http://blogs.channel24.co.za/celebratingmovies/South-African-Cinema-an-essay-on-authenticity-African-Cinema-and-the-debate-around-a-national-identity

I wrote that a few years ago about South African national identity within the larger context of African Cinema. When I look at it now I can’t believe I did, because I swear to god all the academic lingo has seeped out of the wound I sustained from working in the film industry. I’m sure there are many faults, but I think we’re on the same page though, or that we, at the very least, have the same agenda. If you scroll down to the last section, you’ll find a piece entitled THE SOCIAL RELEVANCE OF ALIVE IN JOBURG. Read it, I think you’ll appreciate it.

I just find your wording of certain assertions in your piece to be overly critical of something which is very simple, and which has never happened in SA before:

A cool story universe (District 9 Township Wasteland) married to a cool character arc (premise of District 9 bureaucrat eventually becoming that which he fights against and is initially diametrically opposed to).

SA filmmakers have forever gotten lost in either the cool story universe, or the cool character arc - I don’t think they’ve ever really successfully married the two, but perhaps that’s because I wanna see more films like this, and less like Totsi or other SA films which guilt trip white Afrikaners.

Unfortunately I read this as your schizophrenic rendering, and not the backwards married to the the technological. Are we talking modal or thematic qualities? Perhaps you should have clarified, because I just saw it as an unfounded criticism, which now makes a little more sense (I think).

Blomkamp’s unique aesthetic is indeed thanks in part to his displacement to Canada, but before him Sharlto Copley and Simon Hansen (former partners and both friends of Blomkamp, who spotted his talent at age 14 while he was still living in SA) had been pioneering visual FX in South Africa and were trying to do what he did. They just didn’t have a Peter Jackson behind them. I have seen some of Blomkamp’s earlier work that you won’t find online. He was into it (and good at it) long before he left our sunny shores, and I think the progenitor for D9 - Alive, is a result of his youth spent in SA.

As for racism? I dunno, I must have read spacism wrong. Silly me!!

I think my big problem with your post is I can’t figure out whether you’re praising it or condemning it, because I fear you lose me in an overtly academic critique - nothing wrong with this, but if you write in such a fashion you automatically open yourself up to critics.

So what is it? You call it the most profound SA film since Gods, but at the same time you say “The allegorical spear at the centre of the feature does deliver some sharp thrusts but it can’t support the narrative it’s yolked to and promptly self-destructs.”

I disagree. Why is it rated so highly on IMDb when compared to other sci-fi actioners from this year. What about it’s Metacritic score?

It’s not perfect, but I think you give it less credit than it’s due. Otherwise, thank you for the satisfying debate around D9. My biggest concern is just that it’s not a one time thing, and that it opens up the doors for other filmmakers who want to do what Blomkamp and Copley are doing

I will concede that the term “slumsploitation” is crudely Marxist but the post itself doesn’t attach a connotation to it (and the inverted comas indicate that it was borrowed). Whether you like it or not, films are a commodity and the subject matter of films is commodified. This is a fact that we tend to forget when we get excited about the latest flick. We shouldn’t! Insomuch as we find the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic qualities in Blomkamp’s “technological” fused with “backwards” aesthetic (your antonyms), the word schizophrenic is a clinical description (which means that doctors use it and that nothing derogatory is implied). Moreover, considering how Blomkamp’s displacement from South Africa informs his unique aesthetic is an original and, to my mind, fascinating take on things. There’s a PhD in there! Be my guest.

As the post states, my interest in District 9 stems from the allegory that drives Blomkamp’s seminal project, Alive in Joburg. Stating that the narrative aspect of the feature can’t sustain (and proceeds to destroy) its allegorical core doesn’t infer that the film isn’t worth watching. In fact, I even provide the film with a bombastic claim to fame: “District 9 is the most profoundly South African film since The Gods Must Be Crazy.” That’s priceless (and I’m pretty sure that the ad-man in Neill would approve). Besides, few critics have bothered to tether this work to a South African filmmaking heritage that people like me are trying to construct in our national consciousness.

For the record, Profoundly South African is opposed to binary perceptions about the way people write about things like films as well as skewered ideas about the reasons why. It’s not about saying whether something is good or bad and the desire to challenge easy ways of looking at things is a legitimate motivation. District 9 should have taught you that (or were you simply seduced by the pretty pictures and how they made you feel about who you are and where you come from?). See it for what it is? Why would I want to diminish my experience? Stick to the bigger critics by all means but, if it wasn’t for people like me, there’d be less salt (and reading about popular culture would be a little bland).

“The compelling stylistic amalgam earned director Neill Blomkamp a string of jobs to promote the release of Halo 3, which in turn got him earmarked to direct a feature based on the Halo franchise.”

The Halo 3 commercials (which subsequently won Blomkamp a Grand Prix at Cannes) happened AFTER he’d been earmarked for Halo. Jackson picked him for Halo months before the Halo 3 films happened - it seems to me as if the Halo 3 films were a consolation and attempt by Microsoft to convince the studios that Blomkamp could indeed do it.

“What else but Blomkamp’s displacement from life in South Africa as well as his need as an immigrant to resolve his South African identity could result in such a schizophrenic rendering of the social and political environment he grew up in?”

Ok, this is opinion, and I’ll give you mine. You’re being overly critical. Schizophrenic rendering? Have you looked at Blomkamp’s previous short films? Tetravaal - Third World Robocop? No my friend, you’ve got a filmmaker who loves sci-fi and has done what no-one else has ever managed to do - fuse the highly technological with the almost backwards and African. Of course he’ll have critics because of that, but I think this comment of yours is damning when damnation is not deserved.

“Similarly, everything conceptually brilliant about District 9 is told in the six minutes of Alive in Joburg. The allegorical spear at the centre of the feature does deliver some sharp thrusts but it can’t support the narrative it’s yolked to and promptly self-destructs. Nevertheless, we do get to see guns that turn people into pasta sauce (which is what most people came for in the first place).”

Can’t you see it for what it is? It’s a sci-fi film. Yes, it has a socio-political subtext, but hell, instead of seeing it as a ‘racist’ film that relies on ’slumsploitation’ (Jesus Christ, what will they think of next), see it as a film which sets itself in a part of South Africa which is very real for millions of our fellow country men, and see it as a way of re-imagining it - this is the first film I’ve seen in ages (or perhaps ever) in which the Afrikaner is actually redeemed. Instead of looking for all the negative aspects, look at some of the positives.

This film touches on DNA-encoded weapons, PMCs, arms manufacture and multi-national corporations. Everything else is a vehicle for this in my mind - this is what’s really being criticized, but I suppose in your crusade to find fault you couldn’t see past the tropes that the politically correct among us are hung up on. The film is about more than that, but beyond that, bigger critics have spoken and I’ll take their opinions with less salt.