Aliens and Apartheid.

Alyssa Rosenberg on District 9, the new sci-fi film that uses space aliens kept in an isolated zone in South Africa as a metaphor for apartheid:

The movie is set in South Africa, and the trailers have featured folks with a variety of local accents, and the details of the plot we know so far, that a group of aliens have been set up in a restricted zone for 30 years, sets up a very clear parallel with the township and pass sytem used to restrict the movements of black Africans under apartheid. And the more I’ve thought about it, I think an alien-human confrontation might be a useful metaphor for apartheid. It’s one I’m slightly uncomfortable with, because it relies on an assumption that the people being imprisoned and the people imprisoning them actually are fundamentally different, which supports an underlying assumption that supported apartheid. But District 9 appears to be in part a movie about what happens to people who perpetrate an oppressive system, and what happens to people who are isolated entirely from the civilization that’s chosen to imprison them. Maybe using aliens to represent justifiable a violent resistance makes us more comfortable with Umkhonto we Sizwe–or at least about talking about the fact that violent resistance to apartheid may have been necessary, even as anger against apartheid helped spur resistors to forms of violence that seem horrifying and unjustifiable, like necklacing. The attitudes of the apartheid regime are reprehensible–this was a government that did biological weapons research for use incontrolling internal dissent–but it still seems worthwhile to learn how those attitudes developed, accreted, and became morally debilitating. The trailers for District 9 so far seem to suggest that the aliens just want to leave peacefully, though they are shown in violent confrontation with humans.

G.D.

G.D.

Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
G.D.
  • ladyfresh

    i recommend watching the short film that it’s based on

    Alive in Joburg

    i’m really(really really really) interested in seeing this film

  • Yay District 9! Movie looks badass.

    Still, the info about this has been out for a while, so I guess Rosenberg must have just watched Bruno or something and wrote this piece, but for being a professed south african history nut, I was not impressed. Big biopics are hard to make regardless, but christ how does ANYONE choose Winnie Mandela? Does Rosenberg not know that she was a gangster, or the ridiculous amount of enemies she made? I mean, how is that not even mentioned? And how come there is no mention of the Pan-African Congress, which was way more popular in south africa but could never get the pr of the ANC? i dunno, i don’t know much about SA history, but it sounds like rosenberg is giving an official anc account of everything with some of biko’s skepticism thrown in. i dunno, i am just being salty, but i expect more from people who claim to know a lot. If you want to see how much this film can help in examining apartheid, i would not read what she writes. I would check out this dude though
    http://theleoafricanus.com/

  • Lindiwe

    The apartheid metaphor wasn’t the first thing that came to my mind. I immediately thought of he recent Xenophobic violence. The comments made by the several South Africans sounded a lot like what we were hearing before and during the attacks… in addition to that the parallel between the foreigners being crammed into churches and community halls seeking safe refuge and this ‘District 6’ … I guess I’d have to watch the film to get the full apartheid metaphor.
    Either way,it looks pretty interesting. I live in a bubble so thanks for the heads up!

  • Lindiwe

    Oops. Hows that for an appropriate slip? District ‘9’.