Dear sciSCREENer,
Please note that the Lars and the Real Girl sciSCREEN has been re-scheduled to Thursday 29th May.
Date: Thursday 29th May
Time: 6pm
Venue: Hadyn Ellis Building, Maindy Road, Cardiff
Book at: Lars and the Real Girl
Tickets are free but must be booked in advance
This event is sponsored by the Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute as part of a series of events exploring mental health and neuroscience issues.
Please also note that our website - www.cardiffsciscreen.co.uk - is currently experiencing a few glitches. Apologies for any inconvenience.
Thursday, 8 May 2014
Thursday, 1 May 2014
District 9: Prawns, Pests and Matter out of Place
The following is an essay written by Jamie Lewis and relates to the District 9 sciSCREEN.
District 9 (2009) is a science fiction film that in many ways is less about an imagined future and is more a social commentary on the here and now. There is no doubt that the film is an allegory for racism, ethnicity, South African Apartheid and, perhaps more widely, xenophobia. To this end, District 9 has some connections to the film Planet of the Apes (1968) which has also been described as an allegory for racism and arms-warfare (although this has been criticised in other quarters). Weapons, along with social and class politics, as well as other worlds are also central themes in Blomkamp’s most recent film Elysium (2013). In Elysium, humans have built and colonised an artificial ‘planet’ in space, which can be seen from Earth. In District 9, however, the aliens, colloquially known by the derogatory name ‘prawns’, have presumably come from space to Earth. It is this concept of the ‘alien’ in District 9 that I discuss in this short essay.
First let us compare the alien in this film with another film around the same time – Avatar (2009). In both District 9 (Wikus van der Merwe) and Avatar (Jake Sully) the central character in the film is a human who becomes an ‘alien’. It is, however, arguably easier to empathise with those blue, sentient creatures from Avatar, as they were beautiful, idealised, moral beings. District 9 makes the audience worker harder to sympathise. The aliens are far from beautiful. In fact, they are meant to disgust, and for the most part, unlike Avatar, we don’t see them as morally superior. Indeed, in large parts of the film, they are presented as grotesque savages and scavengers. All the same, we do have to empathise with them as victims. Accordingly, District 9 is much more politically powerful than Avatar – as what keeps us treating other people humanely isn’t tested by treating people that we admire with dignity (Na’vi), but treating people we don’t understand with the same level dignity (Prawns). Thus, despite the film’s central characters being from a faraway world, its central concept is about something very human – the film is a commentary on humanity and inhumanity.
The setting for District 9 is Johannesburg, a place not only home to the prawns of District 9 but also in real life the ‘parktown prawn’ – a six-legged, cold-blooded insect with feelers on top of its head and underneath its jaw. These creatures can grow up to 10 cm masticating their way through a diet of snails, slugs and vegetation. Indeed, the parktown prawn is the inspiration behind the look of the District 9 prawn explaining their grotesque insect like features. Other resemblances between District 9’s prawn and the parktown prawn include the parktown prawn’s tendency to discharge a blob of noxious black sludge, and a penchant for cat and dog food as well as garden pests.
“Give them one hundred cans. – Hundred, One Hundred!”
“Yes, yes, but we take them all now”.
“Alright, boys! Get them the catfood – hurry up”
District 9 (2009)
Unfortunately for the residents of Johannesberg, the parktown prawn’s eating habits don’t end there. Parktown prawns also feed on floor boards, furniture and rugs. Thus, they may be a friend for the gardener but they are certainly a pest for the household dweller. Mary Douglas is important here if we are to unpack the symbolism behind the District 9 prawn. Douglas was a British social anthropologist best known for her work on human culture, rituals and symbolism. The ‘home’ for Mary Douglas was less a particular space and more a place brought under control (Fudge, 2011). For the most part, parktown prawns become a ‘pest’ when they are out of place. In the garden, they can be conceived as a friend of the South African greenkeeper, ridding the garden of unwanted gastropoda. In the house they are deemed a pest; invading the home, munching their way through furnishings, damaging property and ultimately making the place untidy or ‘dirty’.
