David Smith, Guardian (Manchester), September 2, 2009
The squatters of Chiawelo share the District 9 limelight with another group on the bottom rung of society.
Nigerian immigrants play a large part in the film—taking the roles of gangsters, prostitutes or witch-doctors. They are depicted eating alien flesh or having sex with the creatures. Many Nigerians are furious.
An internet backlash is under way with an online petition and a Facebook group, “District 9 Hates Nigerians”, accusing the film of xenophobia.
One blogger, Nicole Stamp, wrote: “That’s Hollywood’s Africa, isn’t it. Black Africans shown as degenerate savages who’ll have sex with non-humans and are pretty damn eager to eat people. Disgusting.”
There was further criticism yesterday from the Nigerian-born British actor Hakeem Kae-Kazim, who appeared in the films Hotel Rwanda and Wolverine.
He told South Africa’s Beeld newspaper that many Nigerians were upset about the film. “I have lived in South Africa,” he said. “The country has so many beautiful things to offer . . . its problems can’t be ascribed only to a small group of people.”
On Facebook, he wrote: “If the African continent truly wants to be liberated, we cannot sit back and allow this depiction of a ‘few rotten apples’ to be spread across the world.”
He expressed concern that District 9 would reinforce negative stereotypes of all Africans.
“The idea that it’s not only Nigerians, but all Africans who behave in that way, will be spread across the world. I find that to be a painful thought. The manner in which the Nigerians are depicted cannot be justified.”
Original article
(Posted on September 16, 2009)
Comments
I wonder how many Nigerians have actually seen the film? Or are they just spouting off because they heard or read someone else spouting off? What a bunch of whining cry babies. And the “British” Nigerian born actor, Mr Unpronouncable wants to blame a SciFi film for spreading negative stereotypes about Africans? What about Africans spreading negative stereotypes about Africans? They ARE a negative stereotype! As usual, Blacks blaming others for the way they are portrayed.
District 9 is tame and barely scratches the surface on black behavior. Any movie that truthfully depicted documented behavior black Africa in Africa and abroad would be so violent and perverted it would be banned in every nation on earth…
Hakeem Kae-Kazim …”expressed concern that District 9 would reinforce negative stereotypes of all Africans.”
Seems like he’s more concerned about the realism of District 9 in this regard.
Rather than being happy with the white societies that gave them Internet access with which to post these messages, these Nigerian fools are complaining about the way in which they’re depicted in some movie!
Well, clean up your own act, Nigerians, and maybe the rest of the world won’t have such a negative image of you! How many times do you direct your venom toward the Nigerian email scammers, who have done more to sully the reputation of Nigerians (if such a reputation can be any further sullied) than the entire output of Hollywood.
Have you ever heard of a Nigerian grassroots campaign to stop the Nigerian email frauds? Me neither.
This reminds me of how the residents of Gary Indiana direct more venom towards the local newspaper for covering Gary crime news than they do toward the criminals themselves. It’s all about public relations as far as blacks are concerened, not about reality. Kind of a modern day belief in voodoo.
A wonderful movie by the way. Despite some reviews showing it as having a pro-immigration bias, I didn’t get this at all from the movie.
Can we just enjoy a movie or entertainment without everyone making some political, racial, social commentary out of it? I betcha soon they’ll call “Ghost” racist the good guy was Patrick Swayze, his sneaky medium was Whoopi Goldberg (a black woman), and he was killed in the movie by Willie Lopez, a Puerto Rican.
I know this may seem odd coming from an avid supporter of American Renaissance but…has anyone asked what the (black) South Africans think of those “friendly Nigerian immigrants” (I’ve seen the film and only a fool would think that it was conflating Nigerians with Nigerians in South Africa )
I’m actually quite surprised the liberals aren’t totally on the warpath over District 9. The movie shows south african blacks exactly the way they are…..which is to say, extremely violent, depraved psychopaths that worship black magic.
