9, A Movie That Mixes All These Film Genres, Takes Place in The City of Johannesburg, South Africa

Jess Fong
Week 11 (District 9)

Science fiction, dystopian, and apocalyptic films tend to take place in cities, as they are
often the cultural, economic, and political hubs of humanity. It comes as no surprise that District
9, a movie that mixes all these film genres, takes place in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa.
In the film, aliens, derogatorily known as prawns for their crustacean-like appearance, have
been living in Johannesburg for roughly twenty years, confined to a part of the city known as
District 9. As tensions between the locals and the aliens worsen, the government is pressured into
relocating all the prawns to another district, via a private company Multi National United (MNU).
What ensues during this project offers a good look into the socioeconomic divisions present in
any society and the consistent patterns of power struggle that they create in urban settings,
regardless of who happens to be living there.
The society in District 9 functions on a very us v. them or us v. the other mentality,
with us being the local humans and the others being the aliens. This is a dynamic that is seen
in every city, where there is a main or ruling classbased on economic, racial, and/or ethnic
standardsjuxtaposed against everyone else. This is apparent primarily in Elijah Andersons
book The Code of the Street and Mike Daviss City of Quartz, where sharp divisions appear
between the mostly white, upper middle class and lower, impoverished, often African American
or Latino class. The classes are seen as distinct societies with their own moral codes and norms,
and, as exemplified in the movie Menace to Society, often function independently of each other.
In District 9, the aliens are an entirely different species with their own separate language and
lifestyles, but represent any outsider group, the one that doesnt fit into societys norms. Society
has a natural tendency to stratify as individuals group together based on commonalities.
What is interesting in District 9 is the fact that the introduction of an entirely new species
of inhabitant still do not bring the black and white locals together as one group against the aliens.
The era of apartheid still lingers as the higher, management levels of the human class are
dominated by white locals, while the lower levels that associate more with the aliens (such as the
Nigerian gangsters) are black. So long as the ruling class is strong enough in its own identity, it
seems that any addition to society will simply be added into the other group without much
disruption to the established power and social structure of the city.
Due to this harsh distinction between the human and alien classes, the latter is strictly
restrained to District 9. The district disintegrates into a slum, marked by poverty, illicit trades
and activity, and violence and crime. This is not an occurrence specific to alien residence; it is
the result of the cutting off of a particular group and/or area from the rest of a city. The movie
shows the degenerative cycle that befalls the other class in an urban setting. Cities, as a largely
consumerist society, require a consistent in- and outflow of resources to do well. When goods
outflow and capital inflow stopped for places like Detroit and Chicago, the cities, as seen in
William Wilsons When Work Disappears, eventually deteriorate. The same applies for regions
within cities, as a city is often big enough in terms of population and area to contain multiple
mini-societies. District 9 has definitely become its own societyits main residents are of an
entirely different species. However, its status forces it to be isolated from the necessary flow of
resources that, as an urban mini-society, it cannot easily produce on its own. District 9 exhibits
all the characteristics of an urban ghettopoverty, scenes of abandonment, gangs, etc. A number
of illegal provide everything that the district has been cut off fromlocal gangs provide cat food
as a source of food and drugs, interspecies prostitutes offer pleasure and sex.
Obviously, payment must be involved, which in this case happens to be a desire for the
aliens weapons technology. This tradeoff represents yet another core piece of urban social
structurepower as expressed through desired resources. Power in any city, broken down to its
basic element, is a comparison of who has the most valuable resources, be it food, money, or
technology. In District 9, the humans clearly see the potential in obtaining the aliens technology;
it would give them a resource that no one else would have access to or be able to replicate, thus
placing them at the very top of the hierarchy. This makes it absolutely vital to the humans to
confine the aliens in every way possible. Beyond the basic special difference, they socially
isolate the aliens by labeling them as the other, physically isolate them into this district,
which inevitably leads to economic isolation through lack of readily accessible resources.
Isolation on so many fronts prevents the aliens from realizing their potential status and power as
the holders of the single resource found nowhere else on the planet.
The introduction of a new species does not detract from this established urban, and
broadly human, reaction to potential changes in the status quo. Those in power will obviously do
what it takes to maintain their power. It just so happens that the urban space, with its natural
demographic stratification due to a large, heterogeneous population and more defined spatial
optionsstreets, buildings, neighborhoods, districtsmakes facilitates this power maintenance.
In the end, the social and physical structuring of a city, and the timeline in which it happens,
often boils down to how the ruling class wants to hold its power. District 9 paints a grim picture
of the inevitable divisions and developments that are present in urban society, patterns are made
all the more real because they have occurred in human-human interactions in the past, and
continue to occur in human involved interactions with any other species.

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Jess Fong

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