal shrouded in atmospheric mist. It is both ominous and ridiculous, yet the movie gets no more creative than that secondhand “gotcha” spectacle—which is also central to its promotional campaign. Newsflash: Just because a film is advertised one way doesn’t mean that’s what the film is really about.Visiting extraterrestrials stuck on earth are forced to live as second-class citizens enduring humans’ degradation; and from there on, preposterousness rules in District 9.

That cartoonish Mothership image suggests the high-concept inanity featured in Children of Men and Cloverfield: It’s apocalyptic silliness. Not ominously beautiful like the civilization-in-peril tableau that caps Roy Andersson’s You, the Living (critic John Demetry described that climax as a “revelation out of [Morrissey’s] ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’”). Rather, the immanence in District 9 suggests a meager, insensitive imagination. It’s a nonsensical political metaphor.

Consider this: District 9’s South Africa–set story makes trash of that country’s Apartheid history by constructing a ludicrous allegory for segregation that involves human beings (South Africa’s white government, scientific and media authorities plus still-disadvantaged blacks) openly ostracizing extraterrestrials in shanty-town encampments that resemble South Africa’s bantustans.

It’s been 33 years since South Africa’s Soweto riots stirred the world’s disgust with that country’s regime where legal segregation kept blacks “apart” and in “hoods” (thus, Apartheid) unequal to whites. District 9’s sci-fi concept celebrates—yes, that’s the word—Soweto’s legacy by ignoring the issues of self-determination (where a mass demonstration by African students on June 16, 1976, protested their refusal to learn the dominant culture’s Afrikaans language). District 9 also trivializes the bloody outcome where an estimated 500 students were killed, by ignoring that complex history and enjoying its chaos. Let’s see if the Spielberg bashers put-off by the metaphysics in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be as offended by District 9’s mangled anthropology.

District 9 represents the sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema—the kind that comes from a second-rate film culture. No surprise, this South African fantasia from director Neill Blomkamp was produced by the intellectually juvenile New Zealander Peter Jackson. It idiotically combines sci-fi wonderment with the inane “realism” of a mockumentary to show the South African government’s xenophobic response to a global threat: Alien-on-earth population has reached one million, all housed—like Katrina refugees or Soweto protesters—in restricted territories. “Before we knew it, it was a slum,” says Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley, a nervous, Daniel Day-Lewis type) who is a white executive for multinational corporation MNU. He brings a camera crew when he serves eviction notices to relocate the aliens. These restless, hostile (thus dangerous) foreigners resemble bi-ped crustaceans and are derisively referred to as “prawns” just as South African blacks were derogatively tagged “kaffir.”Wikus tells the camera, “The prawn doesn’t understand. One has to say ‘This is our land. Please, will you go?’”

Wikus’ semi-polite attitude is a reversal of the European imperialism that started South African colonization. But the allegory is also misapplied because the prawn, who resent their mistreatment, primarily yearn to beamup back to their Mothership. Blomkamp and Jackson want it every which way:The actuality-video threat of The Blair Witch Project, unstoppable violence like ID4 plus Spielberg’s otherworldly benevolence: factitiousness, killing and cosmic agape.This is how cinema gets turned into trash. Blomkamp and Jackson’s outrageously stupid idea boasts comicbook logic—Wikus gets infected alien fluid and starts to metamorphose into a Prawn Like Me monstrosity. But this cheap, darkhumored pass at empathy disgraces any greater cinematic potential.

When Luc Besson produced the 2007 parkour action film District B-13, he adapted genre mechanics to real-life historical problems in an attempt to come to terms with the current class and race conflicts in Parisian banlieus and their rising social tension. Besson understands how pop cinema can exercise and alleviate social frustration. District 9 becomes sheer exploitation—a sign of decayed compassion like the perverse vampirism as AIDS-and-homophobia allegory in HBO’s True Blood. Amidst the grotesqueries and social squalor, Blomkamp and Jackson interject the satiric mode of the Down Under mockumentary Cane Toads to depict the fearful encroachment of Others. It brings back ugly profiling from the bad-old-days of Apartheid: Scared humans describe Prawn satirically (“They steal sneakers, then check for the brand”) but the disdain has unfunny familiarity.

