District 9
Aug. 16th, 2009 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedMore international-release movies should be set in South Africa cos the accent is really cool.
If you consider the aliens to be a metaphor for black South Africans, then you have to ask questions like: "If the leadership died before they landed, why didn't they appoint new leadership, are the aliens/black people really all not-too-bright laborers with ONE exception, who is unfailingly polite to the white main character despite how he's treated?". I'm not going to pretend that this interpretation doesn't exist or that it's not insulting. But looked at as a speculative movie - what if aliens landed in Johannesburg? Wouldn't they be treated the way black South Africans were treated under Apartheid? - this really works.
I liked that District 9 wasn't a "look how much research we've done on the sociopolitical problems of this exotic land!" movie, it was a movie with a Hollywood budget (c/o Peter Jackson) but South African actors and a South African writer/director: Neil Blomkamp, who also wrote/directed the original short "documentary" from which this movie was remade. While it's nice when Americans or Europeans do their research, a much better solution is to hand the money over to someone who KNOWS.
One thing I really liked was that MNU (the Evil Corporation) was able to confiscate nice things and abort alien babies because it is illegal for the aliens to have nice things or babies. Who do you think wrote those laws into existence in the first place, huh?? When the laws are unjust, upholding the laws is also unjust.
Is there going to be a District 10??? This is my number one concern as a moviegoer. (And, I suspect, the number one concern of most moviegoers. Worst Cliffhanger Ever, etc.)
I have written fanfiction. *poses* It's RPF and off for rewrites now. It's so nice to have a rewriter/cohwriter, you don't have to obsess so much over exact phrasing and the motivation to draft is much higher. I never drafted before either, it was always first take up on the internet and then minor revisions ex post facto. I can see why real authors do it this way.
If you consider the aliens to be a metaphor for black South Africans, then you have to ask questions like: "If the leadership died before they landed, why didn't they appoint new leadership, are the aliens/black people really all not-too-bright laborers with ONE exception, who is unfailingly polite to the white main character despite how he's treated?". I'm not going to pretend that this interpretation doesn't exist or that it's not insulting. But looked at as a speculative movie - what if aliens landed in Johannesburg? Wouldn't they be treated the way black South Africans were treated under Apartheid? - this really works.
I liked that District 9 wasn't a "look how much research we've done on the sociopolitical problems of this exotic land!" movie, it was a movie with a Hollywood budget (c/o Peter Jackson) but South African actors and a South African writer/director: Neil Blomkamp, who also wrote/directed the original short "documentary" from which this movie was remade. While it's nice when Americans or Europeans do their research, a much better solution is to hand the money over to someone who KNOWS.
One thing I really liked was that MNU (the Evil Corporation) was able to confiscate nice things and abort alien babies because it is illegal for the aliens to have nice things or babies. Who do you think wrote those laws into existence in the first place, huh?? When the laws are unjust, upholding the laws is also unjust.
Is there going to be a District 10??? This is my number one concern as a moviegoer. (And, I suspect, the number one concern of most moviegoers. Worst Cliffhanger Ever, etc.)
I have written fanfiction. *poses* It's RPF and off for rewrites now. It's so nice to have a rewriter/cohwriter, you don't have to obsess so much over exact phrasing and the motivation to draft is much higher. I never drafted before either, it was always first take up on the internet and then minor revisions ex post facto. I can see why real authors do it this way.