District 9 hit theaters on August 14th, 2009 and took number one at the box office in the U.S., grossing over $37 million. The critics raved, with noted review site Rotten Tomatoes showing a 90% fresh rating, indicating that 90% of critics approved of District 9, a rarity for a science-fiction movie, especially one about aliens. One month later the movie continues to make waves, but for a completely different reason.
Nigeria Demands Apology
The Nigerian government has demanded an apology of the makers of District 9. The government claims that the Nigerians portrayed in the film gives the country and its people a negative depiction, as criminals and cannibals. They cite the behavior of the Nigerians that are highlighted in the film as giving the negative image. In the film, the aliens are kept in a camp known as District 9. Inside of the camp a group of Nigerians live and operate almost as slumlords, dealing with the aliens for weapons, gambling, and fulfilling various stereotypes that go along with the slumlord title. Even the officials of the organization in the movie are afraid of the leader of the group of Nigerians, furthering adding to the mystique of their existence in District 9. The Nigerian government believes that this casts the country and its people in a negative light, perceiving them as bad people. What they fail to further acknowledge though, is the context of the film. The filmmakers themselves at this time have neglected to comment on the situation.
District 9 is Science-Fiction
District 9 is a science-fiction film. Aliens come to earth in a massive spaceship that, although it runs out of fuel, continues to hover in the air for the twenty years prior to the movie. An organization sets up a large camp, basically a refugee camp, in order to house the aliens in South Africa, where the spaceship is hovering. They call this camp District 9. Meanwhile, their technology is taken and dissected and humans try to discover their advances. Important new discoveries are even made through reverse engineering. Needless to say, District 9 is not something that parallels to real life. There are no aliens in South Africa. There is no District 9. There is no gigantic spaceship in the sky over the African nation.
The 'Criminals' and 'Cannibals' of District 9
The group of Nigerians that live in District 9 run things by whatever means necessary. They deal with the aliens, trading food or weapons, or even women. They use violence or they barter with the aliens to get what they want. Technically, the group of Nigerians living in District 9 are cannibals. However, the movie never tries once to give the impression that the Nigerians in the movie are even a remote amount of the population of Nigeria. The way the movie casts it, the Nigerians could have been South Africans, or British, or American. The fact that they are from Nigeria is irrelevant, it is simply a way to group the people that are living in the camp. Furthermore, the organization, most of the members being South African, resorts to violence much more readily than the Nigerians do in the film. The Nigerian government does not mention this, nor does the South African government take issue.
The film is science fiction, and it was made for entertainment, not as a racist statement. Additionally, the Nigerian government states that the film portrays Nigerians as cannibals because the group leader takes a bite out of someone's arm and eats it. The 'someone' that the leader takes a bite out of is actually an alien. The alien weapons that the Nigerians buy can only be used by someone with alien DNA, as they are biologically operated. An oracle of sorts tells the leader that if he eats some alien it will give him the biological identification necessary to fire an alien weapon, and so she presents him an arm to have a piece of. The leader is hardly a savage, merely an evil villain in a science-fiction movie trying to gain power. Furthermore, it is impossible for one to be a cannibal when they eat a different species. In fact, the aliens are called Prawns in the movie because they resemble the aquatic creatures. A person taking a bite out of a prawn is hardly a cannibal.
District 9 premiered in theaters as a science-fiction movie that featured aliens landing and being held in a refugee camp. A group of people live with the aliens in the camp and operate as slumlords, ruling with violence and crime and making a profit off of the situation. Their leader even goes so far as to eat a piece of slaughtered alien, in order to try and obtain its biological marker that will enable him to use alien weapons as a human. Because the movie mentioned once that the group were Nigerian, the Nigerian government has taken issue to the movie and demanded an apology for portraying the people as criminals and cannibals. While the people in the movie were undoubtedly Nigerian, there is no reason to suspect that the film suggested all Nigerians are like the limited group in the film. After all, it is science-fiction, usually the further from reality something is, the more people enjoy it, and this film was critically acclaimed and number one at the box office.
Thomas Froats - My name is Thomas Froats and I am a freelance writer as well as a law student at the University of Kentucky's College of Law. I am ...
