Though I am not a big fan of sci-fi or alien movies, I must admit I enjoyed District 9. The movie starts off as a mockumentary in order to expose the context of the story. Then it develops into a more or less conventional movie interrupted a few times with news reports, or interviews throughout. As we discussed in class, the movie touches on very important themes such as “othering”, apartheid, xenophobia and biopolitics.

Apartheid is a system of legal segregation of law and society, and is an extension of colonial practices. It is not coincidental that the movie was based in Johannesburg, South Africa, where there is history of colonial violence (and slavery) between the British and original Dutch colonizers. The white minority ruled over the black majority, and though not as slaves, but in all social, political ways. This was to blame the National Party of South Africa, who were the dominant party since 1948 until 1994.

“Othering” is a practice of “us vs. them” system where one feels entitled to, or just is a part of an exclusive clan, without any real understanding of what is really happening. We can see this in District 9, when the main character, Wikus, is an ordinary middle-class worker who is doing his job without questioning the authorities, or without doubting the ethics of his work. Wikus is a representation of the typical working class; the majority of this society who simply follows orders and does what they have to do in order to earn and provide for themselves and their families. It is not their fault, because they were not brought up to question and reflect on the social and political matters of life. We do not have much power and will in our lives if we look at it from this point of view, because the “most” available public educational system for the majority of our society is not adequate in preparing and producing open-minded, reflective, compassionate, principled thinkers. And the deceiving, brainwashing media does not help in anyway, but even further contributes to blindfolding the collective imagination.

I thought that Distirct 9 profoundly represented our society’s corrupt, and selfish authorities. A lot of the time, actually majority of the time, our governments have some selfish intention in intervention and colonization. One of the first official colonizations, the colonizing of the New World, however sworn by the Papal authority that the colonization was most importantly because they were “saving” the barbaric savages and giving them law and order and religion, we all know that they simply wanted all the endless resources from the New World, including the people, whom they saw as resources too. The intervention of the States in the Middle East also was solely dependent on the available oil and opium, in my opinion. And yes I am somewhat a conspiracy theorist, but that’s besides the point. The point is that, from the beginning of history, the more powerful exclusive clans, and only more powerful in terms of machinery and army force, have inhumanely and brutally just taken over and forcefully taken everything they needed from the other clan. They do so in the name of just war, however is it really just when the other country has no equal power in fighting. In this case, the authoritative government, MNU, simply wanted to adopt the aliens’ machinery.

There are so many things I would like to discuss here but won’t because my view is very extreme and might offend some people. But I just want people to consider and reflect on everything that is going on around us- question the intention of all biopolitical industries. Who or which political party, which authoritative figure is behind every news channel, and newspaper and what are their intentions? Why and how does only 1% of the world has majority of the wealth whilst the 99% lives in the shadow? How much does the pharmaceutical industries make, and where does all the money go? (I don’t even believe ADHD is a real thing) Why is there GMO’s in majority of the food we eat? I could go on forever.

In conclusion, please don’t trust the media. Actually just abstaining from media is probably the best solution to having an uninfluenced, unbiased and a healthy mentality. Always question and reflect on everything you are told. And always be compassionate and understanding towards people, and try to understand where they are coming from, why they are the way they are, rather than straight away judging or blaming.

And if you have instagram follow- seekthetruth and standup911.