Douglas’ seminal work first published in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966) traces the word and meaning of ‘dirt’. Pollution or dirt, she argues is the consequence of ‘matter being out of place’. An example would be bodily fluids, important to the internal workings of one's body, but which on leaving the body become seen as filthy and dangerous. In a similar vein, the prawns of District 9 are also out of place. The following extract is part of a conversation between Christopher Johnson – one of the alien ship’s officers – and his young son.
Christopher Johnson's Son: How many moons does our planet have?
Christopher Johnson: Seven.
Christopher Johnson's Son: This planet only has one. I can't wait to see our planet again... it's bigger than this one, isn't it?
Christopher Johnson: [switches off holographic atlas of presumably the Alien home planet] Enough.
Christopher Johnson's Son: We go home now?
Christopher Johnson: Not home, no. This is where we must go.
[shows his son an MNU brochure outlining "Sanctuary Park Alien Relocation Camp" aka District 10]
Christopher Johnson: See that tent there? That might be ours.
Christopher Johnson's Son: I want to go home!
Christopher Johnson: We can't go home. Not anymore.
District 9 (2009)
As much as the film’s message is about difference and tolerance, it is also about the aliens’ attempts – as E.T. (1982) might put it – 'to go home'. At best, the prawns are viewed as ‘pests’ by the humans as they have inhabited their world. This, of course, is why Wikus’ is tasked with overseeing the mass eviction of the alien prawns from the town to a huge camp out-of-town. Unlike the parktown prawn though they do more than infest the home, they overrun the structures of social order and social categorisation as well. It is only when Wikus begins metamorphosing into a prawn himself does he begin to understand these beings and begin to understand that social categories of place, space, home and alien are malleable, constantly shifting and, most importantly, socially generated. During his metamorphosis, and of possible interest to Douglas, Wikus also begins to see the humans with their powerful weaponry and interest in acquiring the alien weaponry as more dangerous than the prawns. Just as the parktown prawn is mischaracterised as a prawn (they are actually king crickets), Wikus, realises he has mischaracterised the District 9 aliens. They are more than bottomfeeders- they too have a society, and they too have families. Most importantly, they too have homes, and the slums they are forced to inhabit on earth are not brought under control enough for the prawns' liking so as to appropriately function as a new 'home'.
The Hunger Games and Roman History
The following essay is written by Guy Bradley and relates to the sciSCREEN centering on The Hunger Games.
The Roman allusions in the Hunger Games are myriad and clearly intentional. Suzanne Collins has stated in interviews that the ancient world, and in particular gladiatorial games, was the inspiration for the idea of an autocratic government forcing people to fight to the death for the entertainment of the masses.
The link is made explict throughout the series. To give some examples. The name for the fictional state of Panem, Latin for bread, is a direct lifting from Juvenal’s (and Fronto’s) famous phrase that the plebs are only interested in panem et circenses, bread and circuses. Juvenal is referring to chariot racing in the circus, circenses, but Collins draws more heavily on the gladiatorial games. The term ‘Games’ comes from the Latin ‘Ludi’, originally meaning festivals with a variety of different entertainments (gladiatorial combats became popular only towards the end of the Roman Republic, and never surpassed chariot racing).
The idea of a Capitol dominating and exploiting its outlying districts echoes the primary place of Rome within an empire made up of provinces. The names of the privileged elite in the Capitol are predominantly Roman, creating overtones of a Rome-like decadence. For instance, the autocratic president Coriolanus echoes the arrogant patrician of the same name from early Rome; the gamesmaker Seneca, like his namesake who was an advisor the emperor Nero, is forced to commit suicide by an all-powerful leader. Other names are Roman in origin, but less directly mirror their ancient counterparts: the talkshow host Caesar alluding to the dictator Julius Caesar, and Plutarch, a Greek biographer in the Roman empire whose work inspired many of Shakespeare’s ancient characters
It is not just Rome that provides the source material here. The 'Reaping' of tributes consciously reworks the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Crete demanded a regular annual tribute of youths from Athens, who would be sacrificed to the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Collins says that Katniss is a ‘futuristic Theseus’, the hero who volunteers to face the Minotaur and by killing him overturns this cruel system. Spartacus is another acknowledged allusion, a slave forced to fight in the arena, who then leads a rebellion against Rome – luckily Katniss meets a better end than his followers, who were crucified along the Appian Way.
