The hysterics of District 9....

and then, after a while, if you shoot enough days there it becomes normal ... it almost becomes home after a while" (DVD commentary).

Of course, it is actually home to many, and they are reported to be "placing their hopes in the alien movie" (York). As one resident interviewed by the Globe and Mail put it, " 'I'm happy that our situation will be shown all over the world. It needs to be exposed. Maybe it will help us. Maybe the government will do something' " (York). The article quotes her again: "There haven't been protests at Chiawelo this year, but Ms. Malatsi sympathizes with the violent demonstrations. 'That's the only language the government hears, ' she says. 'People all over the country are struggling. These are people who live in conditions like ours' " (York). Instead of the heightened emotional state of a protesting crowd, we have what Andrew Marr of The Times of London calls a "hysteria film."

However, if District 9's audience gets to opt in to its hysterical discombobulations, it also gets to opt out. On the one hand, the film lends its viewers access to affect (perhaps suffering, perhaps laughter, perhaps both) about a rapidly changing, often unrecognizable social order. On the other, the film does not require them to make sense of those contradictory emotions, partly because of it nonsensical structure and partly because of our multiple identifications--first laughing at Wikus the bureaucratic buffoon but later feeling for and with him. The cinematic fiction grants viewers permission to experience the inchoate, the fractured, the hysterical of ourselves and our society, but the relief of exiting the theater tempers this. Since our