This article analyses Neill Blomkamp's Academy Award-winning District 9 (2009) to investigate the extent to which popular cinema might support neoliberal ideological positions. It draws upon Slavoj Žižek's psychoanalytic theory of ideology to explore how far anti-capitalist and anti-colonial tendencies in the film should be regarded as an “unconscious fantasy” (1989, p.30) that works towards reinforcing key aspects of neoliberalism. Through an exploration of private military contractor Multinational United (MNU), lead protagonist Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), and the film's spatial composition, this article argues that District 9 works in support of neoliberalism by constructing a social reality that sidesteps genuine criticisms of neoliberalism's role in continued socio-economic marginalisation and ongoing human suffering. This is evident in hollow criticisms of corporate capitalism vis-à-vis MNU and ignorant misrepresentations of the alien Other, which reinforce discourses of cultural and ethnic superiority associated with neoliberalism.
This article explores the role of key characters and scenes in Neill Blomkamp's hugely successful science fiction feature District 9 (2009) to investigate the extent to which popular cinema might support neoliberal ideological positions. As a film that received prominent attention for its condemnation of neo-colonialism and corporate capitalist intentions (Schwarzbaum, 2009; Barrett, 2010), District 9's suitability for analysis in this context becomes significant in an epoch in which the validity of neoliberalism is under intense public questioning after a series of high-profile economic and humanitarian crises have exposed its inherent unworkability for the majority (Eberwein, 2009; Doran, 2012; Petras, 2014).
Neoliberalism can be defined as much a cultural phenomenon as it is an economic doctrine, comprising a historical relationship to European colonialism and twentieth century American imperialism (Hardt and Negri, 2000; Mignolo, 2011; Kapur and Wagner, 2013). This article defines it as an ingrained set of behaviours, beliefs and modes of thought concerned with the proliferation of the intellectual, cultural, political and economic superiority of Anglo-Saxon, Christian identity and values. Kapur and Wagner propose that neoliberalism is identifiable with a “history, structure and set of relations” (2013, p.4) related to European colonialism, whereas Appadurai on the other hand defined it as the “new global cultural economy” (1990, p.6). Krishna's discussion articulates an explicit historical link in more detail:
Although the specific terms postcolonialism and globalisation have become popular only in the past two decades or so, they emerge from a far longer intellectual history on the growth and decline of various regions and nations in the world economy and the intertwined histories of capitalism and colonialism. (2008, p.13)
According to Žižek, the concept of ideology relies on an essential “naivety” on the part of the Self, or subject. Quoting Marx, who many years ago defined ideology simply as something that “[the people] do not know, but they are doing” (2009, p.3), Žižek instead claims that in the contemporary epoch we, the people, in fact know full well that neoliberalism has inherent flaws and contradictions but continue to participate in its regulatory processes regardless.
This creates a unique paradox that underlies the analytical framework of this article: considering the assertion that (ideological) reality will dissolve if we come to know too much (Žižek, 1989, p.16) as Marx may have claimed, the word “too” in the previous statement has become crucial in properly understanding the process today. Now, the very ideological foundations are supported by the knowledge that the system is to some extent flawed. Indeed, Žižek writes that the “cynical subject” is often “quite aware of the distance between the ideological mask [and reality] but still insists on the mask” (1989, p.25). Hence, Žižek's stance is that various anti-capitalist movements over the world today exist merely in the form of an “ideological fantasy” that structures the “social reality”:
Reality is a fantasy-construction which enables us to mask the Real of our desire. Ideology is a fantasy-construction which serves to support our “reality”; itself an illusion. The function of ideology is not to offer us a point of escape from our reality but to offer us the social reality itself as an escape from some traumatic, real kernel. (1989, p.45)
Cremin discusses the evolution not of exchange value but of “social-value” that in the post-political era serves a “political and commercial function” (2011, p.75) in which the act of consumption works to allow the subject to indulge the fantasy of removing themselves from the ideological order. This article takes into account works by Cremin, Žižek, and Prudham (2009) to define this notion of cultural capitalism as a phenomenon wherein notions of charity, ethics and social concern have come to be included in notions of consumption. Though largely under-researched in a cinematic context, recent Hollywood appears to follow commercial products like Starbucks, Nike and Ben and Jerry's in promoting discourses of ethical and social concern for the sake of its investors and customers. Selected contemporary Hollywood film examples like Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008), Cameron's Avatar (2009) and Matt Reeves' Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) for instance display clear anti-capitalist, pro-environmental and ethical themes, which initially seem to critique neoliberalism. However, each film can ultimately be said to support key aspects of the system through justifications of cultural and racial hierarchies, economic imperialism and Western ideals of freedom, liberty and individualism (Kellner, 2009; Veracini, 2011; Adamson, 2012). Taking this into account, this article seeks to investigate the extent to which District 9 follows aspects of cultural capitalism and neoliberal validation through 1) an exploration of how far Multinational United (MNU) fulfils an anti-capitalist narrative; 2) a scrutiny of lead protagonist Wikus van de Merwe's (Sharlto Copley) role in liberating the alien “prawns”; and 3) an examination of space in the film and how it might stabilise District 9's ideological underpin.
