Butt Ugly: District 9 and Race Relations

Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 uses parallel and analogy to bring about a discussion of race, political power, human rights, and what differentiates people, along with what makes them the same. When aliens land on Earth, over Johannesburg, the people of the area must deal with questions of how to handle the insurgence of a new population, one that is notably diverse from the existing citizens. While this could bring about more questions of political logistics (are these new aliens citizens?) or human rights (are these aliens legally human? What rights do they get?), it brought me to questions and race. One of the intriguing things about this film is the fact that it is directly modeled after District 6 and political/racial strife in Johannesburg. One of the beautiful things about this film is that, despite not knowing much of anything about that situation, I found a lot of truth in the picture that applies to my life and to America as a whole. While the film uses various elements to convey its message, I feel that focusing on the physical appearance of the Prawn reveals some notable depth in the film.

The nuance of the film isn’t accepting that it’s commenting on race relations; that fact is fairly easily obtained. The true introspection for me came with the fact that I knew it was dealing with race relations, and I still had a hard time being accepting. In the United States in my lifetime, we’ve been programmed to know that all cultures and races are accepted, and that we should be open minded about everyone we meet. This notion seems to be blindly accepted, and perhaps because it isn’t challenged, it doesn’t grow as deep of roots as it should. By making these aliens resemble insects and having them look so distinct from humans, it create the need for me to actively try to be accepted. My first impulse was to reject these ugly creatures because they were physically repulsive. I’m not totally sure I can rationalize that view, but it was the Id in me coming out, for better or for worse. I had to actively remind myself that this was a metaphor for race relations, and that I wasn’t being accepting as I should be. On top of being ugly, they also were distinctly not-human in appearance. This also forced me to remember that the “other,” in this case aliens, were supposed to be more like humanity than unlike humanity (I contrast this with the movie Her, where I personally had little trouble accepting AI as part of humanity). I think this gave me a look into the views of past generations, where racial acceptance itself wasn’t accepted. As awful as it sounds, I can start to understand how the first people to deal with people of a different race saw them, and could treat them so awfully. By comparing my initial repulsion to the Prawns to past generations looking at different races, I’ve gained some nuance to the way they thought.

Another notable way they contrast the Prawn with humans in physical depiction is the size and strength of the aliens. Aside from being distinct with humans, and off-putting in appearance, they are also notably larger than the humans in the film. This gives a sense of power asymmetry, where the aliens have a physical advantage over the humans. This contrasts political power, where humans have a sufficient advantage over the aliens. This creates a volatile environment, where the humans are leery of the aliens, and live in fear of their physical power. This seems to mirror the way in which many people view minorities in our world. This is one way to view the extreme reactions to fear of minorities in our world, most notably with police violence, sometimes leading to death. It seems that the fear the authorities show in dealing with the physically powerful prawns may reflect the fear that authorities deal with minorities in the United States (and beyond) in our world.

"Interstellar," and the Need for the Next Generation

In Interstellar, Christopher Nolan depicts a world in which mankind must leave Earth behind in favor of a more habitable world. The film focuses primarily on Cooper as he leads the voyage to determine which faraway planet would best serve as humanity’s next home. As film-goers journey with these pioneering astronauts, Nolan makes statements about humanity, hope, and the importance of survival through various means. Before launch and intermittently throughout the film, however, we also get a glimpse at the Earth they left behind. We get preview into their world of education, a slight understanding of their job market, and even a look into their world of science, which isn’t exactly flourishing under the barren condition of their Earth. Some of the interactions on Earth illustrate a sociological phenomena that sociologists today have identified, and we can understand that phenomena through the film.

Physicist Max Planck made a statement about the adoption of scientific innovation into the mainstream belief system, that has since been referenced as the “Planck Problem.” He said, "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.” Social scientist Jay Stuart Snelson refers to this as “ideological immunity.” he expands and explains Planck’s statement by saying, “the more knowledge individuals have accumulated, and the more well-founded their theories have become, the greater the confidence in their ideologies.” Snelson says the problem is further exasperated by humans’ tendency to seek information that conforms to their established views, and dismiss information that contrasts it. So, in total, Planck’s problem states that people grow too solid in their beliefs to appropriately amend them to consider new information, and the problem is exasperated as people collect new information, given that they follow the tendency for people to find information that supports their views and dismiss information that does not support it.

We can use Interstellar to understand Planck’s problem; there are three instances where I believe this social phenomena is displayed in the film. The first example comes early in the film and doesn’t get much screen time, but still serves as a jarring example of just how different this world is from ours. Early in Interstellar Cooper goes to a parent-teacher conference, and while there his daughter’s teacher tells Cooper that she believes, and is teaching, that humans have never been to the moon. She says this in defiance of Cooper’s statement that the United States indeed landed on the moon. Although there is no further information presently by either side, which makes this an imperfect example of people’s defiance of new information in favor of their beliefs, it does serve to show how intrenched both the teacher and Cooper are in their own beliefs to serve as an example of Planck’s problem.

Later in the film, Murph is trying to convince her brother, Tom, to move his family and try something new, in light of the growing health issues his son has developed from the environment. Tom refuses to consider this, saying that he intends to continue farming, the only thing he knows. Murph once again uses his son’s health, and Tom’s deceased son, as examples of why this current course of action is detrimental to the health of his family. Ultimately, Murph must resort to trickery to evacuate Tom’s family, as Tom is too entrenched in his habits of farming to consider a new possibility, which shows the inability to accept information that defies established views that is expressed by Planck’s problem.

The last example of Planck’s problem that I’ve identified is the most complete depiction of the phenomena in this film. Dr. Brand, the head of NASA, has been working on an equation that is supposed to be of vital importance to the mission for much of his lifetime (surely a non-communications major could explain why it is important, but I’ve learned to just accept that it is). We see in one scene where Murph looks at Dr. Brand’s incomplete equation, and starts to see where his shortcomings lie. Dr. Brand is quick to whisk Murph away in an attempt to guard his own pride. A bit later, Dr. Mann explains to Cooper that Dr. Brand knew the equation was unsolvable prior to Dr. Mann’s launch, which was decades prior to this point in the film.

At this point in the film, Dr. Brand passes away, using his last breaths to apologize to Murphy for making her believe the equation was solvable and that she would see her father once again. However, as soon as he dies, we see Murphy take it upon herself to solve the problem and, ultimately, she saves the world. In this sense, we literally had to wait for Dr. Brand to die to solve the issue. This is a more textbook example of Planck’s problem than the other two, also, because it the more information Dr. Brand got, the more he was certain the problem couldn’t be solved. It was indeed his tendency to find support for his preformed hypothesis that cemented him into his false conclusion all the more. As the movie hinted, all it took were fresh eyes that had no conclusion formed, in this case, Murphy, to find the errors and a truer conclusion. Through this example, and the other given, we can use Interstellar to get a better understanding of Planck’s problem, and see how it can play out in the worst of scenarios.