This blog post examines alien discrimination and human selfishness through the film District 9, prompting us to reconsider the reality of foreign worker issues and the meaning of difference.
The Story of Discrimination in District 9
The film begins with an alien spacecraft crash-landing on Earth. The government designates the area ‘District 9’ and begins housing the aliens there. Most of the aliens in the film are not highly intelligent. They live focused solely on basic survival needs. This alien species possessed immense scientific technology, but the crash-landing on Earth resulted in the death of most of the aliens capable of higher thought. Consequently, the aliens lacked the capacity to wage war upon arriving on Earth. Instead, they are portrayed as beings bound by humans, forced to live according to human dictates.
While the aliens in the film do not work directly for humans, they trade their weapons and important technological products for trivial items like cat food. This mirrors the reality of foreign workers who live without proper recognition of their value. Foreign workers typically labor in places locals avoid, like garbage dumps, construction sites, and injection molding factories, often taking on low-paying or dangerous jobs. If foreign workers didn’t do these jobs, no one else would. In other words, without foreign workers, the foundation of industry would crumble. Yet, the film also depicts a society that devalues them simply because they aren’t citizens, even denying them minimum wage. Particularly egregious are unscrupulous employers who exploit foreign workers without acknowledging their worth, exemplified by the MNU company’s director in the film. MNU is a company obsessed with weapon development, and the director even uses aliens as targets for weapon firepower tests.
In the real world, too, the lives of foreign workers are often covered in documentaries. Even if a foreign worker suffers a disability due to an accident, the company turns a blind eye, leaving the worker unable to return home. They are discarded as easily as worn-out machine parts, replaced without a second thought.
One uniquely striking scene in the film involved agents traveling to collect signatures from aliens for their relocation to another region. During this process, the officers obtained signatures by any means necessary, regardless of the aliens’ consent, and illegally confiscated their weapons. This parallels the reality where foreign workers often don’t even know their rights exist, and even if they do, they struggle to get outside help, leaving them vulnerable to threats from employers. Even the law, the bare minimum of morality, fails them completely.
The film frequently features brutal scenes. Initially, one might assume these are included for entertainment value, but upon closer viewing, they evoke terror rather than fascination. When the MNU Director’s son-in-law transforms into an alien, the Director unhesitatingly attempts to use him as a test subject for weapon development. Furthermore, alien eggs are discovered and incinerated with flamethrowers, and individuals exploiting aliens for prostitution also appear. The film shows humans, despite their capacity for rational thought, failing to exercise that reason at all. In reality too, some employers despise and discriminate against foreign workers, treating them as beings worse than animals.
The Film District 9 and the Stanford Prison Experiment
In the film, we feel a profound sense of betrayal by characters like the employers. We might think they should never exist in this world. However, I want to consider a slightly different perspective. Were the employers truly evil from the start? I, too, have unconsciously discriminated—does that mean I also have the seeds of an evil employer within me? A relevant study comes to mind: the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Professor Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo selected 21 ordinary individuals, assigning half as fake guards and the other half as fake prisoners. They observed what unfolded while living in this simulated prison. Regarding the results, Zimbardo stated: “The situation won, and the people lost.” The fake guards, without being told to, woke the prisoners at dawn to punish them, locked them in solitary confinement, and even committed sexual abuse without hesitation. And yet, they were all ordinary people.
When I encountered this study, I wondered, ‘What if the roles of guards and prisoners were reversed?’ This question was answered by Wikus, the protagonist of District 9. He was originally an MNU executive but gradually transforms into an alien. Initially, Wikus couldn’t accept his transformed state and displayed selfishness, trying to use the aliens to revert only himself back to human. However, over time, he realized he was just an alien, and no human would help him. Ultimately, he became someone sharing life and death with the aliens. By descending from a position of strength to weakness, he naturally assumed the role of the weak resisting the strong.
Who is the protagonist Wickers?
It’s crucial that Wickers wasn’t inherently evil from the start. He isn’t the typical hero of alien invasion films; he appears as an ordinary, small-time citizen who rejoices in a promotion and yearns for his wife’s love. In reality, he didn’t mistreat the aliens out of hatred; he was forced into that behavior by circumstances at work to secure his promotion. In this regard, the film’s choice of a mockumentary format effectively reveals Wickers’ ordinary nature. Most events in the film unfold through Wickers answering questions in an interview format. This format draws the audience deeper into the film’s events and connects Wickers’ ordinary, small-town persona to us.
We, too, are ordinary people, no different from Wickers. When I first saw the film, I thought Wicker offered a new window into the foreign laborer issue. But as time passed, the image he presented was no different from the unscrupulous employers we despised—it was human nature itself. Depending on the situation, we too can be immoral like Wicker, or become the underdog resisting reality. Ultimately, the fact that human selfishness drives such change remains unchanged.
Our Stance on Discrimination and Difference
The core message of this film is about the problem of difference and discrimination. Let’s reconsider our perspective on foreign workers. Because I live in Korea as a citizen, I inevitably interpret everything within the framework of being a ‘citizen’. Conversely, if I go abroad, the people there will also distinguish me as not one of their own. When such differences are deliberately emphasized, it becomes discrimination. What we must do is acknowledge differences without belittling or discriminating against them. The film suggests that putting oneself in another’s shoes can prevent such discrimination. Just as Wicker gained enlightenment by transforming into an alien, we must accept others’ differences as they are.
Why is the film titled District 9, not District 6, the very hotbed of discrimination? Perhaps the director intended to convey a message: flip the number 6 upside down and see it as 9.