District 9 is relatively unique in that it was a box office success in the United States despite its setting entirely in Johannesburg and its strong contextual references to South Africa. This is highlighted well by Valdez-Moses et al., who point out that:
The language of the aliens makes use of “clicks”, which a South African audience will likely associate with the distinctive phonemes of San, Khoi, Xhosa, or Zulu, lends credence to this identification. Some of the most sensational “revelations” of the film—aliens are being used as experimental test subjects by scientists working in the labs of MNU for the purposes of developing new weaponry—may allude to scandalous exposés that appeared in the press during the hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In 1998, Dr Schalk van Rensberg, a scientist who worked in the 1980s and early 90s for Roodeplaats Research Laboratories, testified that his research had been directed toward the development of race-specific biochemical weapons targeting blacks; van Rensberg confessed that he was ordered to develop a vaccine that would render black women fighting for UNITA infertile. (2010, p.156f.)
Notwithstanding, in addition to addressing domestic issues District 9 also makes significant references to transnational concerns around human rights, military privatisation and the War on Terror prominent in news reports at the time. Compared with typical Hollywood films, District 9's unconventional locale set wholly away from the United States allows for a variable margin of freedom in terms of the way the film approaches socio-historical allegorisation, cultural symbolism and political commentary in both a local and global context. The docu-style opening for instance could be interpreted to reflect Weaver-Hightower's comment on the “popular [cinematic] mythology of the US as the metaphoric centre of the world” (2006, p.304), lending support to District 9's neoliberal milieu.
Here, correspondent Grey Bradnam (Jason Cope) comments: “to everyone's surprise, the ship didn't come to a stop over Manhattan, or Washington, or Chicago…” followed by: “there was a lot of international pressure on us at the time [regarding the operation to remove the aliens from the hovering ship]”. These remarks indicate a particular socio-political “gaze” to District 9 in the way they reconstruct the popular neoliberal discourse implicating the United States as an omnipresent global policeman with an invariable stake and interest in the actions of allied nations' governments worldwide.
This same theme appears later in the film when a scientist alleges that protagonist Wikus's rapidly transforming body “represents hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars' worth of biotechnology”, going on to state that “there are people out there, governments, corporations who would kill for this chance”. Whether these lines were included in order to conciliate the American market remains unclear but the comments certainly represent an interesting reflection of cultural imperialism present in global cinema – an issue discussed by Rings (2011) and Weaver-Hightower (2006, 2007).
Valdez Moses et al. also comment that there is a “neoliberal twist” (2010, p.165) to District 9 in the manner in which it presents a South African state that appears to have yielded control to a corporation. Indeed, as Heller-Nicholas elaborates:
Multinational United, the private military company, stands in place of the government in the film. We never see government officials or soldiers. The very name [of MNU] implies that South Africa is not the only place where commercially-minded corporations have effectively replaced regional government structures. (2011, p.139)
In addition to MNU's institutionalised discrimination against the aliens, the ethically unsound medical experiments that Wikus discovers in the bio-lab reinforce the image of global corporate identities that MNU typifies as nothing but greedy, cruel and corrupt. (Heller-Nicholas, 2011, p.139)
The ruthlessness of MNU and its hierarchy is communicated quite bluntly during a conversation between Smit and a lab scientist as Wikus lays strapped to a bed in the research facility:
Piet: He's going to turn into one of them, a prawn?
Scientist: What happens to him isn't important. What's important is that we harvest from him what we can right now. This body represents hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars' worth of biotechnology. There are people out there, governments, corporations who would kill for this chance.
Piet: Will he survive the procedure?
Scientist: No, of course not. We need everything. Tissue, bone marrow, blood. The procedure's gonna basically strip him down to nothing.
Other mnu official: What about next of kin?
Wikus: Please, help me. Don't let them do it.
Piet: I'll handle that.