Even older racial stereotyping occurs when Nigerian immigrants enter the game as interlopers who operate a criminal underworld that exploits both aliens and the South Africans. Because the Prawns (“called bottomfeeders”) subsist on canned cat food, the Nigerian mob run a scam selling cat food at exorbitant prices.Their viciousness is almost comical in its Sam Jackson–style exaggeration.These malevolent blacks are also grinning cannibals who later threaten Wikus’ life. They’re a new breed of racist swagger; the kingpin sits in a wheelchair, big, black and scary. By this point, District 9 stops making sense and becomes careless agitation using social fears and filmmaking tropes Blomkamp and Jackson are ill-equipped to control.

“You fucking mizungo [white person], I’m gonna get you!,” screams the menacing black Nigerian cannibal.This contemporaryset dystopic, sci-fi flick never becomes fun. (Michael Bay bashers who stupidly complain about the cultural-status of the twin Autobots in Transformers 2 should park their rectitude here.) Instead, District 9 illustrates the strange new state of racial and political identity. It suggests some lingering Afrikaans’ fear or, possibly, how Jackson really thinks about the Maori and Aborigines.

Fools will accept District 9 for fantasy, yet its use of parable and symbolism also evoke the almost total misunderstanding that surrounds the circumstance of racial confusion and frustration recently seen when Harvard University tycoon Henry Louis Gates Jr. played the race card against a white Cambridge cop. Opening so soon after that event—and adding to its unending media distortion—District 9 confirms that few media makers know how to perceive history, race and class relations.

[khad]

http://newsblaze.com/story/200908071.../topstory.html
Prairie Miller has another good review:

Published: August 07,2009
District 9 Movie Review

By Prairie Miller

While Hollywood's early venture into science fiction predominantly pandered to public panic related to the Red Scare, the postmodern sci-fi paranoia of choice, if District 9 is any indication, seems to be the color black. In utter disregard of the loathsome racist history of apartheid in their country creating the dismal reality of poverty and pending chaos today, a team of white South African filmmakers has concocted a racially coded alien invasion mockumentary in the guise of entertainment.

Relentlessly clunky and grating in the extreme, District 9 takes its cue from Cloverfield's contrived artsy vertigo to situate the futuristic tall tale combining premeditated pseudo-disorganized camera and surveillance video footage, as supposedly hyper-real journalistic racial profiling panic in the here and now. Sharlto Copley is Wilkus van der Merwe, the public face of private mercenaries contracted by the South African government to evict and relocate to a concentration camp, the surging population of Johannesburg District 9 aliens from outer space. Those refusing to be ordered out of the teeming slum as Merwe cheerfully hands them notices to vacate on camera, are summarily shot dead to the delight of black viewers of the evening news.

But in the course of Merwe's elated pursuit of his fifteen minutes of photo op small screen fame, he contracts an alien virus which to his initial dismay, harvests the host creature and his superpowers within which, well, turns him into a pregnant man. And while Merwe spends the rest of the future as now thriller fleeing mercenaries and hiding out among his new odd couple alien allies in District 9, real South African blacks express relief on camera about alien removal and extinction. The distasteful joke here being perpetrated by director Neill Blomkamp, is that he fooled his subjects into talking about their aversion to the swelling immigrant population from other African countries, particularly Nigeria, and then, so to speak, photo-shopped them into his politically odious victims-as-villains movie. Clever.

At the same time, the Nigerians are depicted as despicable when not depraved bottom feeder hustlers and homicidal gangs financially exploiting the aliens, when not forcing the females into cross-species sex for sale. This, while the white dominated government is simply perplexed.
Rarely have such raucous, hyperactive high alert proceedings in a movie managed to be so relentlessly dull. And while Merwe resists coming to terms with his inner alien but eventually gets turned on to his newfound notoriety wilding with the enemy, but in no way having creature sex with them as the tabloids have been charging, the oppressed metal-screeching monsters become simply oppressive. Pass the earplugs.

