District-9... Oh boy where to start? (I have a lot to say but I’m going to limit it to this, sorry if it’s scatterbrained)
So, first of all, if we’re reading the aliens as allegorical for displaced communities of color (refugee status, police brutality, the fact that they literally live in TOWNSHIPS, etc) then it’s hard not to see Wikus as perpetuating the white savior trope.
HOWEVER, if we see his transformation as indicative of some sort of mixed-race-ness then not only are we seeing the Tragic Mulatto figure, but more geographically appropriately we see in him a realization of very recent South African apartheid laws against miscegenation and the mixed race kids that are born. His allegorical characterization is then further complicated because the NMU tells the public that he engaged in the miscegenation himself, and his status as human and alien makes him an embodiment of that fabricated union. Therefore, he’s doubly guilty of both ends of the South Africa’s apartheid crimes against mixed race couples/children.
Wow, I’m having a really hard time with this movie because part of me wants to see the obvious allegory of Alien=POC and see Chris’s success as something hopeful. But the use of the Nigerian community in D-9 really complicates a sympathetic reading. I can’t get over how the filmmakers seemed to deliberately dehumanize the Nigerians. They live in Distirct-9 with the Aliens, they purposefully showed the Nigerians betraying the Aliens (placing them on a inferior moral position in the eyes of the audience), and then they showed the Nigerians eating the Alien’s flesh, showing them to be animalistic or something less than human.
Aaaaah okay it’s late, the punchline is idk whether I liked this movie or not???