The Games themselves echo many Roman themes. Just as in Rome, the staging of the Games is as important as the event itself. The tributes are paraded before the adoring crowds in chariots, just as gladiators paraded in their colourful armour before fighting. Gladiators were typically slaves, condemned to fight; yet they could win considerable prestige through success in the games, and the lure of the arena was such that even free Romans volunteered on occasion to fight.
Training and skill mattered as much to Roman gladiators as in the Hunger Games. In the Hunger Games the tributes from some districts, career tributes or ‘Careers’ for short, are trained for the Games from an early age. All tributes get some rudimentary training in weaponry and survival skills, in the equivalent of Roman gladiator barracks, with help from winners of the Games (just as gladiator trainers, lanistae, were often retired gladiators). Like gladiators, some tributes have specialised training in various weaponry, though archer gladiators were rare: presumably the risk to the audience was too high, though predictably the ‘bad’ emperor Commodus had a go on regular occasions. In the Hunger Games, comparative amateurs come up against more highly trained adversaries. Untrained tributes are expected to have little chance and in Rome, highly trained or veteran gladiators seemed to have much better chances of winning. However, one of the most notable contrasts with Rome is that the imagined scenario is more bloodthirsty than most gladiatorial games. One of the surprises that has emerged from modern study is that gladiators were relatively infrequently killed. They spent much time training, didn’t fight very often, and it’s estimated that only 10% or so were executed by their opponent when they lost in the 1st c. AD. The editor, the provider of the Games, has a financial incentive not to allow too many gladiators to be killed off: they represented a substantial investment of his time and expense that it would be better to reuse later. The Darwinian scenario of the Hunger Games is closer to the execution of prisoners by sword and by condemnation to the beasts that accompanied the more ritualised and carefully staged pairings of gladiator types.
There are some interesting parallels between the behaviour of the audience of the arena and of the Hunger Games, though the televising of the spectacle leaves the audience more detached from the action. The whims of both, and their thirst for blood, ultimately drives the spectacle and influences the outcome. The gamesmakers manipulate the situation to favour particular outcomes, and play the audience. In Rome the emperor is the primary patron of the plebs, and losing them would make his position precarious. Appealing to the crowd and to the verdict of the gamesmaker/editor is critical in both scenarios, and more realistic than films like Gladiator, which probably underplay the gladiators’ subjection to the whims of the crowd.
Clearly then this is not a positive conception of ancient Rome: contrast, for instance, the way that the founders of the US constitution drew on Rome for its Republican political models. Roman history has always been a source of negative as well as positive examples, from which you may, as Livy says, ‘select what to emulate and what to avoid’. Inevitably it is difficult to escape the influence of our sources: the Hunger Games draws on the moralising perspective of ancient authors like Juvenal to emphasise the complicity and shallowness of the audience. There’s also something of Gibbon’s outlook from the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the decadence of the Capitol’s corrupt elite. But some elements are rather perceptive and plausible, particularly the reflections on power and popularity, and the emphasis on the nexus of elite power and the whims of the audience. Just as the gladiatorial games were ultimately a manifestation of the powerlessness of slaves in Roman society, so the Hunger Games provides a powerful warning about the consequences of autocracy, wrapped up in some surprisingly traditional clothing.
The link is made explict throughout the series. To give some examples. The name for the fictional state of Panem, Latin for bread, is a direct lifting from Juvenal’s (and Fronto’s) famous phrase that the plebs are only interested in panem et circenses, bread and circuses. Juvenal is referring to chariot racing in the circus, circenses, but Collins draws more heavily on the gladiatorial games. The term ‘Games’ comes from the Latin ‘Ludi’, originally meaning festivals with a variety of different entertainments (gladiatorial combats became popular only towards the end of the Roman Republic, and never surpassed chariot racing).
