The World is a Ghetto

Don't you know that it's true

That for me and for you

The world is a ghetto

War 1972

SPOILER ALERT!!!. If you have not seen the movie District 9 please do not read this as I will be revealing the entire plot. Ok, you still with me? First let me lay the foundation for where my perspective is coming from. Science Fiction is my first love. I have been reading sci fi books and watching sci fi movies since I was about 6 years old. The idea of beings from other planets or dimensions has always boggled my mind. As a kid I read every book I could get my hands on and watched every show I could about UFO’s and aliens. To really understand science fiction you really have to read books as opposed to watching movies. Jules Verne and HG Wells are recognized as being the fathers of science fiction. They didn’t write about aliens but they did introduce the foundation concepts for modern science fiction decades before film and television. Even they had influences. I would say that science fiction began with old world mythology before the advent of math and science when the knowledge of the world was based on nature, superstition, sorcery, and unbridled imagination. The mythology of the ancient Egyptians, the Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Sumeria, and the Homerian epic the Odyssey could all be considered science fiction. The stories are populated with alien like humanoid beings who have supernatural powers, advanced technology, and come from far away unknown places.




Anyone who has read Joseph Campbell is familiar with the archetypes that exist in our universal subconscious and the hero quest, which is basically the story of maturation and transformation. Almost all science fiction is about a hero quest. Star Wars is a typical example with Luke Skywalker in the role of the hero. The hero usually has some type of mentor who helps guide his maturation or transformation. In addition to the mentor there is usually some kind of female or feminine entity that is either a Madonna to lead the hero to altruism and moral justice or a femme fatale to lead him to corruption and temptation. Science fiction allows you to get out of the box so transformation can go beyond the thought process, it can also be embodied in physical transformation. Paul Atreides the hero of Dune eventually transforms into a god like giant worm. The Mother of all transformation stories is of course Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. In Kafka’s story the transformation is immediate. A man (Gregor) goes to sleep and wakes up as a giant bug. Metamorphosis is not a science fiction story as the focus of the story is the transformation of Gregor’s family unit. In the world of sci fi the most famous transformation story is The Fly which is Metamorphosis with a sci fi twist. The focus is still on the family unit but added to the story is the theme of hubris and the danger of playing god. Playing god has become a major theme in science fiction in the advent of the nuclear age. Another basic tenet in hero stories is that usually the hero finds himself in events larger than himself that initially he may be reluctant to confront but ultimately becomes the harbinger and catalyst. Usually the events are revolutionary and aimed at changing the status quo. In Dune it is the awakening of the Fremen and the revolution against the Empire. In Star Wars it’s a rebellion against the evil empire aided by the mystical Jedi to restore a benevolent monarchy and republic.




If you are as old as I am it is hard to hear the word “Johannesburg” and not think of apartheid. The situation with the aliens is not exactly one of apartheid since they are the minority and they are outsiders, not people indigenous to the area, they aren’t even indigenous to the planet. They weren’t brought by force and they didn’t have their land and homes taken away. If anything they most resemble the Cuban refugees who came in boats to the United States in 1980 and were put into refugee camps. Maybe the planet the bugs came from was overpopulated and these bugs were part of the population deemed expendable. It’s not important to the film makers because the movie is about us not the aliens so they don‘t really bother with giving any specific reason as to why the aliens are here. At the center of the relocation movement is a typical bureaucrat named Wykus. Unlike the civil servant Sam Lowry in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, who is so numbed out by his job he daydreams of having large wings and rescuing damsels in distress, Wykus approaches his job like a crusading zealot. Because of his zeal for his work and his perceived middle of the road intelligence his superiors appoint him as top man in the relocation scheme. Rather than delegate the ground work to bureaucratic underlings he actually goes door to door with armed and itchy fingered soldiers to serve eviction notices to the aliens (knick named Prawns) who have managed to understand English enough to secure cat food, hookers, ill fitting clothing, and trade in small arms with the local warlord. It's at this point you think its quite possible the film is heading into Monthy Python territory because it all seems so absurd. Even the prawns think it is absurd as they don’t quite know how to react to being evicted. As expected violence breaks out (when you go to the door with guns drawn to give eviction notices to 7 foot tall bugs you know some serious violence is soon to follow). Wykus uncovers a shack which seems to house some kind of egg nest. He orders the shack burned and as the bug fetuses snap, crackle, and pop Wykus gleefully and wickedly describes the sound to the always present tv camera, as being akin to popcorn kernels exploding. In the midst of this madness we are finally introduced to an alien who is actually intelligent… they aren’t all retards apparently. He even has a name, Christopher Johnson (Crispus Johanssen would have been better). He and another alien mate have an elaborate lab set up in his shack and they have managed to produce a vial of liquid that has taken 20 years to develop and is the key to their salvation. Is there where the plot reveals that the aliens have been playing lame and the spaceship is a really a Trojan Horse? Nope. Wykus comes knocking on Johnson’s door to evict him. In a mad scramble Johnson and prawn buddy hide the precious vial, not under the bed but they might as well have. Trying not to arouse suspicion as suggested by his prawn buddy Johnson slams the door not once but twice in the face of Wykus. This only puts the soldiers in storm trooper mode so they burst into the dwelling searching for weapons (which is the basic pretense the local government uses for search and seizure of alien shacks). Wykus finds the not so well hidden vial and being the inept fool that he is manages to spray some of the stuff directly into his face. Inspector Clouseau could have not done better. He pockets the vial instead of putting it with the other evidence. Since it is obvious there is no alien cabal who have some long thought out and detailed plan to revolt or escape, anyone who has watched a lot of movies knows that Wykus is going to start changing into an alien. There had to be some reason he sprayed the stuff on his face right?




