I would like to begin this blog by mentioning that it is unbelievable that we have already reached the end of our first term as university students! In essence, we have now successfully accomplished the first step of our university careers.

Without further due, for this particular posting, I would like to place an emphasis on the literature review that I wrote. Back several weeks ago, we all read Martha Nussbaum’s article, Democratic Citizenship and the Narrative Imagination. Overall, the gist of this article concerns how literature functions as a medium that utilizes imagination to stimulate moral conscience. Nussbaum states that everybody has his or her own religion, gender, race, class, and national origin, which makes it difficult for people to have a complete knowledge of other people’s thoughts and perspectives (144). Furthermore, given that the ability to relate to others is a fundamental aspect of citizenship, literary works serve this purpose by solidifying an understanding of other people (145). According to Nussbaum, the ultimate effect as she states from Ralph Ellison is that literature could be analogous to a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might helps to keep society afloat while progressing towards democracy (147).

While I overall do agree that Nussbaum does present reasonable and valid arguments, we realistically cannot deny that literature often creates unintended consequences in a negative manner. Another scholarship article that I analyzed for my literature review was The Relationship of Literature and Society by Milton C. Albrecht. One of Albrecht’s counter-arguments to Nussbaum is that particular literary works “tend to disrupt or corrupt society” (433). An extreme case that Albrecht mentions is taken from an argument that Albert Guerard made about how Werther by Goethe contributed to a wave of suicides (434). For this reason, censorship of certain literary material deemed as being “socially disruptive” is a practice common in different societies (433). As an extension to this argument, I have linked a video below that highlights notable examples of books that are banned in certain societies and explains the reasons for their prohibition. In fact, what I do find surprising is that some books are actually studied extensively in Canadian high schools, such as George Orwell’s Animal Farm or John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. This video actually reinforces Albrecht’s argument that some forms of literature do have a detrimental impact. Of course, in the end, I will agree that whether a literary work is necessarily harmful in nature is really the discretion of a state.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEldl8eL_kc

Based on the opposing views of Nussbaum and Albrecht, I reach a conclusion that the impact of literature on a society is a two-sided issue, which we can compare to many other matters in life. On the one hand I agree that literature realistically does contribute to the development of an individual’s moral conscience as well as the promotion of a just society. Nevertheless, I am also convinced that whether intentional or not, literature can also generate the opposite effect. Even if the effect is not immediate, at the very least, societies will often speculate about potential detrimental impacts.

As some final remarks, I would like to wish everybody good luck on the finals as well as a happy holiday. I look forward to another intriguing semester of ASTU.

District 9 is a South African science fiction film that was released back in 2009. The film is set in the South African capital, Johannesburg, where the arrival of aliens invokes widespread hysteria among the city’s inhabitants. As a means to segregate the aliens from the human population, the city of Johannesburg adopts a system of an internment camp. However, they go as far as conducting live dissections of the aliens to extract their DNA and test their weapons. The film follows the progress of the MNU’s mission to relocate the aliens, which becomes disastrous as the commander himself gets infected by alien technology. Like all other films, District 9 undoubtedly serves an entertainment purpose to its audience. Nevertheless, the film presents many relevant themes that are analogous to various social issues embedded in world history concerning the marginalization of different social groups. In fact, the film serves as a representation of the long history of institutionalized racial discrimination that occurred in South Africa during the apartheid.

The film plays an effective role in illustrating the reasons and basis for the occurrence of ostracizing individuals within a given society. In the film, the aliens are representative of the wide range of social groups in world history that have encountered institutionalized discrimination, such as immigrants and indigenous peoples in most western nations. They are portrayed by their grotesque appearances and behavior purposely to reinforce the level of despise that the human characters in the film have towards the aliens. This can compare with the race riots that took place in Detroit during 1943 as a result of the massive migrations of black Americans from the rural south into the city. This incident essentially happened because of the indifferences between white and black populations of the city. At the same time, the film also shows a scene where human activists stage a protest in support of the aliens prior to the MNU carrying out their mission. Likewise, some white Americans, such as the Quakers, helped to emancipate slaves during the American slave trade.

On a more severe level, the film also depicts how the human populations inflict atrocities on the aliens. For example, various acts by MNU officials in opening fire on unarmed aliens that seem uncooperative blatantly demonstrate an excessive use of force, which we can relate to the comment that Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his letter from Birmingham jail about how he witnessed white law enforcement officers “curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill his black brothers and sisters with impunity”. The illegal experiments conducted on the aliens, such as the vivisections, are even more outrageous, almost like the massive killings that Spanish colonialists carried out on indigenous Americans during the formative stage of Latin America.

In conclusion, the many events that take place in District 9 have a distinctive connection to numerous real-world events involving the alienation of particular populations. Below is a link below to one of the film trailers of District 9. The gist of the trailer actually expresses the film’s themes very clearly, but according to my observations, the trailer does appear to create an evident bias, since it focuses on the discontent that the human characters feel towards the aliens. Unlike the film where the protagonists and antagonists are actually ambiguous, the trailer seems to incline the film’s viewers towards antagonizing the aliens. However, feel free to let me know what you think.