kameraad mhambi

I finally managed to see Neil Blomkamp’s District 9. I left the cinema feeling conflicted. On the one hand the ending was very Hollywood, cheesy and skop, skiet en donder cinema. Yet I felt there was something to the flick.

But I could not find the words to match my feelings.

And then I read Andries du Toit remarkable review of the film. The review called Becoming the Alien is a tour de force and captures much that I felt when seeing it, and also opened my eyes to new ways of reading it. To quote some of it:

“This is at the centre of the extended set-piece that forms the heart of the first part of the movie – the long, chaotic sequence where the hired mercenaries and functionaries of  MNU, the firm to which the government has outsourced the task of the ‘clean up’ of the ghetto, have their first encounter with the reluctant, soon-to-be-displaced Alien population.  It is  a cinematic tour de force; one of the most sustained and brilliant pieces of filmmaking I can recall seeing  –  but I wonder whether any of the movie’s international audience will even understand  a fraction of what is going on here.”

Wikus is what makes the movie work – And du Toit describes precisely why:

“What makes it brilliant cinema, of course – what makes it all come together as it does, is not just this accuracy; not even the disorienting, vertiginous, documentary-style way in which Blomkamp renders the almost-out-of-control chaos of the engagement. It is above all, the figure of Wikus van der Merwe, surely one of the most unlikely protagonists that cinema has produced in a long while. One of the high points of a pretty impressive performance on the part of the actor Sharlto Copley is his rendition of Wikus during the forced removal, half the time trying to control the whole mad show, and half the time acting as a kind of crazed, geeky curator, speed-talking at the camera and describing in awful English every aspect of what is going on.

The whole point of Wikus, of course, is that he is such a prat. He is thick as a plank. He is awful. He is as unlike a Bruce Willis or a Samuel Jackson as it is possible to be – and this is at least partly because he is Afrikaans. He is not just Afrikaans, he is a rockspider. He is a doos, a chop, a moegoe. He mangles English with hilarious ineptness. He is cringe-makingly uncool: cheesily in love with his ‘angel’ wife, dorkily clumsy in front of the camera, cravenly obedient to authority, crudely bullying to the aliens that he deals with, and horrifyingly inept in his dealings with his Black underlings, whom he patronizes with cheery ignorance. At the same time, in his earnestness, in his desire to be liked, in his bright-eyed and bushy-tailed eagerness to make a success of this impossible, chaotic, disaster of a job, one cannot but like him.”

And du Toit also got something I did not at first, how District 9 makes racists of us, and then takes us on a journey:

“By presenting the aliens to us, not as attractive, noble creatures, by making them half-human and half insect, the film constantly trips us up by making the racist gaze our gaze. It confronts us with our complicity with racism, by making us identify with the perspective of the racist, inviting us to feel the revulsion of the xenophobe – and then pulling the carpet from under our feet.”

Wikus of course is the vehicle for this narrative journey. In all good stories the main character faces a challenge. And this difficulty, this challenge, transforms them. Well District 9 and its aliens does that to Wikus proper:

“The compelling and mysterious thing about the aliens in District 9 is the deep ambiguity that they represent. Are they a culture of superbeings, more advanced than us? Their spaceship, looming hugely over Johannesburg, seems to suggest that. Or are they cockroaches; depraved, subhuman, corrupt; so decayed that even with all their weaponry they are nothing but victims? That question hangs over the whole movie – and nowhere more disquietingly than when Wikus realises that he is physically turning into an alien. What does this transformation mean? At one level, it is a fall into death, it is the body rotting: teeth falling out, nails dropping off, the white skin flaking, sliming, growing black scales. But it also brings with it a strange promise: the possibility of a different relationship with the aliens – and of course, the ability to manipulate all that awesome weaponry.

All this comes together in one of the most inspired moments of the whole film. Wikus and the alien ‘Christopher Johnson’ are in the bowels of the MNU building. They have secured the vial of fluid that they need to effect their escape plan. They are in a firefight: the scene is indescribably chaotic, with junk and destroyed equipment scattered all around, gunshots, bullets flying everywhere. A moment ago, horrifyingly, they stumbled across the lab where the MNU has been torturing and conducting medical experiments uponthe aliens. Wikus protests his innocence – I did not know this was happening, he says – but his protests sound feeble and unconvincing even to us. By now we are used to anthropomorphising ‘Christopher’, and we can see the horror and the pity – and the rage – that we imagine flowing through him as he looks at the ravaged body of his murdered kin. We can see that he would be entirely within his rights to smear Wikus then and there, and go his own way. But he runs across the passage to join him, and together they crouch behind a bulkhead, the room filling with smoke and the thunder of gunshots, firing madly round corners, covering each other as they dash down the passage. And suddenly we are watching … a buddy movie. I thought it was the most thrilling moment in the whole film- not because of the excitement of the action, but because the panache and the knowingness with which the movie draws upon – and re-invents – the genres within which it operates. There are many movies in which the aliens are good guys – but never aliens that look like this. Wikus has crossed over to the other side. And so have we. For the rest of the film, we will look at the humans with fear and distrust, and when the mercenary Kobus Venter finally gets his gruesome come-uppance – he is torn apart alive, eviscerated and eaten by a group of aliens – the audience cheers.”