This one-dimensional depiction of MNU as an immoral entity could be interpreted as a criticism from director Blomkamp of actual government reliance on private security firms to protect capital investment interests in resources such as oil or gas. The subject of accountability has been one of increased media scrutiny particularly in light of events such as the Blackwater massacre of Iraqi civilians in 2007 and abuses by CACI International and Titan Corporation employees in Abu Ghraib prison (see Bina, 2004). Here, District 9 certainly follows other popular films like James Cameron's Avatar and Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) in which frustrations and anger concerning human exploitation and corporate greed appears to be channelled directly at a private organisation.
The subsequent exposure of MNU's illegal experimentation programme publically humiliates the company, however further scrutiny of the scenario reveals that this apparent condemnation of MNU's inhumanity could be nothing more than a diversion. Indeed, the embarrassment that the whole affair would potentially cause them conceals the likely probability of MNU's continued involvement in the relocation of the aliens to so-called District 10. After all, who else could be charged with the forced removal of 1.8 million aliens to a new location 200km away from Johannesburg? The South African government are noticeably absent from the story and would surely not suddenly step in after originally passing the buck on taking charge of alien-related affairs in the first instance. After risking his life to save alien Christopher (Jason Cope) and disappearing into District 9, Wikus himself would also be likely to be vulnerable – with Valdez Moses et al correctly observing that in a hypothetical continuation of the story, the protagonist “would be likely to be exploited by a new warlord in District 10” (2010, p.161).
From a cultural capitalist perspective, the cruelty exposed in the lab experiments at MNU and proceeding exposure of the scandal to the public could be suggested to perform a wider (ideological) function of providing viewers with the opportunity to remedy frustrations with regard to real-life governmental and business malpractices like the Iraq War or the 2008 economic crash respectively – something both Eberwein (2009) and Jones (2010) allude to. As Žižek claims in this context: “the function of ideology is to offer us the social reality as an escape from the traumatic real” (1989, p.45), which in this case manifests the construction of MNU as an object of blame with which an angry, perhaps somewhat apathetic subject, can direct their resentment regarding real-life transgressions.
Despite his role as District 9's lead character, the customary position onto which the desires of the subject are often projected, there can certainly be said to be an element of Otherness to Wikus' character from a typical Hollywood perspective. This is most likely because of the relative creative freedom writers Blomkamp and Tatchell appear to have been handed thanks to the presence of Lord of the Rings trilogy director Peter Jackson supporting the production. Indeed, in portraying the part of an apartheid-era Afrikaans bureaucrat, Wikus does not fit the criteria of the typical Hollywood leading man. His thick accent and relative lack of masculine characteristics (traits that are often associated with Afrikaans men) also highlights a degree of unconventionality to the protagonist within Hollywood codes of characterisation.
Regardless, previous to his mutation Wikus is presented as having lived a comfortable life in a nice quiet suburban area of Johannesburg with his wife Tania (Vanessa Haywood). The couple are happily married and, in spite of not being “a very smart boy”, Wikus has attained a steady job at the MNU “Department for Alien Affairs”. He is a relatively happy-go-lucky individual and he appears to have the respect of his friends and family (minus Tania's father) who take the time to attend a party organised in his honour to celebrate his promotion.
Returning again to Valdez Moses et al.'s roundtable discussion on the film, the authors here agree that District 9 “celebrates the dramatic transformation of Wikus into a political hero who risks his life for the course of universal freedom and racial equality” (2010, p.158). This initially appears to be an accurate observation: for the first half of the story, the protagonist demonstrates a distinct prejudice towards the aliens, describing them constantly as “prawns”, reacting angrily to Christopher's son's claims that the two are the “same” and also, after ordering that a shack containing a number of alien babies be destroyed, encouraging the viewer to listen out for the popping sound of the burning eggs.
However, Wikus does appear to eventually display shades of compassion as his transformation intensifies: the scene in which he dons a mechanised alien battle suit is ostensibly constructed by Blomkamp to be the moment he absolves himself of his long-held prejudice and realises his heroic destiny. Initially, however, instead of helping a captured Christopher, Wikus decides to run away from his apprehended acquaintance as well as primary antagonist Koobus (David James) and his cronies despite the protection that the suit he is wearing affords him. After a short while running, he stops to reflect and overcomes the fear and intense self-loathing that has defined his mutation experience, deciding to return with the intention of helping Christopher.
