Matinee Lessons from District 9

Jeff Alworth

There's a moment in the recent movie District 9 when the camera stops to regard the city of Johannesburg.  Hanging in the sky is a massive, derelict spaceship, and it is the object of visual splendor to which I believe director Neill Blomkamp was directing our attention.  But my eye was drawn to the impressive skyline, terrain I've never seen--familiar in a generic manner, yet unfamiliar in the specifics. 

Humans are by nature local creatures, but Americans even more so; the cities we know and care about are contained within our borders--except, perhaps, those in Europe we use as vacation backdrops.  As my mind tried to take in the size of Johannnesburg, I had a funny sensation, magnified the longer I watched the movie, that a future exists in which the world spends very little time looking at the insignificant skylines of US cities or caring what we do in them.

A more obvious metaphor, I suppose, is District 9's very premise.   A couple decades ago, an alien vessel broke down in earth's atmosphere, stranding millions of aliens who were summarily quarantined by the local government.  A standard Hollywood set-up, except that it's not a Hollywood film.  The aliens aren't being held by malevolent Americans but rather malevolent South Africans who work not for the CIA but a shadowy agency called the MNU; the allegory isn't, say, a strained rendering of a half-remembered chapter about Japanese internments; and the lead is some slightly doofus-y guy who is distinctly not George Clooney.  The movie was made for a paltry $30 million, a sum recouped in the US alone over the weekend (though it received simultaneous international release) as it shot to #1 at the US box.  Another obvious clue that it wasn't an American picture: it was actually entertaining and compelling.

I'm not much of a nationalist, but I felt a twinge of regret watching this import.  Not for any of the obvious reasons.  I hope Hollywood goes bankrupt immediately (yesterday, ideally)--I'd love to see more foreign cities and read subtitles while watching things explode in them.  I would delight in seeing every decent sci-fi script skip the hands of George Lucas and go immediately to Peter Jackson's. I don't mind others exceeding us. (District 9 is admirable, but it's no Matrix.)  I mind that we're getting so much worse than us.

This is not only true in the movies.  Politics lately have become intolerable.  Death panels--really?  We're supposed to nod and consider such asinine nonsense as if it's a credible argument?  Today a gun representative told Chris Matthews that armed men should be allowed to attend presidential town halls and saunter through airports and onto planes.  Seriously. Or take the news.  The arrival of Glenn Beck goes to show the trajectory that's on.  (Connect the dots: Murrow, Cronkite, Jennings, Hannity, Beck ... ?  We don't want to know.)  And the less we say about Big Papi and Brett Favre, erstwhile faves of mine, the better.  Evidence abounds--one not need visit a town hall meeting to wonder if maybe the US needs a breather as the world's foremost power.

Not everything is worse.  TV is enjoying a rennaisance.  (Netflixsters, get your Mad Men, Season 2 disks now!)  In Oregon, we enjoy perhaps a greater abundance and variety of beer than anywhere, anytime.  Our restaurants are lovely, our bike lanes ample. It's just that so much of the really good stuff seems to come from somewhere else.  Not to get too morose about it, but when South Africa can whip up a $30 million blockbuster with effects every bit as good as those rendered at Skywalker Ranch, the writing's on the wall. 

Then again, maybe that's a good thing.  The fewer GI Joe: Rise of the Cobras we have to endure, the better.

By Jeff Alworth Aug. 19, 2009