The idea of a Capitol dominating and exploiting its outlying districts echoes the primary place of Rome within an empire made up of provinces. The names of the privileged elite in the Capitol are predominantly Roman, creating overtones of a Rome-like decadence. For instance, the autocratic president Coriolanus echoes the arrogant patrician of the same name from early Rome; the gamesmaker Seneca, like his namesake who was an advisor the emperor Nero, is forced to commit suicide by an all-powerful leader. Other names are Roman in origin, but less directly mirror their ancient counterparts: the talkshow host Caesar alluding to the dictator Julius Caesar, and Plutarch, a Greek biographer in the Roman empire whose work inspired many of Shakespeare’s ancient characters
It is not just Rome that provides the source material here. The 'Reaping' of tributes consciously reworks the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Crete demanded a regular annual tribute of youths from Athens, who would be sacrificed to the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Collins says that Katniss is a ‘futuristic Theseus’, the hero who volunteers to face the Minotaur and by killing him overturns this cruel system. Spartacus is another acknowledged allusion, a slave forced to fight in the arena, who then leads a rebellion against Rome – luckily Katniss meets a better end than his followers, who were crucified along the Appian Way.
The Games themselves echo many Roman themes. Just as in Rome, the staging of the Games is as important as the event itself. The tributes are paraded before the adoring crowds in chariots, just as gladiators paraded in their colourful armour before fighting. Gladiators were typically slaves, condemned to fight; yet they could win considerable prestige through success in the games, and the lure of the arena was such that even free Romans volunteered on occasion to fight.
Training and skill mattered as much to Roman gladiators as in the Hunger Games. In the Hunger Games the tributes from some districts, career tributes or ‘Careers’ for short, are trained for the Games from an early age. All tributes get some rudimentary training in weaponry and survival skills, in the equivalent of Roman gladiator barracks, with help from winners of the Games (just as gladiator trainers, lanistae, were often retired gladiators). Like gladiators, some tributes have specialised training in various weaponry, though archer gladiators were rare: presumably the risk to the audience was too high, though predictably the ‘bad’ emperor Commodus had a go on regular occasions. In the Hunger Games, comparative amateurs come up against more highly trained adversaries. Untrained tributes are expected to have little chance and in Rome, highly trained or veteran gladiators seemed to have much better chances of winning. However, one of the most notable contrasts with Rome is that the imagined scenario is more bloodthirsty than most gladiatorial games. One of the surprises that has emerged from modern study is that gladiators were relatively infrequently killed. They spent much time training, didn’t fight very often, and it’s estimated that only 10% or so were executed by their opponent when they lost in the 1st c. AD. The editor, the provider of the Games, has a financial incentive not to allow too many gladiators to be killed off: they represented a substantial investment of his time and expense that it would be better to reuse later. The Darwinian scenario of the Hunger Games is closer to the execution of prisoners by sword and by condemnation to the beasts that accompanied the more ritualised and carefully staged pairings of gladiator types.
There are some interesting parallels between the behaviour of the audience of the arena and of the Hunger Games, though the televising of the spectacle leaves the audience more detached from the action. The whims of both, and their thirst for blood, ultimately drives the spectacle and influences the outcome. The gamesmakers manipulate the situation to favour particular outcomes, and play the audience. In Rome the emperor is the primary patron of the plebs, and losing them would make his position precarious. Appealing to the crowd and to the verdict of the gamesmaker/editor is critical in both scenarios, and more realistic than films like Gladiator, which probably underplay the gladiators’ subjection to the whims of the crowd.
Clearly then this is not a positive conception of ancient Rome: contrast, for instance, the way that the founders of the US constitution drew on Rome for its Republican political models. Roman history has always been a source of negative as well as positive examples, from which you may, as Livy says, ‘select what to emulate and what to avoid’. Inevitably it is difficult to escape the influence of our sources: the Hunger Games draws on the moralising perspective of ancient authors like Juvenal to emphasise the complicity and shallowness of the audience. There’s also something of Gibbon’s outlook from the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the decadence of the Capitol’s corrupt elite. But some elements are rather perceptive and plausible, particularly the reflections on power and popularity, and the emphasis on the nexus of elite power and the whims of the audience. Just as the gladiatorial games were ultimately a manifestation of the powerlessness of slaves in Roman society, so the Hunger Games provides a powerful warning about the consequences of autocracy, wrapped up in some surprisingly traditional clothing.
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