The moment certainly emphasises a sudden, newfound courage in Wikus. With the action returning to Christopher and the MNU soldiers, an abrupt deadly laser blast kills two guards before the action cuts to a mechanically-suited Wikus running towards the camera all guns blazing. Coupled with the fast attack escalation in dramatic music, the sight of Wikus in the suit approaching the camera head on creates the effect of the protagonist growing in size – and with this, his metamorphosis from reluctant to willing hero is signified. Subsequently, Wikus prevents a rocket launched by Koobus from hitting the spaceship carrying Christopher and his son to the alien mothership thereby allowing them to board, chart a course for home and initiate some kind of future rescue mission. This selfless act apparently highlights Wikus's newfound vitality: he has finally seen beyond his own selfish ends – something he could not do as he ruthlessly battled to prevent his gruesome mutation earlier in the narrative, and committed an act of empathetic kindness typical of the Hollywood hero. Thanks to his sacrifice, Wikus is seemingly absolved of his earlier prejudice towards the aliens and furthermore also proves to Tania's father-in-law that he is in fact “strong”1 by taking on and overcoming the ultra-masculine MNU.
However, despite the reconstitution of colonial white saviour narratives, District 9 challenges traditional “happy-ending” discourses like those seen in Avatar: left alone and abandoned in the township there is nothing left for Wikus to do but to submit wholly to his encroaching Otherness. Knowing that he cannot reverse his transformation for the time being, van Veuren claims that the protagonist takes the role of a “sacrificial lamb” for the viewer in the way that he is “thrown in at the deep end of the worst nightmares of white colonial anxiety and guilt” (2012, p.581). From an ideological perspective, this outcome can be said to work towards absolving the subject of their (indirect) complicity in the neo-colonial process in that Wikus takes the punishment on their behalf.
In his analysis, Van Veuren states that “the image of the border and its traversal is crucial [to District 9's] symbolic use of the city, the body and social relations” (2012, p.572), theorising that the film exists within “well-known structures of the segregated apartheid city: the high-rise inner city, the quiet white suburb and the black township” (2012, p.575).2 Taking this into account, it is important to now elaborate on van Veuren's claim to discern the extent it may be considered accurate and ascertain whether it can be contextualised within a neoliberal framework.
District 9's physical boundaries appear to be established at the beginning of the film, observable most prominently in the title shot of the alien township. Here, director Blomkamp employs a bird's eye view shot to draw the audience's attention to a heavily fortified border running vertically down the left-hand side of the screen, which works to segregate District 9 from the metropolitan city in the mind of the viewer. Regarding the township itself, this article is inclined to agree with Nel, who writes that District 9 can be characterised as a typical “contemporary, urban, African ghetto; dirty, claustrophobic, and litter-strewn, with nightmarish labyrinths and alleys” (2012, p.552). Initially, the representation of the slum in this way can be suggested to illustrate a potential example of Edward Said's “colonised” space (1994, p.61), with the township presented in binary contrast to the rational order of Johannesburg, which Said termed “metropolitan space” (1994, p.61).
However, Van Veuren's proposal above suggests a progression on this, and needs to be analysed further. In particular, it is important to identify potential examples of this triangulated spatial structure and then scrutinise the travails of protagonist Wikus who can be seen to desperately go to any lengths to reverse his mutation into alien prawn by re-entering District 9 – and also the urban downtown city.
Early in the film, wife Tania organises a pleasant dinner party to celebrate Wikus's promotion. Before cutting to the shot inside the house we are able to observe that, unlike the District 9 slum, the suburban street where Wikus' lives is rationally ordered – with straight roads and pavements, manicured gardens and clean driveways, which denotes a more familiar space associated with the coloniser. Furthermore, while Wikus' suburban home environment contrasts with the disorder of District 9, the depiction of downtown Johannesburg – location of MNU headquarters, is fundamentally different in its construction to the other two spaces: physically urban, hectic and bustling; mentally militarised, bureaucratic and masculine; the corporation's building is located in the heart of Johannesburg's city centre – a location typically reserved for the power brokers of the capitalist order in Hollywood filmic codes of reference.
