By Carina Ray
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HUMANIZING ALIENS OR ALIENATING AFRICANS?: DISTRICT 9 AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION
Hollywood's fascination with Africa is not new. As far back as King Solomon's Mines and Tarzan, the entertainment industry has used Africa as a backdrop to tell its stories, often with unfortunate consequences for Africa and Africans. Over the last decade, however, cinematic engagement with Africa has not only intensified, it has also become more sophisticated, if still fairly predictable. While many of these newer films still revolve around white protagonists, not all of them are about "great white heroes". A few films, including Totsi and Catch a Fire, even manage to tell an African story from an African perspective. With the arrival of District 9 (D9) Africa has now made its first entry into the genre of science fiction. Indeed its mix of equal parts sci-fi, faux documentary, and action-thriller has made D9 an unexpected critical success and hit at the box office. Beneath all of the fancy dressing, however, D9 purports to be a social commentary on the banality of prejudice. Neill Blomkamp, the movie's South African-born director, draws on his country's apartheid and post-apartheid history to address the interrelated issues of xenophobia, segregation, poverty, displacement, and the abuse of state power. Yet in fundamental, perhaps even irreparable ways, does D9 undermine its own possible best intentions in its presentation of these pressing issues?
In convening this eSymposium for the Zeleza Post, I want to open up a frank and rigorous discussion of D9 and explore how we can use the film to encourage ourselves, our students, colleagues, and the wider public to confront our individual and collective assumptions about Africa, not least because this is the "Africa film" that everyone is talking about. I believe wholeheartedly that when moments in our shared popular culture provide us with opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations about how we understand Africa we can't afford not to seize them. This is especially the case with D9 because evidence suggests that most moviegoers are leaving the film excited about what they've seen and what's more, they believe that the film has a strong social message. What that social message is, however, is unclear at best, and malignant at worst. The film's target audience is men between the ages of 18 and 35 and if they've been lured into the theatre by the promise of lots of blood, guts, and explosions, are they prepared to multitask sensory overload with critical thinking? If not, what impression does the film leave the average viewer with after the special effects have worn off? And what's at stake for Africa and Africans in all of this?
While the contributors to this eSymposium eloquently tackle these questions and more from a variety of viewpoints, it is striking to note that every contributor singled out the film's portrayal of Nigerians as egregious, if not unforgivable. I note this not simply because it is the aspect of the film upon which, in my opinion, D9 impales itself, but also because mainstream reviewers hardly mentioned it at all. This fact speaks volumes about the times we are living in and underscores the necessity of calling attention to popular culture's blind spots in ways that go beyond pointing fingers. This eSymposium does just that by bringing together members of the Africanist community to reflect upon their encounters with D9 within the wider context of Africanist knowledge. The dialogue will then be opened up to the widest possible audience for further debate.
Our stellar ensemble of contributors has deftly covered much of what I wanted to say; however, there is one point that I want to emphasize in relation to D9's thoroughly racist depiction of its Nigerian characters. In the same way that the recent wave of xenophobic violence against Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, and other immigrants from former Front Line States (FLS) in Johannesburg represented an unthinkable betrayal of the sacrifices that the FLS made to liberate South Africa, D9's portrayal of Nigerians as the ultimate enemy, as less human/humane than aliens, spits in the faces of the millions of Nigerian citizens who devoted themselves to the anti-apartheid movement. At the state level, as well, it should be noted that Nigeria not only led the 1986 boycott of the Commonwealth Games in protest over Britain's refusal to enact full sanctions against apartheid South Africa, it also chaired the U.N. anti-apartheid committee and supported the anti-apartheid movement and southern African liberation movements financially. Nigeria's efforts resulted in it being named an honorary FLS. I can't help but wonder if Blomkamp's decision to name the lead Nigerian gangster Obasenjo, an only slight misspelled version of former president Olusegun Obasanjo's name, has something to do with the fact that during his tenure as military ruler of Nigeria in the late 1970s Obasanjo ramped up his country's support for the anti-apartheid movement, which continued until apartheid fell. In recognition of his commitment to ending apartheid Obasanjo was named co-chair of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group on South Africa in 1985-1986 - thus it was Obasanjo who spearheaded the previously mentioned Commonwealth Games boycott. Whatever opinions we might hold of him, past and present, there are others more deserving of Blomkamp's derision than Obasanjo. Sani Abacha would have been a far more appropriate target, but Blomkamp obviously doesn't know enough about Nigeria or Nigerians to have figured that out. It is significant to note that Blomkamp and his family were part of the post-apartheid great white exodus from South Africa. As such, perhaps there is an even more malignant subtext to the portrayal of Nigerians in D9 than meets the eye.
