Reference no: EM132200058

District 9 is a South African film, set and produced in South Africa. The Cape of Good Hope was colonized by the Dutch and later the British, starting in the seventeenth century. For hundreds of years, as part of the British Empire and later as an independent nation ruled by a small white minority under a system called Apartheid, South African society was segregated along racial lines. Under Apartheid all individuals were categorized according to their race and non-White Africans were required to carry identity cards that dictated where they were allowed to live and work. Black Africans were confined to impoverished townships on the outskirts of cities like Cape Town and Johannesburg or so-called homelands. As they grew, these districts were periodically moved further from urban centers through forced removals that involved bulldozing shacks and the like. Segregation was enforced not just in housing but also in education, employment, and social settings. The racial ideology of Apartheid was strongly influenced by Nazism. Africans were viewed as racially inferior, protecting the purity of the White race was considered of paramount importance, and interracial sex was banned.

After decades of struggle, Apartheid finally came to an end when Nelson Mandela, head of the African National Congress, was released from jail in 1990, a new constitution was negotiated, and open elections were held in 1994, making Mandela the first president of a post-apartheid South Africa in which all citizens had equal rights and protections under the law.

The history of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa, as well as the struggles against them, have had a major influence on the literature and film of South Africa. District 9 reflects many of the conflicts of the Apartheid era.

Works of art that have emerged from the historical mindset of colonialism and apartheid, and therefore are critical of those practices, are called postcolonial and/or post-Apartheid. They are considered "post" because their thinking has moved beyond the old historical views of racial difference that supposedly justified segregation, persecution, and exploitation. Instead of embracing the colonial and Apartheid status quo, they aim to criticize (explicitly or implicitly) racist practices.

In what ways does District 9 reflect a postcolonial/post-Apartheid perspective? How does the presentation of alien invasion in District 9 differ from the mainstream British and American tradition of alien invasion fiction and film?