Over twenty years ago aliens made first contact with earth - did you miss it?
District 9 is a science fiction film set in a very factual present. It demonstrates that producers and viewers continue to express faith in a set of values that are truly universal, which is helpful for Christians who believe in a single creator.
District 9 opens two decades after a large space-ship appeared inexplicably over Johannesburg, South Africa. It contained neither cute ETs nor all-conquering Predators, but more than a million alien refugees. The aimless newcomers were quickly cordoned off in a slum on the outskirts of the city and put under the care of a multinational corporation, MNU. The plot darkens as it becomes clear that MNU is responsible for the most appalling abuse of rights as it attempts to gain commercial advantages from the alien's biology and their inexplicable technology. The viewer connects at the point that a profoundly ignorant bureaucrat called Wikus Van De Merwe is accidentally exposed to an alien substance. Wikus' casual racism slips away as he too begins to be perceived as more of a valuable product than a person by his employers.
District 9 does everything conceivable to ensure its far-fetched storyline is grounded in present day reality. It harnesses the visual styling of the 24-hour news cycle to present disturbingly familiar images of shanty-towns and scrounging alien families. The use of Soweto-style slums as backgrounds and the choice to set the film in South Africa, a country already struggling with African 'illegal aliens', completes the picture. However the most recognizable aspect of District 9 is the discomfort we feel in the presence of markedly different cultures and the prejudice that is only ever a step away.
Director Neill Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson have done nothing to relieve the audience from the disgust that arises from watching insect-like creatures behave in a thoroughly inhuman way. The difference between humans and the 'prawns' as they've been dubbed gives rise to dread, and their poverty to disdain. Wikus parodies the sort of attitudes that were commonly directed towards disadvantaged groups in Southern America or Australia. "The prawn doesn’t really understand the concept of property," he tells the camera crew as his gun-toting assistants batter down slum doors to serve legally questionable eviction notices. He is disgusted by their squalor but unable to see his company's role in creating it, and attempts to resist his dubious moral and legal authority are met with bluster and threats. After all, can't the 'prawns' see he is here to help them?
District 9 questions the limits of our tolerance of racial and cultural difference. Like the best science fiction it uses an alien environment to pose some very human questions. More interesting than the questions of charity and understanding though, is the assertion that all sentient species are worthy of a certain level of treatment. That is to say, there are morals which extend well beyond this planet, into the universe itself. District 9's aliens deserve mercy and long for justice just as human beings do. These are not just the negotiable elements of social contracts developed by societies over the millennia; they are aspects of a fundamental morality that arches over all creation. In short, humanity is under the law, and that law will require a reckoning.
District 9 finishes with the fear that the whole of humanity will be held accountable for the way it has individually and corporately treated the 'prawns'. In fact Christians will be encouraged to see that there is a positive hope that judgment of some kind will bring these abuses to an end. Hollywood continues to acknowledge that creation groans under the burden of sin brought on by Adam's folly and added to by our own indiscretions. Better still, the hope for District 9's humans lies in them dropping their excuses and admitting their individual culpability. However in the last frame Wikas is left hoping that someone will intervene on his behalf, because he is powerless to redeem himself. Like the present world District 9's characters are left waiting for the return of one key character who must be both judge and saviour. Once again the fundamental truths of the gospel are discovered in even the most humanistic tales. Why? Because they are true, and even a world in rebellion cannot deny the attraction of truth.
Click below to see the short film Alive in Joberg by director Neill Blomkamp that inspired the creation of District 9
