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

aliens are characterized as loyal and compassionate creatures. Propelled by greed and desire for power, the leaders of the human society in the film conducts inhumane actions towards not only the ‘others,’ but another human as well. District 9 exemplifies how the media can alter or shape our beliefs on “What it means to be human,” leading us to reflect upon ourselves, and the society that we are a part of.
Set in 2010, the aliens first landed in Johannesburg twenty years ago in an alien spacecraft that continues to hover above city.

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

biotechnology.
As the prejudice and racism against the disgusting un-human prawns increases, protests to forcefully move them out of District 9 occurs. For this reason, MNU has decided to relocate the prawns over to District 10, a tightly controlled concentration camp outside of Johannesburg. The naïve and geeky curator protagonist Wikus van der Merwe, an employee of MNU has been assigned the task to deliver notices of eviction to 1.8 million prawns. As the live-broadcast documentary operation begins, the camera shows Wikus stumbling into an alien-breeding shack where the alien babies are feeding on the decomposing body of a cow. Wikus and his men proceed to torch the place; amidst the cheerful atmosphere the camera pans into the burning shack while cracking sounds are heard. A scene depicting genocide is occurring right in front of our eyes. Genocide is considered a horrific crime against humanity, yet the act is deemed acceptable when it is done to the ‘others.’ In the eyes of society the aliens are disgusting, non-human creatures which justifies the xenophobia towards them, reinforced through the media, which correlates to Stanley Baran’s definition of the two-step flow theory, “behavior was limited by opinion leaders—people who initially consumed media content …interpreted it in light of their own values and beliefs and then passed it on to opinion followers.”1 The conglomerates and government control the media in District 9, hence when opinion leaders reinforce and encourage xenophobia society blindly follows.
District 9 is an enforced boundary separating humans from the ‘others,’ but when Wikus is exposed to an alien fluid that mutates his DNA, the boundaries begins to erode. Christopher
Johnson and his son were in the process of “illegally” synthesizing a black liquid to power a mini
aircraft that would enable them to fly up to their spacecraft. Wikus barged into their laboratory,
1Stanley J. Baran Introduction to Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture (New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2014), 326.

aircraft that would enable them to fly up to their spacecraft. Wikus barged into their laboratory, and being the law-abiding citizen that he is, Wikus seizes the bottle from them and accidently sprays himself with the black fluid. Over the course of the next few hours, he begins to experience strange symptoms, losing his fingernails and oozing black phlegm from his nose. At nightfall Wikus arrives home to a surprise ‘heroes’ party hosted by his father-in-law, where he collapses and is hospitalized. A doctor cuts away the bandages to treat Wikus’ injured hand, to reveal that it has morphed into an alien claw. Seizing the opportunity, members of the MNU, including his own ruthless father-in-law, begins to exploit Wikus using him to test the highly powerful alien weapons which can only be activated with alien DNA. After he successfully operates the weapon Wikus is no longer considered human; he becomes the ‘other,’ his DNA along with his life is sacrificed in order to gain power and wealth for those he once considered family and colleagues. Once Wikus is forced into the role of the ‘other,’ exploited by his own kind, the boundaries that differentiates us from the aliens begins to erode, that we are no more human than the ‘others’ we claim to differentiate ourselves from.
After successfully escaping from MNU’s lab, Wikus heads to the nearest diner to buy himself a burger. In the process of ordering, he sees himself broadcasted as a wanted sexual predator who has just escaped from prison. Immediately some people start to run away from him, while others scramble to call the police reporting his whereabouts. This scene reflects on Barans’ mass society theory, “The idea that the media are corrupting influences that undermine the social order and that “average” people are defenseless against their influence.”2 Wikus is dehumanized, exploited, and marginalized by the media wrongfully accusing him having forceful sexual intercourse with an alien, and everyone blindly believed that the media was reporting factual
2Stanley J. Baran Introduction to Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture (New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2014), 325.
information. From being a person who evicted and marginalized aliens, Wikus now understands the feeling of being the ‘other,’ alienated and feared by the society he was once a part of.
Wikus is forced to escape human society and seek refuge in the only place were he thinks humans will not look for him – District 9. Christopher Johnson an alien he previously tried to violently evict takes him in. Wikus realized the only reason MNU has kept the prawns on earth is to exploit them for their biotechnology power through research of their DNA. He and Christopher conspire a plan to retrieve the canister that is hidden beneath MNU’s headquarters. After the successful retrieval of the black liquid, Christopher Johnson encounters countless bodies of his own kind lying lifelessly on the operating table tortured by MNU and conducted as medical experiments. This heart-wrenching scene shows the vast difference in character from what the media has portrayed of the alien prawns. That there is indeed emotion, empathy and humanity within the ‘other,’ yet due to our inherent xenophobia we have wrongfully alienated and marginalized them. Instead of acceptance and open to learning from them, we responded in fear and revulsion.
At the climax of the movie Wikus clad in an alien armored robotic suit that was shot at countless times by Koobus Venter the vicious antagonist, Wikus has nothing left but his courage. It is in this scene that Wikus becomes a man, by ceasing to be one. He sacrificed his chance to return to his human form, protecting Christopher Johnson by firing at the MNU soldiers while Christopher flew up to re-unite the command module which enables the spacecraft to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. Upon the last scene of the movie are the lingering shots of a lifeless, decayed landscape, and sitting above the mountains of garbage is Wikus in his full alien form folding a rose made out of scrap metals and tin cans. Through Wikus’s portrayal of loyalty, courage and compassion, we see the characteristics that define us as a human, ironically portrayed by a person no longer identified as a human being.
Central to District 9 are the themes of discrimination, prejudice, and xenophobia with countless metaphors and symbols depicted throughout the film. The un-justifiable inhumane acts towards the ‘others’ in the film propel viewers to question the boundaries between civilized and uncivilized. Aliens that were depicted as prawns, feared and alienated by society are characterized as creatures with loyalty and compassion, alleviating the discrimination, prejudice, and predispositions once placed against them by society. District 9 is not just mere highly entertaining sci-fi movie, it is a film that forced us to take a closer look at the society that we are a part of, and ask ourselves the true meaning to, “What it means to be human.”

Bibliography
Baran, Stanley J. Introduction to Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture. New York,
NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2014