District 9 and Human Rights

District 9 similarly to the Most Human Human reading uses something non-human to help better define for ourselves what exactly is human. Humans are often defining themselves against an  Other. Most nationalist propaganda will focus more one vilifying what separates the nation against the supposed enemy, just look through any of the propaganda of the two world wars. In District 9 the treatment and attitude toward the “prawn” starts define who we are as humans and what true value we place on notions of human rights.

The prawn are clearly sentient creatures, perhaps most of them are the equivalent of a lower class or are some sort of sub-species to be workers. Ultimately it is not important the details of what are the prawn biologically. What is the important question is, “do they deserve to be treated with the same dignity as most of believe humans should?” When the prawn are found they are in a clearly desperate situation. But attempting to initially aid them all the same difficulties of accommodating refugees arise. They separate them and confine them. They do not allow them the same rights that documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN or the Bill of Rights allow. They try to mask things with false and shade legal reasoning but they are moving them to as Wikus says “basically a concentration camp”.

It may be easy for the MNU soldiers to and the Johannesburg to not see the prawn as deserving any rights as they prawn can be so different and alien to us. It may even be easy for the audience to do so. Yet this ultimately doesn’t justify any of their abuses. When Wikus begins to transform into a prawn, however we see the abuses of these rights tied to a human that we are able to more easily empathize with. He is treated like a slab of meat. They discuss cutting him open and killing him for their studies right next to him as he begs his father in law to help him. This lack of care or empathy doesn’t feel very human to me. It feels more robotic. There is also the clearly psychotic MNU commander, Koobus, feels inhuman in pure enjoyment of killing. By the end of the movie a more terrifying question is raised. With what the prawn Christopher Johnson has seen of humanity what will he do. The fake documentary interviewee speculates that they may return and declare war. After seeing the amazingly powerful weapons this thought is certainly sobering.