Understanding the race and ethnicity issues in a multicultural society is vitally important nowadays as the society is undergoing changes. Some people believe that science fiction has no correlation with modern plights of the society. However, the scholarly research refutes these beliefs. In this essay I will explore the cinematic representation of racial injustice and xenophobia in the modern science fiction film “District 9” to demonstrate that Neil Blomkamf, the film director, investigates racial relations on the example of aliens and humans to reflect such social maladies as racism and apartheid, which until now have not yet been rooted out. I will refer to three scholarly sources on cinematic representation of racial injustice in “District 9” film. These articles assess a depiction of racial relations and racial injustice in science fiction films. The works include Professor Adilufu Nama’s book “Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film," Julian Schurhorz’s article “Mockumenting South Africa? Race and segregation in District 9” and Julia’s Kristeva’ research “Forgiving the Sci-Fi Alien: District 9 as a Postcolonial Apologia”.
“District 9” raises issues of racial inequality and xenophobia by portraying aliens as suppressed and segregated creatures by humans. The film’s theme alludes to apartheid in South Africa, and in fact, its title “District 9” is not a mere coincidence. It points directly to the real District 6 in Soweto, South Africa, which is known for mass protests of the black people against segregation. The title of the film is actually an allusion to the real city area in Johannesburg where 60,000 persons were moved by force in the mid 70-s by the Apartheid government.
The story of “District 9” is set i...
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...i Alien: District 9 as a Postcolonial Apologia," Kristeva thoroughly examines racial identity and race relations in the film. She concludes that: “ the occurrence of apartheid is a temporal”(p. 4). Thus, she asserts that race tension in the real world, which continues to evoke protest, are transferred to the screen with artistic skill. Kristeva states that: “The originality of District 9 is that the shift of focus is from the spectacular otherworldly fantasia to the usual contemporary plights: xenophobia, repression, segregation”(p.12) Kristeva’s style is characteristic of many quotations from Greek philosophers.
In conclusion, I have demonstrated how Neil Blomkamf, the film director, has skillfully used his imagination to scrutinize and portray the plights of modern society: xenophobia, racial injustice, and segregation, which have not yet been rooted out.
The film observes and analyzes the origins and consequences of more than one-hundred years of bigotry upon the ex-slaved society in the U.S. Even though so many years have passed since the end of slavery, emancipation, reconstruction and the civil rights movement, some of the choice terms prejudiced still engraved in the U.S society. When I see such images on the movie screen, it is still hard, even f...
Neill Blomkamp directed the film District 9 which was released in 2009. This South African science fiction action thriller was Blomkamp’s first feature film and is an extension of a short film, Alive in Joburg, Blomkamp did in 2006 (IMDb). In the film, aliens have invaded earth and are wanting to live among the humans, but the humans, being the xenophobic society that they are, discriminate the aliens; the aliens are then lead to a ghetto, known as District 9, in which they are to live. As the film progresses, one of the humans (Wikus Van De Merw) is sprayed by some alien chemical and begins to turn into an alien. The film then goes on to show Wikus’ struggle to cope with being half alien. Blomkamp evokes both ethos and pathos to show how the animalistic contemporary society has turned through the geography, film style and character development.
To conclude, “The Offensive Movie Cliché That Won’t Die” by Matt Zoller Seitz, and “Race Relations Light Years from the Earth” by Mitu Sengupta, both identify and elaborate on the racism and stereotypical views throughout the stories by using nonfiction elements --authors purpose and main idea --to effectively support and explain how theme was distributed.
As a conclusion, it must be said that the generic marker ‘The visual surface of Science Fiction presents us with a confrontation between those images to which we respond as “alien” and those we know to be familiar’ can be applied to Blade Runner when judging the movie from an aesthetic point of view as well as from an ideological point of view. As it was mentioned earlier in the essay, the film is constructed from images which society nowadays find as alien (such as images of the city, interiors and social interactions) and also from more familiar images
To conclude, “The Offensive Movie Cliché That Won’t Die” by Matt Zoller Seitz, and “Race Relations Light Years from the Earth” by Mitu Sengupta, both identify and elaborate on the racism and stereotypical views throughout the stories by using nonfiction elements --authors purpose and main idea --to effectively support and explain how theme was distributed.
parallels to current events. District 9 is a movie with such a message, and its message
Before we get into the movie specifically, we should first talk about representation and how race is represented in the media in general. Representation is defined as the assigning of meaning through language and in culture. (CITE) Representation isn't reality, but rather a mere construction of reality and the meaning behind it. (CITE) Through representation we are able to shape how people are seen by others. Race is an aspect of people which is often represented in the media in different ways. Race itself is not a category of nature, but rather...
