District 9 presents its ideas of racism in a sort or, “please insert racial/ ethnic/ religious/ alien minority here” way. It is the way that people have established guidelines and procedures of dehumanization, or, in District 9’s case especially, to inflict literal alienation. It seems so obvious to deem the Prawns as “others” because they appear differently, act differently, and speak differently. The easiest way to deal with “others”, as shown through human history, is to strip them of their rights to be people in any sense at all. The segregation used to distinguish the Prawns living territory is another example of defining the rights of the desirable, and excluding those who do not seem to belong. Assimilation, by definition, is to adopt the ways of another culture, I would argue that the most common use of assimilation has a much stronger derogatory term than that given by the dictionary. In District 9 especially, it is not as much assimilation as derogation and oppression used in modern day practices particularity. The aliens were not even given the ability to “adopt” into a new way of life, they were banished into a garbage- ravenous slum against their will, and forced to become subjects of cruel and inhumane treatment, all whist unable to understand what was going on or why it was being done to them. Does this sound familiar? It should, because we saw it go on in our very country to an extent through the residential school systems, and through colonization itself; and it can also certainly be seen on a global basis. For those not taking a political lens to the film it might not look like something directly relatable to world events and world history, but that is exactly the films intent. The initial reaction to the Prawns overall depiction is extremely unpleasant, and is precisely how people can dehumanize them and take away their rights. Once this base line is established, the question usually becomes that of genocide or mere life for those alienated, and in District 9 we see both. Whether it is the torching of an alien breeding house, or the inexplicit “nonnegotiable relocation” being assigned to the Prawns in a way that they could not understand, the government is taking away any of their political rights through use of extremely degrading circumstances, of which the most disturbing part is its widely considered standard procedure in politics. Although District 9 uses aliens in place of humans, it is all too easy to see the stark comparisons that can be made by simply “inserting” someone else into the same outsider group as
was done to the Prawns.