District 9

Discussion in 'SciFi & Fantasy' started by Cowboy, Aug 16, 2009.

  1. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,707
    I saw this movie yesterday and thought it was good.

    Has anyone else seen it? If so, what did you think of it?

    I think that the movie gave an interesting, sci-fi take on a real-world problem: what to do with "refugees" who seem incapable of assimilating (like the Prawns' inability to grasp the concept of private property). On one hand, we feel sorry for them and their plight. On the other hand, people soon tire of having to put up with criminal behavior.

    So what do you do with them? :shrug:
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    25,817
    I saw it and loved it. I was amazed at the black people response to teh aliens considering they themselves had lived that life under apartheid.
    And how the main guy kept calling them prawns (same as ni&&er) never even considering it as wrong.

    I loved this movie. I'm hoping for a District 10 telling of the story 3 years from now.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,707
    I noticed that, too, and assumed that was the point of setting it in South Africa. It goes to show that every group is willing to segregate another group that is considered severely troublesome in some way.

    And everybody called them Prawns, not just Wikus (the main character). I don't remember if they ever actually gave the real name of the alien species.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    25,817
    Aliens was not derogatory. 'Prawn' is. And later you see the switch from 'Prawn' to Christopher.
     
  8. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,485
    Just like the book Animal Farm. The oppressed become the oppressors. I loved this movie, it was completely different than I expected it to be.
     
  9. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    25,817
    I admit, it took me about 2 hrs after the movie to realize what fell off the large ship.
     
  10. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,707
    But how much of it was oppression based on hate/fear and how much of it was simply wanting to distance themselves from the Prawns' deviant behavior? I think it's an important distinction.
     
  11. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,879
    Not strange at all. Have you ever seen Eye of the Storm? Its a documentary on Janet Elliot (I think that's her name). She's a teacher who in the 70's did a class experiment on race by dividing the class up into blue eyes-brown eyes and treated one of the group as the disenfranchised/marginalized group. The same experiment was then done with adults by the same woman. It didn't take long before the brown eyes folk (even black ones) became the ones enforcing the segregation.

    Here is The Class Divided a short documentary about the experiment on Frontline

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/

    If you type in 'A Class Divided' in the search video section you can see the whole thing. Quite interesting. I might start a thread about it when I'm not feeling so lazy

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Basically the blacks in the audience see themselves as part of the non-alien group and therefore they do not have to empathize with the prawns.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2009
  12. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    I've heard girls call guys prawns before - rip off the head but eat the body...

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  13. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,049
    its no real surprise, look at israil for instance (its just the most ovious example). The reason it was set up was the discrimination and killings the Jews suffered in Eroupe, yet they are perpitrating similar acts themselves. Then there is Zimbuwee where the same sorts of things are happerning.

    Compassion and empathy seem to be sadly lacking from the majority of humantity when applied over a large rather than indervidual scale
     
  14. krokah Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    198
    The prawns looked to me to be a species that has a system of workers and brains. The workers were basically cockroaches who were scavengers and then their were a few who ruled. Observing the young one at the end of the movie they were born or hatched with a set amount of knowledge. Interesting movie, comments heard exiting the movie was that it was sad and put you on the side of the bugs...would like to see them come back for those left on the planet..
     
  15. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,479
    i never figured that out what was it
     
  16. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006
    Animal Farm is a political trash, anti-communist McCarthyism decaying on pages. When I read it in high school I threw away that book.
     
  17. Killjoy Propelling The Farce!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,289
    Saw it today. Good stuff - though I thought the bit about the fellow who found the alien fuel capsule & got spritzed with "mystery goop" being slowly transformed into one of them to be something which sounded straight out of some kooky old '50s sci-fi flick. I suppose it served as a good device for his transition from seeing the aliens as dumb, cat food-obsessed brutes to realizing that theywere "people" too, so to speak.

    Don't think they ever did. Nor did any of the aliens refer to themselves by any collective term.

    I wondered why they bothered to make a point of that bit... ...didn't look too closely at what that hunk of whatever it was actually was...

    That small ship the Alien father & son were trying to restore to working order, perhaps ?
     
  18. swivel Sci-Fi Author Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,494
  19. Challenger78 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,536
    Slavery Tasted Good for us ?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    .
     
  20. darksidZz Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,924
    I don't get why they were so annoyed at the aliens, I mean hell they would make stuff outta the garbage right?
     
  21. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006
    there wouldn't be a movie if they were not annoyed

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  22. Killjoy Propelling The Farce!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,289
    I gathered that the cause of it was that the expected "return on investment" on the time, effort & money expended to make even the shabby effort to care for the aliens - namely exploitation of their weapons & technology - was not panning out.

    That and run-of-the-mill human xenophobia.

    Hell, we've locked up our own kind in camps and exterminated 'em for no more than holding different ideas about life and the world or whatnot. The aliens had all that plus the appearance of giant "insecto-crustaceans" to prompt a negative reaction. While you or I - or even El Draqonius, I venture to say - might find it fascinating to spend an afternoon bantering with one of them over a tin of Friskies, I suspect the average shmoe would likely not find the prospect so appealing.
     
  23. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,028
    I've read good things about the movie. It's amazing it was made for only $30 million...which the average advertising budget for a Hollywood blockbuster.
     

Share This Page