Sony Pictures
Rated R
1 star

Comments from Marxmail:

went to see it yesterday, it's the first movie i have walked out on
since i walked out on Cujo in 1983.

District 9 is a very very evocative film ... see it if you want your
ultra-leftist feelings evoked.... otherwise, the movie has a ton of
problems ... though i am told the second half that i missed was better.

I saw the whole movie. I have mixed feelings about it. I agree with the
comment that the person who wrote/produced this was immature
politically. The very obvious comparison with Apartheid was the main
comparison, combined with a sort of faux-Nazi approach as a "Final
Solution" to the "Alien Problem". Duh, it was so transparent to be dumb.

Film making has gotten so good now that it really looked like a giant
space craft floating over Johannesburg, the Aliens look real and
believable, and like giant prawns they were modeled on.

I would agree that the filmmaker wanted to make 'regular township'
residents seem like bigots and Nigerians like cannibalistic criminal
gangs to the last person.

Did anyone notice that the true aliens are not the prawns but the Nigerians? Despite their bizarre appearance, the prawns are immediately anthomorphized, so we are made to feel pity for C.J. - the child prawn, and we come to identify with the wise and smart Christopher. We feel no such pity for the Nigerians - who are exoticized so completely with their cannibalism and witchcraft with we can hardly identify them as human. We pity the prawns for being forced to live in the townships, but we regard the townships are the proper home for the Nigerians. Of course, below even the Nigerians (who at least have the benefit of being from some other place) are the completely genocided (disappeared) South African blacks. The movie is worse than a failed satire of race. It attempts rather to fantasize about a white-only South Africa that is colonized by outsiders, including prawns and blacks. But we are made to identify with the prawns exactly because they are not black. As such, this movie fits within the genocidal agenda of most cinema from the settler states.

[brigadista]

thanks for posting this - i saw this film on saturday and i thought the portrayal of Nigerians in the film was dreadful and very racist

apart from which it was a complete waste of a couple of hours of my life as the film was total rubbish-imho

[khad]

thanks for posting this - i saw this film on saturday and i thought the portrayal of Nigerians in the film was dreadful and very racist

More facts gleaned from Marxmail:

by the way, the director stated clearly in an interview that his
portrayal of Nigerians in S. Africa was "realistic" and implied that
viewers had to face the facts about Nigerian gangs.

[Invariance]

I agree with Brigadista: the movie was quite poor.

I'm not sure what sort of film it was supposed to be, and I'm not sure the directors did either. Clearly at the beginning it was some sort of mockumentary, poorly satirizing and comparing it to apartheid, but later it became an emotional drama, then 35-45 minutes of gun-fighting as an excuse to include as many special effects as possible. Ironic that a film which was (seemingly) supposed to show the brutality and damaging consequences of racial segregation engaged in racist stereotyping of all Nigerians as criminals and thugs.

[brigadista]

die hard mixed with ET....plus huge portions of vile racism...... nuff said

[KurtFF8]

I wrote a little review myself over at the PoFo blog I contribute to:

http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/v...f=102&t=109168

District 9 is the new Hollywood-style blockbuster which serves as a commentary on race and apartheid. Already there are many reviews popping up about the significant problems with the film's efforts, and I happen to agree: there are significant problems.

Firstly, let's take a look at the aims of the film. It is obviously an attempt to portray the aliens who are effective refugees in South Africa as an oppressed people that is meant to draw various parallels (most obviously apartheid South Africa, the people of Palestine, etc.) The film takes a firm stance against this treatment here, with the oppression of the aliens being constantly displayed and dealt with. It even shows the problems of the profit motive (trying to get alien technology at the expense of the well being of the aliens as a whole) operating in the oppression of the aliens. The population of Johannesburg is united against the aliens to demonstrate the divisions that take place when a population is effectively "othered" and the "racism" against the aliens is quite penetrating throughout human society (the film again takes a stance against this here).

