While some South African commentators like newspaper editor Ray Hartley, in a rare slip, are saying dumb things about “District 9″ (he got pilloried by his readers on his blog), most people are smart enough to get the film, like the people living in the slum where “District 9″ was filmed:
“The movie, District 9 , was the most popular box-office smash in North America last week. It was filmed among the decrepit shacks and garbage of her Soweto squatter camp, known as Chiawelo, which it portrays as a grim refugee camp for stranded aliens from outer space. The movie depicts this neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Johannesburg’s skyscrapers, as a desperate place of segregation, where the aliens are housed in tiny shacks behind barbed wire to keep them away from polite society. Almost all of the shacks in the movie are the actual homes where Chiawelo’s residents were living. Others might feel insulted if they discovered that millions of moviegoers were seeing their neighbourhood portrayed as the worst place on the planet, a place so shockingly horrible that only aliens could survive there. But the impoverished South Africans who still live in Chiawelo are unperturbed by how the film exploited their homes. Instead, they are cheering the film’s success, hoping it will embarrass and shame the government into long-overdue action.”
I have yet to see the movie but I’ve read some commentary about how the allegory is problematic on blogs like racialicious. Have you seen the movie? What do you think of the commentary (if you’ve seen it)?
Thank you for this post
I am seeing the film Friday night. I’ll have an opinion then. I like the short “Alive in Joburg” so don’t expect much different. I like racialicious.
thanks my friend