District 9, while a piece of science fiction, speaks to issues of apartheid and genocide that are evident in many of the books and films we have read and viewed for this class. In District 9, an alien space ship is spotted over Johannesburg in South Africa. Eventually, a group of humans enter the ship, to discover aliens that are malnourished and sick. They are brought down to earth and given healthcare, food, and water. They are confined to District 9, a government camp within Johannesburg. Eventually, persistent unrest between the aliens and the locals forces the South African government to partner with Multi-National United, a private security corporation, in order to move the aliens from District 9 to District 10. Wikus, an Afrikaan bureaucrat, is assigned by MNU to lead the process of relocation from District 9 to District 10.
Already, we start to see some similarities between the eviction of the aliens and other events in history we have studied in this course. For example, in Defiance, the film I used for my mid term paper, we see people that are forced to leave their homes and make other arrangements for themselves. There are several instances in Defiance where the Jewish community trying to survive commits acts which, at face value, seem inhumane. An example of this is when Tuvia goes to the police chief’s house and kills all but one member of his family. Similarly, in District 9, the main reason MNU was hired was due to unrest between the aliens and local citizens. However, it is important to question what was behind the alien’s unrest. Considering that they were quarantined off from the rest of the general population and treated rather poorly, it does not seem all that surprising that problems occurred. Hiring MNU, it seemed, only exacerbated these problems.
Identification of prisoners played a vital role in the Holocaust, as well as in District 9. One example of this is in Bent. Nazis used a yellow star to identify Jews, while using a pink triangle to identify homosexuals. While this may seem insignificant, in Bent, we see how these symbols play a large role in the characters. On the train, Max’s boyfriend Rudy is beaten and eventually killed partly because of the fact that he has a pink triangle. Max chose to receive a yellow star, on the basis that it would better his chances for survival in the concentration camp.
In District 9, identification of the aliens is different, mostly because their physical characteristics make them easily identifiable. However, we see the importance of identification in District 9 after Wikus gets sprayed by an alien liquid, causing him to take on the physical characteristics of an alien. MNU discovers that Wikus has been contaminated, and forces him to test whether or not the contamination enables him to use the alien weapons. After MNU discovers that Wikus possesses this ability, they plan to kill him in order to harvest his organs. Identification plays such a vital role in District 9 that MNU blatantly betrayed one of their own in order to further their own agenda. We see this multiple times throughout the Holocaust as well: Nazis forcing Germans to give supplies, food, and equipment to Nazi troops in order to further their mission of genocide.
Finally, I believe it is important to examine the general effects of apartheid on a society, in particular, South Africa. According to the apartheid timeline, as apartheid was allowed to continue, civil unrest continued to brew. Eventually, the unrest turned violent, with the South African government killing its own citizens. Economically, South Africa was hurt because of this. The reason for the unrest was clear: despite being a majority in their own country, black South Africans, according to Carol B. Thompson’s article Forum: Investing in South African Apartheid, were required to carry passbooks that indicated they were only allowed in white areas if working there. This is comparable to early stages of the Holocaust, when Jews were forced to live in ghettos and only allowed access to the outside world to work.
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