The opening of the film details an attempt to forcibly relocate the alien population to a new camp further outside of Johannesburg that largely fails. The attempt to relocate fails for various reasons (such as ignorance of how to communicate with the alien population effectively).

While the film itself attempts to tackle these issues, it falls quite short in its own project. There are quite a few problems it runs into. One of the more obvious examples of this that has been pointed out by quite a few people already is the presence of the Nigerian gangs operating within District 9 (the alien refugee camp). The problems here seem to be quite glaring. The Nigerian gang element in District 9 is portrayed as brutal, wild, full of witchcraft and superstition, and almost uncompromisingly antagonistic. The problem with this doesn't lie simply in this terrible portrayal itself, but that this is the main black group portrayed in the film itself. It also comes from a very old ideological conception of the blacks of Africa: exotic, wild, mysterious, and dangerous. This exoticizing is problematic not only because it takes place in the film itself, but that it is taking place in a film that is an effort to combat the very kind of racism we see popping up here. It would certainly be problematic to see this in a "normal" Hollywood-style blockbuster but not in a film like this that is made to be a progressive attempt to fight and point out racism itself. It's just strange how the writers couldn't have noticed this in their overall project.


Another problem with the film that I had (that may not be accepted as a problem by others) was the role of the main protagonist, Wikus van der Merwe. He begins as a seemingly naive character who is unaware that his actions and preconceptions of the aliens are racist/problematic and as the film goes on he is sprayed with a chemical that begins to transform him into an alien. At first he of course tries to reject his new "alienism" and eventually MNU (the main corporate interest in the film that is mainly in charge of dealing with Human-Alien affairs) attempts to kill him to harvest his body for weapon research. He then becomes a fugitive and is eventually forced to take shelter in District 9 with the aliens where he runs into an alien who he previously tried to evict from his home. He then discovers that that particular alien, Christopher, has been working on a small alien craft that would return the aliens back to the main mother ship so they could leave Earth. Christopher promises Merwe that he can reverse the transformation from human to alien if he can return to the alien mother ship. This is what motivates Merwe throughout the rest of the film: returning to his pure human form, not any sort of new found compassion for the aliens. As a matter of fact, any sort of new found compassion for the aliens seems to be motivated solely by his own motives to return to being a human. As the film progresses, Christopher informs Merwe that it will take three years to return him to human form which makes Merwe betray Christopher and attempt to fly to the mother ship himself. After a failed attempt at getting to the mother ship, Merwe is portrayed as being selfish and almost losing his life as a result when Christopher's alien son saves Merwe. After a few events unfold, Merwe decides to save Christopher who is put in a near death situation, and they decide to work together for the rest of the film to get Christopher to the mother ship. At this point, it required Merwe's decision to accept the aliens for the aliens to succeed to any capacity. This may not seem like a "white man's burden" to anyone else but to me it certainly at least seems to be partially motivating in this particular plot device. Also Merwe's betrayal was never sufficiently dealt with, along with the fact that it wasn't the alien's own drive to help give an opportunity to liberate themselves, but Merwe's own personal decision. That to me is quite problematic.

Another minor point of contention I had with the film was the role of Multi-National United (MNU). It is clear that it is portrayed as an exploiting corporate entity (perhaps even a corporation itself, it's not quite clear) and is the main exploiting/oppressive force of the film. My problem with it is that the profit motive behind their actions is only hinted at and not really dealt with too much throughout the rest of the film. Since they are essentially the main protagonist of the film, it seems to me that their role should have been critically analyzed by the film itself, especially a film that is supposed to be taking itself as a serious social commentary.

Despite its various problems, the media seems to be praising it for its progressiveness amongst other things. It certainly does have its positive points (for example MNU is indeed portrayed as an "evil profit seeking entity") and the relocation of the aliens is valuable commentary. But we should still critically analize any film that attempts to make such a commentary, especially if it falls short of its own goals.

Also, Kasama Project has a few good articles on it.

