District 10 to Start Filming

[Christopher]

^Yeah. If it were as easy as Myasishchev proposes for a government to control crime in a small urban area, then every slum in the world would be crime-free. Evidence shows the opposite to be the case.

Remember, this film is an allegory for things that are really happening in South Africa, that have been happening for decades. The location where D9 was filmed was a real slum whose people had been forcibly relocated just like the aliens in the film. They didn't dress it up to look that filthy and garbage-ridden -- it was like that when they got there. Clearly it was not a well-regulated area. Places like that are the kind of places where you'd expect to see black markets dealing in guns, drugs, and other harmful things.

 

[Anwar]

And it's not like District 9 was a small place, there were over a million Prawns living there.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

And it's not like District 9 was a small place, there were over a million Prawns living there.

Exactly. There appeared to be a relatively small number (maybe a couple hundred?) Nigerians present. MNU knew where the leaders were, and they probably preferred it that way. If they cracked down on the activity of the Nigerians, they could easily disperse throughout D9 and be impossible to find again. Best to keep your enemies close and watch them, rather than strike without reason and send them into hiding.

 

[Myasishchev]

^Yeah. If it were as easy as Myasishchev proposes for a government to control crime in a small urban area, then every slum in the world would be crime-free. Evidence shows the opposite to be the case.

What? Of course it's easy to control crime in a (very!) small urban area, particularly if you turn it into a sealed area. The question is whether it is within the power, and whether it is worth it to do so, given the resources of municipal and otherwise local entities, which it almost always is not.

As an example, Atlanta in the vicinity of Forsyth and Martin Luther King is extraordinarily poorly policed, at least as far as my limited experience goes, but the federal building that's on Forsyth is extraordinarily well policed. Because outside powers have deemed it to be an area worth devoting substantial, probably overblown resources into protecting.

In an alien settlement program, the sovereign is pretty likely to care a lot (as indeed they do in the film, even if they have to hire outside contractors because of a lack of talent or trustworthiness within the country--although given it's the UoSA that's slightly weird in itself). The UoSA is not equal to the municipal government of Johanneseburg, so equating D9 with the run of the mill "slum" is disingenuous.

Remember, this film is an allegory for things that are really happening in South Africa, that have been happening for decades. The location where D9 was filmed was a real slum whose people had been forcibly relocated just like the aliens in the film. They didn't dress it up to look that filthy and garbage-ridden -- it was like that when they got there. Clearly it was not a well-regulated area. Places like that are the kind of places where you'd expect to see black markets dealing in guns, drugs, and other harmful things.

And this implicates the question whether the filmmakers were going for a broad, generally applicable allegory, which works, or a very narrow, national one, which forces flaws (like the presence of the Nigerians) into the story.

If they cracked down on the activity of the Nigerians, they could easily disperse throughout D9 and be impossible to find again.

Ah, they're the ones not shaped like bugs.

 

[stj]

^^^Very accurate. The general notion lurking in the background, that the state is just overwhelmed by the problems of the ghetto, is also disingenuous. The state enforces economic policies that produces the poverty creating social decay; neglects to provice essential services, including policing; actively attacks the ghetto population, including by directing the police into persecution of the victim population.

Generally, people who like to claim DS9 is more sophisticated story telling than Avatar dwell upon the more nuanced treatment of race. If the aliens are hive creatures, then the poverty and viciousness of the lower caste aliens really are biologically rooted. That happens to be what racists claim, which is why I must still think DS9 is rather confused. Wikus going down on his knees before the Nigerian gang leader was plainly not so striking an image as possibly the makers hoped.