Wykus returns to his office to do his paperwork and of course he’s not feeling so keen. He tries to work through it like a good bureaucrat but after he starts bleeding green liquid from his nose he decides maybe he should call it a day. He goes home and walks smack into a surprise birthday party his family has thrown for him, looking like hell on a hot day and smelling like he’s been napping in the compost bin and he has his right arm in a cast after getting into a fight with Johnson and getting tossed about 30 ft into the side of a porta-potty during the eviction. The guests seem to only be there for the cake because despite his haggard and odiferous condition they badger him into cutting the cake and just as he is about to cut the cake he barfs green stuff all over the cake and the ear-to-ear-kool-aid smiling guests. His father-in-law who is always lurking about is present at the party and he works for the corporation, no, make that the evil corporation. Instead of some cool name like Weyland-Yutani this corporation is known as MNU… kind of rolls off your tongue, like “KBR”. MNU stands for Multinational United, a generic defense contractor in charge of housing and securing the prawns. You would think that the prawns would be in some Guantanomo type of security set up getting abused by enlisted women and water boarded daily but no, they are “housed” in the same slum with warlords, pimps, and gangsters run by MNU. MNU even has that first generation generic look. Remember when the first “plain wrap” goods were on the shelves in your local market and all they had were the white wrapping with the blue stripe, even the beer? Well that’s how all of MNU’s gear looked, even their tanks. I guess they were going for that NATO look. The prawns have advanced weaponry but only they can shoot it because the weapons are coded to their DNA. The weapons are badass of course making mince meat of anything fleshy. There is even a heavily armored mech suit that MNU storm troopers somehow failed to find but the local gangsters obtain from the prawns for a case of cat food. You know where this is all going. The corporation has been looking for a way to replicate the DNA formula so it can make a shit load of money on the arms market selling alien weaponry and father-in-law sees his son-in-law's arm which is now starting to mutate into a bug arm and calls up the corporation to take Wykus away under the pretense of medical care. Wykus is taken to the lab/hospital/corporate headquarters of MNU where he is examined and of course they discover he’s turning into an alien. The MNU doctors are salivating over the chance to vivisect poor Wykus who has become a weeping wreck. His arm is now completely bug. They take him to the 4th floor where the secret weapons tests are being conducted. The place looks more like a Texas slaughterhouse than a lab, as a matter of fact the hospital section wasn’t very high end either, more like San Francisco General on the worst of days. They strap Wykus into some type of turret and lock his bug arm to one of the alien weapons and force him to shoot by using electroshock treatment. Somewhere I can hear Charlton Heston screaming, “It’s a mad house, a mad house!”. First they make Wykus shoot a brick wall, then a large chunk of butchered meat, and then for the piece de resistance they make him shoot a scared shitless alien whom he blows into about a billion little pieces. He is so aggravated by this he breaks loose with his Steve Austin arm and makes short work of all the lab workers and makes his escape.




Now the movie has become The Fugitive. Wykus runs the streets of Johannesburg using a blanket for a make shift cape like the Elephant Man. He’s scruffy, dirty, and smelly like a lot of chaps you’d find on Market Street. The news is running some bogus story about how he had sex with an alien and has contracted a deadly alien venereal disease and is now an armed and dangerous fugitive. The only place he can hide is the bug shantytown so off he goes. Out of all the thousands of bug shacks he manages to take refuge in Christopher Johnson’s shack. Johnson isn’t too happy to see him but Johnson has a little son who is more like a side kick than a son and of course the little guy takes a shining to Wykus because they have the same arm. Johnson tells Wykus he can change him back to human but he needs the vial that was taken from his shack. Apparently the vial can fuel the command module that fell off the alien ship at the beginning of the movie to get it back to the mother ship where he can then reverse Wykus’s mutation. MNU confiscated the vial when they brought him to headquarters and Wykus is so desperate to reverse his mutation he talks Johnson into breaking into the lab and retrieving the vial. Wykus and Johnson arm themselves with some alien splat master rifles and assault MNU headquarters Rambo style. They get the vial and as they are blasting their way out they come across a room where scientists have been doing all kinds of horrible experiments Dr. Mengele style on the aliens and Johnson is frozen in disbelief, kind of like Ripley in Alien Resurrection when she stumbles upon the lab room containing all of the failed and deformed Ripley clones. Feeling gutted Johnson just stands there while gunfire erupts all around him. Wykus manages to get them both to safety after gunning down the MNU security soldiers with the always lethal alien rifle.




