District 9

I chose to write about the movie District 9. This movie is about an alien species. Their mother ship comes to earth and stops over Johannesburg. No knows why. Nothing happens in the alien ship, so the government decides to take action and go inside the ship. They find a large amount of malnutrition aliens inside and make a special camp for them in Johannesburg. These aliens are called prawns. An organization called MNU was chosen to evict the prawns from their current camp and move them to a new one.

This movie also showed us how we as humans can go along with the norm. "Going with the norm" can be categorized in the empire. Many things in the movie are done because it is the normal thing to do. It is never thought, "Is what we are doing right? What effects does what we are doing have on others?" For example, there are african gangs that also live in the prawn camp, and they withhold food from them. They make unfair trades with the prawns for the food. They also mistreat the prawns and disrespect them because they are different. This happens to many of us as well and we should take more time to think about what we are doing and what consequences our actions might have. An example of the Kingdom is later seen when the main character, Wikus, is running from MNU and the Army because his DNA is successfully combined with the prawn DNA. MNU wants Wikus for tests so they can find out how to successfully combine human DNA with the prawn DNA so humans would be able to use the prawn weapons. Wikus is running because he doesn't know what is going on and he is scared of what is happening to him. He hides in a prawns home and gets to known the prawn and his son. He starts to feel for them and their desire to get back to their home planet. He also sees how things are affecting them in the camp, how they are being mistreated, and also the bad living conditions. Wikus then decides to do what is right and help the prawns. In return, the prawns say they will come back to help him with his problematic DNA.

Discussion questions: What other norms do we go along with without asking ourselves, "What affect is this having on others?" What can we do to get others to notice these norms and what can we do to correct them?