The film District 9 was indeed a highly enjoyable, satisfying, and in its own right, disturbing experience. To say that I had fun with it would be an understatement. Not only did I have fun with it, I broke out into song, singing praises of its greatness. District 9 takes place in modern day South Africa, specifically Johannesburg. In the film, an alien spacecraft is found in low orbit above the city , and upon inspection, a new, sentient species is discovered. As the new species is not human, they are placed in poorly constructed slums and scrape a living off of appalling conditions. The protagonist travels to the slums, and upon arriving, quickly becomes entangled in a desperate struggle to uncover the truth and and see justice done.
District 9 holds a number of lessons applicable to our current day and age. Although ethics of DNA extraction for alien weaponry use is hardly relevant, the principles behind the examples used in the film certainly are. Unfair and unethical treatment of those considered "sub-human" has continued over the years despite countless struggles to eradicate such atrocious action. Racial discrimination, slavery, prostitution, and ethnic genocide are but a few examples of unspeakable horrors being committed everyday. District 9 does a marvelous job at both subtlety and direct confrontation in pointing out how these problems are still prevalent and growing.
Although District 9 helps illuminate the issues at large, it does little in the way of offering practical or ethical solutions. Naturally, offering such a solution is not the goal of the film, but rather to ask the questions and provoke its audience into thinking and analysis. And thus here we are. What do we do about the problems of racial tension and ethno-national conflict? The Kingdom of God is unfortunately not with us, but we must strive to see it come to fruition on earth. Perhaps we must expand our minds and think creatively to solve these issues. Or perhaps these issues can only be fought within the boundaries of "the system". What do you think?
Yep, there's a lot going on in District 9 (even though it ends in a pretty cliche way). As you mention, the story told is unfortunately all-too-familiar. As we've seen throughout class, the empire treats people as subhuman when it needs something from them and then attempts to hide it from the rest of us. When that doesn't work (ala the aliens becoming restless in the film), they move to another, less visible location.
ReplyDeleteNot a perfect analog, but an interesting parallel nonetheless.
Yeah I agree, no solutions are really given in the end of the film. It just shows us these huge issues, and then basically asks us what we think about them. I think we as Christians can take kingdom-related thinking and apply it to situations like these. Asking the simple question "What would Jesus do" is a good way to start.
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