Being so disturbed and distraught about his alien buddies becoming biology experiments Johnson renegs on the deal with Wykus saying he will need all the fluid so he can go back to his home planet and come back to save his race. Wykus asks how long and Johnson tells him it will take three years. Wykus freaks out because he can’t wait three hours let alone three years so he bonks Johnson on the head, fuels the command module, and forces the alien kid to help him take off. MNU on full alert detect the module and easily shoot it down shortly after take off. MNU capture Wykus and Johnson but before they can leave District 9 they are ambushed and taken prisoner by the local Warlord, a guy in a wheelchair who wants to eat Wykus’s arm so he can have the power to use the alien weapons. The gang and warlord are portrayed as cartoon like over the top characters who are into some voodoo like magic and guns. It’s some pretty ugly stereotyping but I’m sure many who went to see the film probably got a big kick out of these characters. Just when all seems lost and Wykus is about to lose his arm and life the kid comes to the rescue. Being the little smarty pants that he is, from the command module he manages to activate the mech suit which just happens to be in the same room where Wykus is about to get a super deluxe machete amputation. The mech suit goes into Terminator mode, recognizes Wykus as one of his own and neutralizes the gangsters. The suit opens up and Wykus jumps inside Appleseed style. Stumbling outside he is immediately set up on by small and large arms fire from MNU forces. Not knowing the full capabilities of the suit Wykus tries to run away using his body to shield Johnson as they make their way back to the command module. After sustaining enough damage to hamper his movement Wykus decides to fight it out. After quickly discovering the mech suit has a menu of killing devices Wykus finishes off all the ground troops. Wykus and the mech suit are felled by heavy artillery blasts and Wykus crawls out of the suit looking even more bug like. All along Wykus has been hounded by Venter, a truly sadistic soldier who is in charge of the security forces. He is a man who loves his job which most of the time seems to be filling aliens full of holes with gun fire. At one point Wykus has him in his sights but he can’t blow the bastard away even though he has just splattered over a dozen soldiers who probably only joined MNU for the paycheck. Venter now has Wykus right where he wants him and that’s on the ground with his gun pointed at his head ready for the kill. Instead of just pulling the trigger he has to give a little speech about how long he has waited for this moment. That gives four aliens who were wandering by just enough time to grab Venter and tear him limb from limb leaving only a blood splat and some chunks of flesh. Johnson has returned to the mother ship in the command module and the mother ship slowly takes off with all the Johannesburg citizens smiling and waving good bye. No F-22 jets or Stealth bombers appear to blow it out of the sky, it just simply takes off into the blue yonder.




The movie ends with an interview with the wife of Wykus. During his times as a fugitive he called her on a mobile phone a few times to protest his innocence, it was the film makers way of trying to inject some humanity into the film and play up the Fly/Metamorphosis theme. It turns out Wykus was just a regular guy who loved his wife and got caught up in events bigger than himself. She wanted to believe he was still alive and out there somewhere. This was symbolized by a metal flower that was mysteriously left on her doorstep. The final shot of the movie is of an alien in a trash dump crafting a metal flower from spare parts of machinery found strewn among the garbage. So ends the hero’s journey, his transformation complete, from fetus frying beauracrat to lonley, melancholy, trash diving bug. Is the world different? Has anything changed? It doesn't look like it. The aliens still get relocated although their new digs look much nicer. The humans are relieved because the aliens are gone so the small minds are still prevailing. How about the aliens? As far as we can see they are still the listless bunch we encountered on first contact in the spaceship and the one of them with half a brain and an ounce of motivation is on his way back to the home planet, the only question is will he come back for the big rescue. So what was this movie about? The message of the story to me seemed to be that civilized human society is full of sadistic, racist, disgusting, greedy bigots and foreigners who come to these civilized places quickly adapt to these ways. The aliens were mostly wretches and the humans were mostly disgusting. All we have to balance the hatred, prejudice, and machismo is an alien kid and a weeping wife. Women really get the shaft in this film. I just don’t see how this film adds to the great stories that have emerged from the world of science fiction. It's missing that Rod Serling element it so badly needs, that moment when a light goes off in your head because you had an “aha!” epiphany that pinged your skull. I was left feeling empty, the same feeling I had after watching Cloverfield. Maybe it’s the embedded camera man way both movies were shot conjuring up fake drama and narrowing the vision of the film to a peephole. Sci fi is about the big picture and there just is no big picture here. It think the story would have worked better if there were no aliens and it was actual humans that were being oppressed, abused, and relocated. I guess that would be boring to some since that actually happens to people in the real world. If this movie left you wanting for more I suggest you read a book by Ursula K. LeGuin called Word for World is Forest. It was a book written shortly after and inspired by the Vietnam war that deals with the abuse of an alien population and the story is about a thousand times better than District 9. Check it out!