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          In 1982, a massive star ship bearing a bedraggled alien population, nicknamed "The Prawns," appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa. Twenty-eight years later, the initial welcome by the human population has faded. The refugee camp where the aliens were located has deteriorated into a militarized ghetto called District 9, where they are confined and exploited in squalor. In 2010, the munitions corporation, Multi-National United, is contracted to forcibly evict the population with operative Wikus van der Merwe in charge. In this operation, Wikus is exposed to a strange alien chemical and must rely on the help of his only two new 'Prawn' friends.
          There are two layers in the film, the obvious, and the underlying layer. The first being the overall plot, which is how Wikus tries to evict the alien residences out of their current location, into a new, smaller location known as District 10. Everything seems to be going according to plan until he stumbles onto an alien chemical which thus turns him into a 'Prawn'. He then needs the help of the aliens he was just recently trying to evict, to return to normal. Then comes the second, deeper layer. The overall population of Johannesburg wants the alien culture to leave, because they think that they're using up space and resources. One woman even says, "They're spending so much money to keep them here, when they could be using it for other things...". Once Wikus starts to change into one of the 'Prawns' he then is hunted out by the government to see how his body has changed. This shows that the overall mission of the Multi-National United is not quite as helpful as it sounds, they want to know more about the alien technologie and weapons, for profit for themselves.
           District 9 isn't your regular science-fiction film. I mean, sure it has aliens, and battles and such, but the whole sense of it all goes a lot deeper. The fact that the film is shot in a documentary style makes it that much more believable, as well as conveys the theme of darkness quite well. Also, the setting really does the movie well in terms of conveying darkness, due to the shanty town-like setting, it really makes everything so believable. One scene comes to mind, is that, this company who supposedly has "the best interest" for the aliens, is at one point shown through closed doors, that they're really using the aliens as human targets to figure out how the alien weaponry works. This really showed how this aren't always what they seem to be.
          Characters can easily represent darkness by typically being the antagonist, or simply being an evil person. In District 9, it's all based on perspective to who the evil is. At the start of the movie, Wikus is trying to evict the aliens from their homes so he is evil to them, but the second half on the movie, he's fighting against MNU, the company he onced served, as so he is evil to them.
         I was able to make numerous connections in regards to this film. A connect from text to text would be the film Law Abiding Citizen, where everyone is turned against the main character, and he is forced to fight and save himself. A connection from text to self would be how I hate going to the doctor. For example, if I start getting sick, then my mom will say "Oh maybe we should have someone check you out to make sure you're okay.", to which I usually reply: "No, I'll be fine.". This is essentially what happened in District 9, only on a much bigger scale. A connection from text to world, would be how hypocritical some people can be when it comes to certain things. For example is the overuse of resources on our planet. Some people go on and on complaining about how we need to find different sources of energy, and then they go and fill up their car with gas. This relates to the movie because they population of Johanessburg really doesn't want to put up with the new alien population.
        Finally I connect this all to the essential question: How does the media shape our view of the world? This is where I found District 9 to be extremely powerful as a movie. There were advertisments everywhere saying this such as, "This area is for humans only" or things such as "10 non-human sightings today". These weren't only just in the film, but were used as real ads for everyday life in our world. It really showed how the Multi-Nation United company was influencing the population to believe that these creatures were bad and should be kept seperate from the regular public.