DISTRICT 9: NO HUMANS ALLOWED!

An alternative way to criticize the reality of exclusion and displacement!

Talking about social and cultural mosaic of cities I think you didn't expect to see a movie like that! District 9, written by Blomkamp and Tatchell, and produced by Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham, is an impressive movie, a cult classic to be. It is briefly about aliens landed in Johannesburg and somewhat 'normalized' in the urban life. They became part of the city, being isolated in a shanty town in district 9. It is not, of course, a coincidence that the movie is plotted in a city with most multicultural conflict and exclusion issues in reality. It is an excellent illustration of how ghettoization, isolation and exclusion can take place and be normalized and legitimised by the authoritarian power and the host community. Alians, who are now called by the 'host community' as 'prawns', live in unhealthy conditions and mingling with illegal activities with the black Nigerian community, who profits from illegal trade of guns and cat food, for which apparently the prawns are addicted to.

The film very nicely sets the plot for us to understand that there are human rights organisations and civil movements that forced the authority (MNU) to find more 'human' and legal ways to move the prawns out of the city to 'solve' the issue, or rather to ignore it, to a guarded and gated tent-town by asking them one by one to approve the 'displacement'. The author Blomkamp indicates that the alien homes in the movie were actually shot in a recently evacuated area of impoverished housing in an area called Chiawelo, which is a suburb of Soweto, Johannesburg. The homes you see the aliens getting evicted from were homes that humans had recently been kicked out of, for real! In reality the people living in this area are moved to the government-subsidised housing called RDP housing. Here is a quote from Blomkamp (see the full interview at http://io9.com/5341120/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-district-9): 'And there is this thing in Africa called RDP housing, which are government-subsidised housing. Where they will build you a brick house in a different area of the city. And you get put put on a waiting list if you're a South African impoverished resident, until you are able to get one of these houses. So the area we filmed the movie in, what plays as District 9, every single resident in that area was being removed to be put into RDP housing. Although not all of them had been given the green light on the RDP housing, most of them had, but all of them were going to be moved, whether they liked it or not. So we ended up with this open piece of land with all these shacks on it...each day we came to set, there were fewer and fewer people.'

The movie also displays some real interviews with the South Africans, who are answering the question 'What do you feel about Zimbabwean Africans living here?', while in the movie it appeared as if they were answering the question 'What do you feel about the aliens (the prawns) living here'? Brilliant isn't it? Absolutely brilliant to show exclusion, isolation, ghettoisation and displacement without even talking about it! Although it sounds like an impossible situation nowadays, I think we can think of many urban histories in which this kind of alienation (literally) took place (and still does)....


I simply love this movie, and, I guess, despite the fact that we were all grossed by some scenes, those of you who were with me last night did that too!

Looking forward to the field research in Rotterdam tomorrow...

Tuna