[pierrotlefou]

I wrote a little review myself over at the PoFo blog I contribute to:



Also, Kasama Project has a few good articles on it.

I think you looked way too deep into this film. It's a genre film for those who like sci-fi/cgi alien films that aren't army propaganda/car commercials. It's parallels to political events is minimal and they don't go into any detail for a reason: it's not important. The backgrounds and motives of the characters are barely explained in the film because the point at which we are entered into the film is at a later point in time. It's like he wrote it and then only filmed the middle and end. I'm not saying it's the next Alien or even that it's very good at all but all of these reviews i read on here are looking way too deep into something that shouldn't go beyond it's face value: Well done cgi aliens and explosions sans everyone drinking Coke and driving a Dodge magnum.

[khad]

I think you looked way too deep into this film. It's a genre film for those who like sci-fi/cgi alien films that aren't army propaganda/car commercials. It's parallels to political events is minimal and they don't go into any detail for a reason: it's not important. The backgrounds and motives of the characters are barely explained in the film because the point at which we are entered into the film is at a later point in time. It's like he wrote it and then only filmed the middle and end. I'm not saying it's the next Alien or even that it's very good at all but all of these reviews i read on here are looking way too deep into something that shouldn't go beyond it's face value: Well done cgi aliens and explosions sans everyone drinking Coke and driving a Dodge magnum.

Unfortunately, even the shallowest piece of crap from Hollywood has politics. You claim that the history of South Africa isn't important to the filmmakers? Well, there is a reason why Hollywood doesn't consider the history important. There's also a reason why racial stereotypes from our culture work their way into the movie without being examined or questioned.

And another thing, our culture teaches inane avoidance tactics like the one one that attempts to treat everything as a joke. Really, what is there to lose by calling a film, which is clearly racist, reactionary trash?

[Mike Rotchtickles]

[FONT=Verdana]I commented about this movie about a week ago. My analysis was on the cast and I was disturbed that a movie based in South Africa has so very few blacks as protagonists in the movie.[/FONT]

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[FONT=Verdana]Once again whites being portrayed as the primary figures in film. It’s really sad how Hollywood continues to refuse to have non-whites playing hero roles. Of course there are a few exceptions. I am not saying always have blacks as heroes but for christ sakes South Africa is only 1/10th white and the majority of the roles in this movie seem to be portrayed by whites. Sickening.[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman][/FONT]

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[FONT=Verdana]I was also commented

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[FONT=Verdana]I doubt that will be a point that ever come out in the movie. Are they going for the accuracy of how the country really is? I don’t know. I still believe that they have missed an opportunity to portray a non-white person in a more relevant role. The movie does have a few black faces from what I have seen and they typically play the parts of sidekicks just like they do in most US movies. Art has the role of shaping perceptions however subtle that may be. I might be reacting a bit strongly to this specific movie because it’s set in my home country, but this is the general problem I have with movies. They generally portray the white man as a hero. The other races play nominal roles which at times can be stereotypical. My feelings have nothing to do with the merits of the movie. It may be good, I don’t know.
In its use of district 6 which is of historical significance to SA, I think it should have been the other way round. The aliens land on earth; they take over and enslave the population. They put the population into restricted residential areas where they only come out to work for the aliens. The movie may end where the native population rises up against the aliens they come to a compromise and the aliens maintain all they stole from the people. Maybe Im just dreaming, in any case there are so very few producers director and financer of movies who are not white, so why would they tell a story that way.

Regardless I think I do owe it to myself to go watch the movie in order to better inform my opinion i just may be surprised.[/FONT]

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[FONT=Verdana]This was when i had seen just a few video clips and read small newspaper excerpts on the movie.[/FONT]

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[FONT=Verdana]As someone who is aware of the racism within Hollywood and in white culture I kind of expected the racism i am reading about in these reviews.[/FONT]

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[FONT=Verdana]You must take a look at how the liberal media will probably gloss over all these things mentioned. Its funny how someone can come and say "I think you looked way too deep into this film." You don’t have to look deep to see racism, those who are ignorant of racism (the color-blind ostriches) might have to look at little further than their own noses and they will get a glimpse of it.[/FONT]

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[FONT=Verdana]Prejudice can be an overt and a subtle thing. Those on the receiving end usually become good at spotting it in all of its manifestations. This is what I believe (Hollywood is the Last Church of White Supremacy).[/FONT]

[KurtFF8]

[FONT=Verdana]As someone who is aware of the racism within Hollywood and in white culture I kind of expected the racism i am reading about in these reviews.

