Unsettling pedagogy

Sifting the postcolonial midden heaps of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9

Science Fiction Film & Television (2020), 13, (2), 199–222.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/sfftv.2020.11
Language: English
Pages: 24

Abstract

This article explores the concept of ‘waste’ as a key authorial signature of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9. Saturating the mise-en-scène and undergirding the production process, the film’s ‘scavenger aesthetic’ is an insistent signifier of residual political imbalances in the wake of apartheid, wherein determinative relations between multinational corporations, security discourse and ‘excess’ population in postcolonial South Africa play out in an alternative history premised on lives organised around the trash heaps of Johannesburg’s townships. This figure is particularly resonant with respect to the film’s problematic representation of Nigerians, the remainders from the real world where South African society continues to grapple with xenophobic discrimination against ‘illegal aliens’. Symptomatic of the reality that stubbornly resists any attempt to marshal into allegory the paradoxes of globalisation incarnated in Nigerians’ occupancy of the setting, the waste aesthetic exposes the shortcomings of truth and reconciliation promises for social reform and the broader formulation of security issues around which neo-imperial politics continue to flourish. Originating in a postcolonial studies course, this article foregrounds waste for an inquiry in which questions of film form arise directly out of the pedagogical challenges of exposing students to the material configurations of postcoloniality documented in sf film.

FormatArticle

£25.00

If you have private access to this content, please log in with your username and password here

Works cited

Akpome, Aghogho. ‘“Zones of Indistinction” and Visions of Post-Reconciliation South Africa in District 9’. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 18.1 (2017): 85–97. Google Scholar

Bauman, Zygmunt. Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts. Cambridge: Polity, 2004. Google Scholar

Boggs, Carl and Tom Pollard. The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture. Boulder: Paradigm, 2007. Google Scholar

Butler, Andrew M. ‘Human Subjects – Alien Objects? Abjection and the Constructions of Race and Racism in District 9’. Alien Imaginations: Science Fiction and Tales of Transnationalism. Ed. Ulrike Küchler, Silja Maehl and Graeme Stout. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015. 95–112. Google Scholar

Conway, Daniel. ‘Framing a New Reality: Documenting Genocide in District 9’. International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 78.4–5 (2017): 444–55. Google Scholar

Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2008. Google Scholar

Dodd, Alexandra and Terry Kurgan. ‘Checking into Hotel Yeoville’. Third Text 27.3 (2013): 343–54. Google Scholar

Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Routledge, 2002. Google Scholar

Duncan, Rebecca. ‘From Cheap Labour to Surplus Humanity: World-Ecology and the Postapartheid Speculative in Neill Blomkamp’s District 9’. Science Fiction Film and Television 11.1 (2018): 45–72. Google Scholar

Flanagan, Martin. ‘“Get Ready for Rush Hour”: The Chronotope in Action’. Action and Adventure Cinema. Ed. Yvonne Tasker. New York: Routledge, 2004. 103–18. Google Scholar

Goodman, Ralph. ‘The Allegory of District 9’. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 11.1–2 (2010): 170–2. Google Scholar

Gordon, Steven. ‘Xenophobia Across the Class Divide: South African Attitudes Towards Foreigners 2003–2012’. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 33.4 (2015): 494–509. Google Scholar

Graham, Lucy Valerie. ‘Amakwerekwere and other Aliens: District 9 and Hospitality’. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 11.1–2 (2010): 161–3. Google Scholar

Hairston, Andrea. ‘Different and Equal Together: SF Satire in District 9’. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 22.3 (2011): 326–46. Google Scholar

Heintz, James. ‘GEAR: A Labour Perspective’. National Labour and Economic Development Institute. Google Scholar

Helgesson, Stefan. ‘District 9: The Global South as Science Fiction’. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 11.1–2 (2010): 172–4. Google Scholar

Hickel, Jason. ‘Xenophobia in South Africa: Order, Chaos and the Moral Economy of Witchcraft’. Cultural Anthropology 29.1 (2014): 103–27. Google Scholar

Hoagland, Ericka and Reema Sarwal, eds. Science Fiction, Imperialism and the Third World: Essays on Postcolonial Literature and Film. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014. Google Scholar

Holloway, David. Cultures of the War on Terror: Empire, Ideology, and the Remaking of 9/11. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2008. Google Scholar

Kapstein, Helen. ‘The Hysterics of District 9’. English Studies in Canada 40.1 (2014): 155–75. Google Scholar

Kerslake, Patricia. Science Fiction and Empire. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2007. Google Scholar

Langer, Jessica. Postcolonialism and Science Fiction. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011. Google Scholar

