It's about both the xenophobia that peeked in the late 2000s, and rears its head from time to time, and apartheid really. The name "district 9" comes from the very real district 6 that existed in Cape Town during apartheid.
The movie was filmed in areas of South Africa that had experienced xenophobic attacks, and where people were forcefully being relocated from shacks and informal structures to RDP government housing. (Alexandra and Soweto to be exact). These areas currently look like a warzone with army patroling in armoured vehicles and burnt down shops due to the civil unrest spiked by the arrest of corrupt ex president Jacob Zuma.
Also the dystopian looking concrete tower (Ponte Tower) has been renovated and cleaned now. It's not a terrible place to live anymore filled with the worst kinds of criminal gangs like it was in the past. It's actually pretty alright now.
Thanks for elaborating, I couldn't remember any more than the bit about refugees.
Also the dystopian looking concrete tower (Ponte Tower) has been renovated and cleaned now
Is that the infamous one that provided the sort of open center and mixed residential-commercial design that gets mimicked a lot as an arcology/hab-block in cyberpunk stories? If so I remember reading about that, how bad it had gotten and what went into fixing it up and renovating it.
Yeah it's that one. It got pretty bad. There was a large trash pile in the middle a few stories high. Sex trafficking, drugs, criminal gangs, etc occupied most of the building during the early to mid 2000s. If you wanted to solicit a prostitute or get hard drugs like cocaine, tik, heroin, etc that was the place to go. But then the tower fell under new ownership and the criminal and gang activity was kicked out after a few years of legal battles, police corruption, raids etc, and the building cleaned up. The new ownership invested a ton of money into the building. After years of work it's as good as a dystopian looking apartment complex in the middle of Johannesburg can get. Now a local radio presenter even owns an apartment there.
I mean, honestly that makes more sense. Apartheid was a 2 tiered system, but the lower racial caste were a source of labor for a white supremacist society, not just a problem to be exterminated.
The whole point is that it represents both. The name of the movie being based on an actual district which evicted everyone to create a whites only neighborhood during apartheid (district 6) and the film being filmed at locations that recently experienced xenophobic violence and forced evictions at the time is no coincidence. The whole point is that you can replace "prawn" in the dialogue with that of any oppressed peoples, to understand what is going on.
It's about both the xenophobia that peeked in the late 2000s, and rears its head from time to time, and apartheid really. The name "district 9" comes from the very real district 6 that existed in Cape Town during apartheid.
The movie was filmed in areas of South Africa that had experienced xenophobic attacks, and where people were forcefully being relocated from shacks and informal structures to RDP government housing. (Alexandra and Soweto to be exact). These areas currently look like a warzone with army patroling in armoured vehicles and burnt down shops due to the civil unrest spiked by the arrest of corrupt ex president Jacob Zuma.
Also the dystopian looking concrete tower (Ponte Tower) has been renovated and cleaned now. It's not a terrible place to live anymore filled with the worst kinds of criminal gangs like it was in the past. It's actually pretty alright now.
Thanks for elaborating, I couldn't remember any more than the bit about refugees.
Is that the infamous one that provided the sort of open center and mixed residential-commercial design that gets mimicked a lot as an arcology/hab-block in cyberpunk stories? If so I remember reading about that, how bad it had gotten and what went into fixing it up and renovating it.
CW: Criminal activity, drugs, sexual violence
Yeah it's that one. It got pretty bad. There was a large trash pile in the middle a few stories high. Sex trafficking, drugs, criminal gangs, etc occupied most of the building during the early to mid 2000s. If you wanted to solicit a prostitute or get hard drugs like cocaine, tik, heroin, etc that was the place to go. But then the tower fell under new ownership and the criminal and gang activity was kicked out after a few years of legal battles, police corruption, raids etc, and the building cleaned up. The new ownership invested a ton of money into the building. After years of work it's as good as a dystopian looking apartment complex in the middle of Johannesburg can get. Now a local radio presenter even owns an apartment there.
I mean, honestly that makes more sense. Apartheid was a 2 tiered system, but the lower racial caste were a source of labor for a white supremacist society, not just a problem to be exterminated.
The whole point is that it represents both. The name of the movie being based on an actual district which evicted everyone to create a whites only neighborhood during apartheid (district 6) and the film being filmed at locations that recently experienced xenophobic violence and forced evictions at the time is no coincidence. The whole point is that you can replace "prawn" in the dialogue with that of any oppressed peoples, to understand what is going on.