involving white South-African mercenaries and government forces shooting the rebel army, mostly comprised of black child soldiers, the audience are made to feel that this is justified and their deaths are unproblematic. The child soldiers are portrayed as cold killers who are willing to shoot women and other children after being told they are the enemy by rebel leaders. Once again, blackness is equated with alien otherness. Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009) takes an alternative approach to representing South African conflict through science fiction. The film is based on the legally enforced apartheid in South Africa between 1948 and 1994 and is said to have been inspired by the real area of District Six near Cape Town where thousands of black South Africans were relocated in order to create a “whites only” area. In the film, aliens (representing black South Africans) are referred to as “prawns” by the humans. As Alexandra Heller-Nicholas observes in a 2011 article “From District Six to District 9: Apartheid, Spectacle and the Real”, the term “prawn” given to the aliens has a derogatory meaning and is taken from an insect which plagued large parts of South Africa. This immediately attaches a negative connotation to the minority group as unwanted pests. The film reflects xenophobia by depicting the alien race as undomesticated and uncultured as they
48 Diegesis: CUT TO [conflict]
deface their own homes, rummage around in waste piles and fight over tins of cat food. Again, non-whites are represented as slaves or savages. The film also received criticism for the representation of the Nigerian community who are shown savagely eating body parts of the “prawns” in order to gain their power so they can use their weapons to become more technologically advanced. As a result Nigerians are represented as primitive and less human than the powerful Multinational Union made up of mostly white South Africans. In a 2009 interview for Salon by Andrew O’Hehir, director Neill Blomkamp defended such scenes, saying he wanted the film to reflect contemporary Johannesburg but this view of a concentrated group results in a negative portrayal of an entire race. Once again, blackness is equated with alien otherness. In all three films, the majority of black characters are depicted negatively as ruthless thieves and murderers or uncultured and uncivilised. Even where white characters are presented in a negative light, the films enforce the importance of white characters over black characters, continuing to uphold the dominant ideal in Hollywood and maintaining associations between Africa and negative historical events such as war, genocide and segregation. This supports the stereotype of the helpless, uneducated and savage African and does little to challenge these negative representations•