At no point in District 9 do we see any characters negotiate these spaces with any meaningful significance except Wikus, who is forcibly removed from this rigid composition upon the onset of his transformation. After ingesting the fluid, Wikus's painful and humiliating metamorphosis into an alien then blurs the rigid lines of segregation initially established early in the film. He is immediately rejected by his friends and family, and then by society. Evidence of this can be found in the scene in which the fugitive Wikus enters a crowded fast food restaurant. On the television inside the restaurant, an emergency news broadcast claims that he has been involved in prolonged sexual activity with the aliens and has consequently contracted some kind of infectious disease. Recognising Wikus' face from the press release, the establishment's terrified customers begin immediately emptying the restaurant out of fear of being contaminated. Once outside, wife Tania then calls him shortly afterwards in tears to announce: “I have something to say to you and it's not gonna be easy…I can't do this…I don't want you to hold me again…”
Despite Wikus' pleas and claims that the report of his indiscretion with the aliens is not true, Tanya ends the call abruptly. Fully aware of his exclusion, Wikus then angrily attempts to chop off his already mutated alien arm with an axe. The scene is particularly significant in the context of this article's investigation in that the arm can be said to represent a symbolic indication of the protagonist's impending Otherness. The irrational act of self-mutilation that Wikus inflicts upon himself could be interpreted as a desperate attempt to be once again accepted by something akin to a hegemonic ideology manifest within the spatial construction of the film.
The ongoing anxiety that this boundary may be broken at some point could be suggested to expose societal anxieties within the neoliberal subject in a number of ways: for one it lays bare the traumatic reality of discrimination, racism and colonial residuality that still remains at the core of the collective psyche in neoliberal society; more so it could also be suggested that the protagonist's transformation represents an ongoing anxiety vis-à-vis the possibility of disasters such as the 2008 global recession (which occurred just one year before the District 9's release) re-occurring sometime again in the near future. The fallout of which might possibly serve to exclude many from the supposed “socio-economic privilege” of the ideology in much the same way as has been done here with Wikus.
Hence that which threatens the subject in District 9 appears to lay in the possibility that the ruling ideology may reject any individual that does not comply with its rigid demands of conformity and the (mental and physical) lines of segregation that it constructs. If one acknowledges this then such a theory goes some way to explain the enduring totality of neoliberalism today and why the subject indeed “knows it but is still doing it” as Žižek suggested (2009, p.3). It reveals that the subject is perhaps driven by an anxiety that the comparatively comfortable but ultimately flawed neoliberal paradigm may reject them. Such a proposal would concur with Fisher (2009) who writes that proponents of the liberal democratic model often justify the system with the simple pronunciation that it is the best we have: “[they] have decided to say that all the rest is horrible…we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we're lucky that we don't live in a condition of Evil” (2009, p.5).
Wikus's wife, Tania, in particular seeks to maintain a segregationist agenda in the story, demanding on a number of occasions that she desires a world where humans and aliens do not interact. For example, after initially stating that she does not want to see Wikus again, she phones her husband a second time in tears declaring that she “just wants everything back the way it was”. The protagonist also wants that same thing. Moments after the call, when Christopher announces that the fluid be can used both to reverse Wikus's transformation as well as powering the alien mothership, he enthusiastically declares “I can go home, you can go home, you can take your boy, you can take all the prawns with you”. He even becomes a cold-blooded murderer in his attempt to maintain the segregationist order by killing a number of MNU employees when storming the organisation's headquarters with Christopher.
This possible ideological agenda goes someway to undermining Wikus's supposedly altruistic behaviour seen earlier. Indeed this is explicitly confirmed though when, after successfully obtaining the fluid and returning to District 9, Christopher tells Wikus that it will be three years before he can “fix” him. He states that he must first go back to the alien home world in order to get assistance for the population of subjugated extra-terrestrials stranded on Earth. Wikus reacts angrily to this by knocking Christopher unconscious and recklessly attempting to fly the command module up to the alien mothership himself.
In this moment, the irrational behaviour of Wikus highlights an intense desperation on his part to stop at nothing in his attempt to restore the status quo. It is only when Wikus resigns himself to his impending Otherness that he turns his attention to the aliens' cause – and this in itself could be interpreted to be part of a wider objective of ensuring his transformation back to human form when Christopher hypothetically returns to Earth. The violent act he commits upon Christopher in knocking him unconscious demonstrates at once both a prejudiced contempt for a dehumanised Other as well as a selfish dismissal of the alien's predicament. In order words, the supposed grand act of altruism displayed towards the prawns at the film's climax is ultimately a selfish act meaning that in the end, one of District 9's central messages is to maintain the strict lines of mental and physical segregation with the Other or risk ideological rejection.