Wikus and us have become the Alien. Brilliant.

But du Toit gives one final twist to his interpretation:

“There’s one last inversion.  One of the most abiding images in the film is of the alien spaceship: huge, threatening, enigmatic, hanging over the Joburg skyline.  It is ominous, brooding (hanging there like the future, says one friend of mine;  like the mines under the surface of the city, says another).  And it looks so right that next time I am at OR Tambo international airport, I know that I will reflexively look up  to see if it is still there.   But the continual presence of the ship forces one more question.    Who is it who arrived, uninvited, in South Africa?  Who is it who came one day in a ship, and stayed, and did not leave?  In Johannesburg: who are the aliens?”

Very impressive I have to say. And subsequently I have witnessed people on Twitter badger the editor of South Africa’s Mail & Guradian to include Du Toit’s writing in the paper.

But…

I thought Andries did miss something. In a comment on his blog I wrote that I thought the movie was not just a reference to our past, but also to the South African present. Just as I mentioned in my preview to District 9.

But when Andries responded to a comment about the highly contebntious depiction of Nigerians in the movie like so:

“Yes, it is a caricature of how present day white South Africans (and therefore also Wikus) sees the Nigerians.”

…it was then that I wrote:

“Ag nee man Andries.

Now you expose your ignorance and reinforces my doubts of your otherwise excellent review. It seems that a few white struggle veterans on here are willfully only seeing the romantic glory days on the anti-apartheid struggle and have no idea of whats happening in today’s townships. Have a look at these pics…

It is no coincidence that Congolese live in the City bowl in Cape Town and Nigerians in Hillbrow. They just are not safe in Alex and Khayelitsha.

Studies have shown that Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans themselves, see white South Africans as much more positive towards them than black SA.

In a recent Channel 4 documentary they visit Lindelela and interview those that are about to be deported. “Blacks are worse than the Boers”! the resounding response.

It’s all relative of course as white SA’s opinions are hardly smelling of roses. But still. There is a significant difference.

The fact that the local and international press don’t cover what’s happening to black migrants to SA does not make it less horrible.

I would like to think that this movie can be interpreted much wider. The fact that its not the government but a private company doing the removals is telling. The aliens are not removed just outside the city so their lbour can be extracted, they are taken 200km away – just like our current black refugees. This may be a bit literal, but it would seem that Wikus’s Joburg does not have any apartheid or obvious animosity between black and white Saffas.”

Andries responded:

“I wonder why you are so very intent on letting white South Africans off the hook here. True – neither in the movie, nor in reality, do white South Africans take up arms / toyi-toyi against the aliens. But that’s because we don’t need to. We’re safe in our policed, burglar alarmed suburbs.”

Angry, at what I perceived as an underhand dig at my bona fides, I fired back:

“Andries, good point.

With that I would agree completely, the aliens don’t compete with whities for jobs, houses Etc.

And doesn’t the same analogy hold for old apartheid SA? Afrikaners are more racist, boorish because they were more likely to feel threatened: working class, less educated, be the ‘interface’ with black SA – in the police, the railways, the hospitals and not have a European passport – than the Houghton living English speaking white middle-classes?

I would think its not be a question of being intent on letting people off the hook – it should be a question of analyzing the situation correctly in accordance with actual experience, no? Or does it not matter who kills refugees inside South Africa unless the killers are white?

It is a given that white SA and in particular Afrikaners are responsible for the reprehensible system called apartheid. And I think the hegemony of white culpability is complete. But that hegemony is also dangerous for the future of SA as it helps obscure the present.

Ironically, the denial of black agency is one of this ideologies offspring.

I have been following and reporting on the murders of Somalis on my blog since 2005. Long before the press thought it news worthy. They still don’t really. Do you know – for example – that in Fish Hoek on October 2006 40 were killed? I spent some time in Yeoville recently where at a braai many South Africans there told me how they were going to kill all the immigrants. I think we have a real problem.

I also thought the movie had definite touches of the past and the present. I think in the context of our recent history it would be a huge mistake not to read it that way as well.”

But I thought about it some more. Why had I written so much about xenophobic murders of black foreigners in South Africa the last few years? Andries’s review was ringing in my ears while I was thinking about this.

And it struck me. What if the movie is about just that – becoming an alien. Blomkamp is like me – an expat. He is in Canada, I am in Britain. We have both become aliens. Is this a movie also about leaving your homeland?

But there is something more profound about the film. Just as I think there is a more profound shift underway in South Africa. Funny enough, many and even the countries laws call this shift transformation. You read about it everyday. What is its essence? Some black South Africans no longer call themselves black. They are now Africans. By implication other South Africans have ceased to be African.

But I am as well I protest! I am an Afrikaner!

When I read Andries’s review I also read about the interviews conducted by the JSC for positions on the South African High Courts. One prospective judge was asked how possibly his appointment could further transformation, as he was white.

In a somber mood I added a follow up comment to the one fired off in anger – and  it could be the more truthful one.

“And perhaps also if I were to analyze myself I too “have become the alien”. No longer the confident arrogant Afrikaner, now I feel like those Mozambicans. An interloper.”

Related deployments:

1. District 9 – xenophobia racism & the red ants