This was a South African/New Zealand[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]film, not a Hollywood film
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[khad]

This was a South African/New Zealand[/FONT][/COLOR] [FONT=Verdana]film, not a Hollywood film
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As far as I am concerned, Peter Jackson is Hollywood establishment. He's the one who produced this film.

[Mike Rotchtickles]

This was a South African/New Zealand [FONT=Verdana]film, not a Hollywood film[/FONT]

It is hollywood formulae.

[khad]

It is hollywood formulae.

And 88% of critics agree: It's a hit!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/district_9/

This fucking country...

[KC]

It just seems like they took a real life situation, dumbed it down and polarized it to Manichean extremes, and then repackaged it under a sci-fi guise. Nothing new or original about that at all.

As for the racism, this film wasn't made as a representation of Apartheid (as far as I am aware); it was simply the source from where the very poorly developed and one-sided story was extracted. In this sense it can be seen as racist or offensive, but my opinion is that it is simply insensitive to the issues from where the story came. On its own it is an entirely different case than if you are aware and/or knowledgeable about Apartheid and/or can make the connection.

[brigadista]

and the represetation of Nigerians in the film? highly racist....

[pierrotlefou]

[FONT=Verdana]I commented about this movie about a week ago. My analysis was on the cast and I was disturbed that a movie based in South Africa has so very few blacks as protagonists in the movie.[/FONT]

None of the humans were protagonists. The main white character was a douche bag who only in the very end, because he needed the alien to help change him back, helped the alien. The film tries to invoke a little pity for him in the end but only to make you think this guy wasn't a complete creep.

[Jimmie Higgins]

While I was disgusted by the racist depiction of Nigerian immigrants as superstitious cannibals (like racism out of a Victorian novel) I didn't think - as the reviewers above did - that the allegory was about apartheid.

It clearly seemed to be about refugees and immigrants and post-apartheid South Africa. It is still highly highly problematic as this kind of allegory, but I think these are the fears the filmmakers were trying to tap into - much as "Children of Men" did (to better effect in my opinion). The aliens came at the end of apartheid and things like NMU (multi-national) seemed like a broad swipe at the fact that even with the end of apartheid, it's the multi-nationals that make the rules, not the politicians alone let alone the actual population.

So as disgusting and racist as the depiction of the immigrants was I think the filmmaker's aim was to try and show that "all humans are evil" because the scenes with the Nigerians taking advantage of the aliens is immiediately followed by beurocrats explaining talking about NMU and it becomes clear that the corporation is trying to take advantage and steal weaponry just as the Nigerians are. The gang boss wants to eat the aliens to "take their power and secrets" and the scientists perform barbaric experiements in an attempt to also take their power and learn their secrets. This is typical post-modern misanthropy (was it Blake who said that "science must destroy in order to study") that most modern films adopt in order to seem edgy and hip.

The best thing about this movie was that no national monuments were destroyed like most CGI-filled movies these days.

[spiltteeth]

Welp, didn't see see the film but many people here don't seem to realize that it was based on facts.
The Nigerian gang is based on an actual people, with the same name.
I mentioned that I heard the film was really racist and my friend, who was in Africa at the time when the gang tried to seize power although they are still around.
He was a zoologist and told me that the people's shaman told them to kill all the animals in the zoo and eat them to consume their spirit. My friend got out barley alive.
It's an accurate depiction of them, according to him. If anyone here knows the gangs name let me know, my buddy told me and I've forgotten. I'd like to see what the web says.