This article argues that District 9 works in support of neoliberalism by creating a social reality that deflects genuine criticisms of neoliberalism's role in continued socio-economic marginalisation and ongoing human suffering. This is observable in hollow criticisms of corporate capitalism vis-à-vis MNU, and ignorant misrepresentations of the alien Other that serve to reinforce discourses of neoliberal superiority though tacit endorsements of cultural capitalism as morally and ethically superior to an imagined corrupt corporatism. This trope ultimately renders the film more desirable as a product for commercial consumption among audiences in the current epoch of increased attention to social responsibility.
The overall portrayal of MNU indicates that District 9 follows other popular films produced around the same time like Cameron's Avatar, the Wachowskis' and Tywker's Cloud Atlas (2012) and Jones' Moon (2009) in its attempts to explicitly chastise military brutality and draw attention large corporations' focus on profit over humanity. Blomkamp's comments in interview would also support that this is the case.3 In particular, the exposure of MNU's illegal experimentation program at the film's climax is constructed to humiliate the organisation publically, however there is a contradiction here regarding the fact that MNU will continue their involvement in the project to relocate the aliens to District 10.4 Taking this into account, this article would adapt Rieder's discussion on individual film characters and claim that MNU and other fictional institutions like them can be suggested to “draw upon a deep reservoir of popular resentment” (2011, p.44) simmering in the wake of the various socio-economic crises of the twenty-first century. Moreover, such scenarios like this in film provide a dual ideological function for the viewing subject: in developing a scapegoat for colonial and capitalist exploitation, the subject is not asked to consider their ongoing (indirect) complicity in propagating this form of neoliberal violence, allowing similar real-life atrocities to continue unabated.
District 9 disseminates Wikus's desperate desire for a return to his comfortable old life through a combination of traditional colonial white-saviour tropes and more contemporary discourses associated with cultural capitalism. Here we see the Other is saved by the white hero – who simultaneously metes out some form of reified retribution against prejudiced corporatism. In older films, this latter element was markedly absent, only making an appearance in the last twenty years or so.
Supplementing this, District 9 reconstructs colonial and cultural hierarchies central to neoliberalism (Hardt and Negri 2000) in order to transmit a scenario wherein the subject is made to feel grateful that they are constituents of particular form of identity antithetical to the miserable existence of the Other. Here the desires and anxieties of the subject are at once embodied and played out through the actions of lead protagonist Wikus, whose own degrading and humiliating descent into Otherness serves to reinforce the superiority of the hegemonic ideology. Unlike Avatar for instance, a film in which the fantasy aspect of the story largely invokes a positive reinforcement of the qualities of neoliberal identity as linked to colonial discourse, this article puts forward that District 9 constructs an alternative, more disturbing, method of ideological adherence by constructing a social reality that portrays Wikus' comfortable existence as being forcefully taken away from him after he ingests the fluid.
From this point in the narrative onwards, District 9 presents Wikus desperately attempting to reverse his transformation to prawn so that he can once again be accepted back into society. This is sought after at the expense of almost 1.8 million extra-terrestrials, exemplified in the scene where Wikus crudely dismisses the aliens' situation by knocking Christopher – their one chance for salvation, unconscious in order to fly up to the alien mothership himself.
This scene demonstrates an example of neoliberalism's core principles being displayed in an era when various economic, environmental and social crises have brought the supposed supremacy of the system under sharp criticism. Released a year after the world financial crisis began and amid ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, District 9 addresses these events but ultimately justifies neoliberal ideals through the portrayal of an essentially inferior alternative: the miserable life of the Other, which is embodied in the alien prawns.
Taking the findings of this article into account, it is crucial to not lose sight of the fact that as political elites in many countries scapegoat immigrants for their neoliberal economic policy failures, the truth that audiences must confront is that instances of apathetic disavowal at supposedly archaic apartheid-style practices seen in film and discussed in right-wing media conceals a very real possibility of a return to the darkest moments of historical white racist brutality here and now.
1. Tania's father has a problem with Wikus' innocent personality and lack of typically masculine traits. Upon comforting his daughter as he informs her that Wikus cannot be saved from his “infection”, he says: “you know Wikus, he never was very strong”.
2. See Easthope on “the cinematic representation of the city-as-space” (1997).
3. In an interview with Empire magazine, director Blomkamp outlined his personal opinion on how he believed a District 9-type situation might be handled by authorities if it were to actually occur: “if aliens did arrive here with all this crazy technology, the first thing humans would do would be to set up something like MNU to milk them for every last cent!” (Hewett 2009, n.p.).
4. District 10 is described by Wikus as “more like a concentration camp” than a home. Further comparisons with South African history can be drawn here regarding the concentration camps that were established by the British during the Second Boer War (1899–1902).
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