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
District 9 is a science fiction film produced by Peter Jackson (2009). The story is established through a mix of third person camera and documentary footage that takes place in present time. This is a twist of regular science fiction that typically takes place in the future. The film takes place in a “colony” of alien refugees (Prawns) are forced by humans to live in a South African slum. This is an example of social satire as it presents a critique to the injustice with which we treat those who are different from us. The nature of racism is shown by the metaphors of science fiction with the ideology and discourse to deal with those who are different than us whom we fear or despise. The low budget film has no flair no big budget special effects, casts no name actors and is generally considered an anti-Hollywood film. The story line is that of an extraterrestrial race that ultimately makes contact with Earth and the relationships between these aliens and humans within society.
Lights, cameras, action; is all in which a movie is processed when viewed my others through millions of pixels of film. The critical evaluation of the movie is only seen through the eyes of those who think deep within the overall picture. District 9 is the perfect movie to correlate to the readings that is comprised to be read in American Cultural Studies. There are readings throughout the assigned book Rereading America that will relate to scenes in the film District 9. It will inform, as printed on the cover, how the readings and scenes provide a substance for cultural contexts for critical thinking and writing. For instance, some of the scenes from the movie form a relationship with race, social class and gender sections of the book. Despite the fact that the source is an American Cultural book, it stills inherit the same methods and ideologies within this films even though the settling is not in the Americas.
The film, Fruitvale Station, is based upon a true story of a young, unarmed African American male, Oscar, who was shot by a Caucasian BART police officer. The film displays the final twenty-fours of Oscar Grant’s lives going through his struggles, triumphs, and eager search to change his life around. There will be an analysis of the sociological aspects displayed throughout the movie that show racism, prejudice, and discrimination.
The White Savior Complex is a damaging subconscious underlay of the Hollywood system, and more broadly all of western society. It is used to further separate the notions of “us” and “other” by creating a firm separation fueled by self-righteousness, and a sense of entitlement. Hollywood attempts to address race relations, but fails because of this trope. Kingsle, from the article “Does My Hero Look White In This?” described that both racism and colonialism are acknowledged, but not without reassuring that not only were white people against the system of racist power dynamics, but also were actively fighting against it in leadership roles (2013). In the remainder of my essay I will be commenting on many modern films and their use on this trope, and why subscribing to this filmmaking strategy is problematic.
In the Following essay I will explore and develop an analysis of how the movie Twelve Years A Slave produces knowledge about the racial discourse. To support my points, I will use “The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures” written by Henrietta Lidchi, a Princeton University text “Introduction: Development and the Anthropology of Modernity” and “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
While watching movies, have you ever noticed that the villains in almost every single Hollywood film are of Middle Eastern or European descent? In a reoccurring theme of Hollywood, the villains in these films are almost always foreigners or people of color. This is a stereotype. On the other side of the spectrum, we often see that the heroes of these films are most often than not white males. This is another stereotype. Within the last few years, we’ve seen actors such as Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, and Zoe Saldana take the lead roles, so it can’t be said that there are no non-white heroes, but there certainly isn’t many. Hollywood action movies, moreover than other genres, are typically loaded with an abundance of stereotypes. The way these movies are composed and structured can tell us a great deal about the views held within the American psyche and who holds the social power. The harsh reality is that the media ultimately sets the tone for societal standards, moralities, and images of our culture. Many consumers of media have never encountered some of the minorities or people of color shown on screen, so they subsequently depend on the media and wholeheartedly believe that the degrading stereotypes represented on the big screen are based on fact and not fiction. Mary Beltran said it best when she stated in her “Fast and Bilingual: Fast & Furious and the Latinization of Racelessness” article, “ultimately, Fast & Furious mobilizes notions of race in contradictory ways. It reinforces Hollywood traditions of white centrism, reinforcing notions of white male master while also dramatizing the figurative borders crossed daily by culturally competent global youth – both Latino and non-Latino” (77). This paper will specifically look...
“We fight each other for territory; we kill each other over race, pride, and respect. We fight for what is ours. They think they’re winning by jumping me now, but soon they’re all going down, war has been declared.” Abuse, Pain, Violence, Racism and Hate fill the streets of Long Beach, California. Asians, Blacks, Whites and Hispanics filled Wilson High School; these students from different ethnic backgrounds faced gang problems from day to night. This movie contains five messages: people shouldn’t be judgmental because being open-minded allows people to know others, having compassion for a person can help people change their views in life, being a racist can only create hate, having the power of the human will/goodness to benefit humanity will cause a person to succeed at any cost and becoming educated helps bring out the intelligence of people.