Defining What It Means To Be Human In District 9 Essay

Defining What It Means to Be Human in District 9 While District 9 directed by Neil Blomkamp is a trangressive, and highly entertaining sci-fi movie about Wikus van der Merwe’s journey from a normal blue-collared worker to becoming a fugitive, battling to save his life and human identity. The movie is also a blatant metaphor for oppression, prejudice, xenophobia and the power of media all intricately weaved together through its mockumentary style narration. The marginalization of the aliens speaks to the prejudice concurrent in society, reinforced by the media. The aliens or ‘prawns’ - as the humans refer to them, are depicted as human-cockroaches; the ‘bottom feeders’, living on rubbish dumps, feared and alienated by society, they are the ‘other.’ Contrary to what the media depicts of them, the

After three months, the South Africans decided to investigate as to why the spacecraft continues to be immobile. They entered the spacecraft to find over a hundred thousand malnourished and sick aliens, incapable of maneuvering the spacecraft. The government realized that they were far from being an invading force, unable to return home these prawn like creatures are considered refugees. Marginalized by society, they integrated themselves into a degraded slum called District 9. Since then the prawns were personified by the media as hungry invading animals of Johannesburg, and will not hesitate to kill their own species to satisfy their cat food cravings. With the façade of a security force the Multinational Unit (MNU) a military contractor and “global leader in technological innovation,” prevents the aliens from leaving in order to learn advanced weapons technology. Rather then providing aid for the aliens to repair their craft, they use oppression and violence to extract and experiment on the aliens to harvest their