And this racism issue is idiotic. In general films have 2 hours to tell a complete story. In general, most films play on stereotypes. They have to. There’s just not enough time to NOT play off of the audiences preconceived notions if you can. Great films exploit this in interesting and unexpected ways, but a film is not automatically GUILTY of racism if it uses generalities to quickly set up characters.

See: White Chicks

And besides, a bunch of mostly white guys screaming racism on websites written and read by mostly white guys is not only sad, but stupid. It’s a movie directed by a guy who came from there, not by the grand master of the KKK. Get over it.

Listening to the bonus cast now…

(sorry to double post, but there is no edit button)

And yes, I brought up RE5 because the game had similar faults in its depiction of African cultures.

And this would be less relevant if the goddamn movie wasn’t about racism! It shoots itself in the foot.

Around the 10 minute mark when Jay is trying to steer the conversation to something other than the ship hovering and then Reed brings up Geosynchronous orbit!

Classic!

Racism – I don’t get why people are so sensitive when it comes to race in movies. Im white and my wife is black so maybe we are just too removed from the issue to get it but neither one of us thought this movie was racist to anyone besides aliens!

There were a white gang exploiting the aliens in the movie and it was called MNU! This feels like the King Kong is racist argument all over, its just hyper sensitivity and should be ignored.

Nigeria is home to some of the biggest criminal and scam organizations in the world and they don’t only revolve around email scams.

“Its the fact that the Nigerians were shown as near neanderthal, superstitious/voodoo cannibals is the result of a century of white colonial projection upon Subsaharan African cultures. Its very similar to Resident Evil 5 in that way.”

Clearly you don’t know about what goes on in Africa or for that matter Haiti, which is only a couple of hours from the US by air. Witch doctoring and superstition is rampant in some areas. Voodoo is very much alive in Haiti for example. Take a look at the film Ghosts of Cité Soley where gang members use Voodoo for protection.
It’s not the filmmakers responsibility to sugarcoat reality for the viewer so his view, which is largely constructed by Hollywood rather than actual research. In fact I’m more offended when a film portrays a “rainbow gang” of sorts where every race is visible.

People who call this film racist don’t know what they are talking about.

P.S. I actually typed out a longer response for you, Goon, but I realized it could be misconstrued, so I deleted it. Writing this postscript will probably make you more curious. Don’t worry about it. People already know I’m an idiot, and anything I say is not worth a second thought. I should probably stop typing.

And Fatbologna, even now I can’t think of anything new to say about the allegorical aspects, theme or story of District 9. Besides the racism issue of which I have little knowledge when it pertains to South Africa, I don’t know what else there is to talk about without getting into minutiae. Maybe we could have discussed how different District 9 would have been without the documentary aspects? I didn’t realize I came across so negative about District 9.

Patrick H., I apologize for being boring and annoying. I think “boring and annoying” pretty well sums up my personality.

But I will take all the Film Junk you give me, just so we’re clear.