Löfflmann, Georg. ‘Hollywood, the Pentagon, and the Cinematic Production of National Security’. Critical Studies on Security 1.3 (2013): 280–94. Google Scholar

Marx, John. ‘Alien Rule’. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 11.1–2 (2010): 164–7. Google Scholar

Milner, Andrew. Locating Science Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2012. Google Scholar

Moses, Michael Valdez. ‘The Strange Ride of Wikus van de Merwe’. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 11.1–2 (2010): 156–60. Google Scholar

Moses, Michael Valdez, Lucy Valerie Graham, John Marx, Gerald Gaylard, Ralph Goodman and Stefan Helgesson. ‘District 9: A Roundtable’. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 11.1–2 (2010): 155–75. Google Scholar

Nel, Adéle. ‘The Repugnant Appeal of the Abject: Cityscape and Cinematic Corporality in District 9’. Critical Arts 26.4 (2012): 547–69. Google Scholar

Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2013. Google Scholar

Paul, Christopher and James J. Kim. Reporters on the Battlefield: The Embedded Press System in Historical Context. Santa Monica: RAND, 2004. Google Scholar

Peberdy, Sally. ‘Imagining Immigration: Inclusive Identities and Exclusive Policies in Post-1994 South Africa’. Africa Today 48.3 (2001): 15–32. Google Scholar

Platzky, Laurine and Cherryl Walker. The Surplus People: Forced Removals in South Africa. Johannesburg: Ravan, 1985. Google Scholar

Pravinchandra, Shital. ‘Body Markets: The Technologies of Global Capitalism and Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest’. Science Fiction, Imperialism and the Third World: Essays on Postcolonial Literature and Film. Ed. Ericka Hoagland and Reema Sarwal. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014. 87–98. Google Scholar

Purse, Lisa. Contemporary Action Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2011. Google Scholar

Raja, Masood Ashraf, Jason W. Ellis and Swaralipi Nandi, eds. The Postnational Fantasy: Essays on Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitics and Science Fiction. Jefferson: McFarland, 2011. Google Scholar

Rieder, John. Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2008. Google Scholar

Rieder, John. ‘Race and Revenge Fantasies in Avatar, District 9, and Inglourious Basterds’. Science Fiction Film and Television 4.1 (2011): 41–56. Google Scholar

Ringer, Christophe D. ‘Afrofuturism and the DNA of Biopolitics in the Black Public Sphere’. Black Theology: An International Journal 14.1 (2016): 53–68. Google Scholar

Robb, David L. Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies. New York: Prometheus, 2004. Google Scholar

Robinson, Tasha. ‘District 9 Director Neill Blomkamp’. AV Club. https://film.avclub.com/district-9-director-neill-blomkamp-1798217462. Google Scholar

Russell, John G. ‘Don’t It Make My Black Face Blue: Race, Avatars, Albescence, and the Transnational Imaginary’. Journal of Popular Culture 46.1 (2013): 192–217. Google Scholar

Shapiro, Michael J. Cinematic Geopolitics. New York: Routledge, 2009. Google Scholar

Smith, Eric D. Globalization, Utopia and Postcolonial Science Fiction: New Maps of Hope. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Google Scholar

Stoler, Ann Laura. Imperial Debris: On Ruin and Ruination. Durham: Duke UP, 2013. Google Scholar

Tremonte, Colleen. ‘Film, Classical Rhetoric, and Visual Literacy’. Journal of Teaching Writing 14.1–2 (1995): 3–19. Google Scholar

Van Veuren, Mocke Jansen. ‘Tooth and Nail: Anxious Bodies in Neill Blomkamp’s District 9’. Critical Arts: South-North Carolina Cultural and Media Studies 26.4 (2012): 570–86. Google Scholar

Veracini, Lorenzo. ‘District 9 and Avatar: Science Fiction and Settler Colonialism’. Journal of Intercultural Studies 32.4 (2011): 255–67. Google Scholar

Wagner, Keith B. ‘District 9, Race and Neoliberalism in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg’. Race and Class 57.2 (2015): 43–59. Google Scholar

Williams, Paul and Ian Taylor. ‘Neoliberalism and the Political Economy of the “New” South Africa’. New Political Economy 5.1 (2000): 21–40. Google Scholar

Woerner, Meredith. ‘5 Things you Didn’t Know about District 9’. Gizmodo (19 Aug 2009). https://io9.gizmodo.com/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-district-9-5341120. Accessed 13 Feb 2018. Google Scholar

Žižek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. London: Verso, 2011. Google Scholar

If you have private access to this content, please log in with your username and password here

Details

Author details

Brophy, Gregory

Malley, Shawn

Science Fiction Film & Television