I was quite surprised to see the truth portrayed in that movie. I expected them to draw parallels between blacks and the aliens and then blame “environment” (ie white oppression) for these social ills. Instead, the movie makes a STRONG case for seggregation and really demonstrates the fact that integration leads to balkanization, conflict and racial animosity and exploitation. Even goes so far as to show white people as initially strong supporters of racial togetherness, human (and in this case non-human) rights, altruism etc. etc. And all that just evaporates in the face of decades of actual contact with the other. It goes to the extreme to show a complete lack of empathy for the other, that is inevitable in the face of the other’s alieness. In the inhumane behavior directed towards the aliens, because they are, in fact, not human, we see clearly how this inhumanity becomes a part of interacting with those different than ourselves because altruism is rooted in only how similar they are to ourselves. If we aren’t similar, it’s impossible to maintain that attitude. Whites are better at it….but only to a point. Contact and actual experience with the differences of the other always destroys this. War is the inevitable consequence. Often, with a genocidal pattern.
Something to be very careful of.
The reason this Nigerian is complaining is not because the behaviors are stereotyped, but because Africans have been known to kill people, eat the body parts, and also have sex with four-legged animals. The Nigerian is furious because the movie depicts acts that are still being practiced, whether he likes it or not.
To Tim in Indiana:
When it comes to crime in Gary, Bantus react the same way today, as their beloved messiah Richard Hatcher did over 40 years ago. He’d foam at the mouth, and accuse anyone of mentioning Gary’s high crime rate as “racist”. Deep down, he knew that virtually 100% of Gary’s crimes were being committed by his own people -Gary is some 90% Bantu, after all. But, he had to save face with his own people, and so would hammer away by blaming guns for the crimes being committed by Gary criminals - not the criminals.
This is standard operating procedure in Bantu communities today; but more importantly this train of thought sums up why Bantus are woefully underdeveloped in Africa, and why they are so messed up in non-Bantu countries across the Earth wherein they reside.
You know the old expression, “a pig in a parlor is still a pig” - well, a Bantu in Beverley Hills or the White House, is still a Bantu.
“I have lived in South Africa,” he said.
Not recently you haven’t. You got out, apparently, and now live in Britain which used to be safe before it opened its floodgates to the great unwashed like you.
The country has so many beautiful things to offer … its problems can’t be ascribed only to a small group of people.”
Yes they damn well can. Ask any white farmer or any tourist that’s been mugged or violated.
In answer to all the question about exactly WHY these Nigerians are whining about a movie when their country is near the bottom of the list of the World’s Most Unlivable Countries, I can only say:
THE TRUTH HURTS.
In Flemington, a suburb of Melbourne, there are four public Housing (ie, taxpayer-funded) towers filled with Sudanese, Ethiopians etc. The ‘community leader’ - someone named Ahmed - claims that they hang around causing trouble because ‘they ain’t got nothing to do’.
Everyone interviewed complains about ‘racist police’ etc etc etc. One troublemaking idiot says, ‘We have rights, this is Australia’.
They are all Muslims - one comments, ‘We have no role models’.
Of course they are incapable of behaving like rational human beings without a ‘role model’.
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
“District 9” isn’t the only movie this decade that depicts black African brutality for what it is. See “Tears of the Sun,” “Hotel Rwanda,” “The Last King of Scotland,” “Lord of War,” and “Blood Diamond.” Question: How did the filmmakers manage to corral black actors to play their parts?
I admit I’m confused now as I heard that this movie was very anti white and was a metaphor for supporting third world immigration. I haven’t seen it. If you’ve seen this movie, what is your take on it?
“Can we just enjoy a movie or entertainment without everyone making some political, racial, social commentary out of it?”
The fact is there are very few movies being made today that don’t have some kind of agenda attached to it. We don’t even go to the theatre anymore and instead stay home and watch movies that are more than 20 years old. The money you spend in those places is funneled into some anti-White cause and used against you. I don’t even believe profit is a factor anymore when they’re churning this trash out as long there’s a possibility it might influence a few people.
5 — Anonymous wrote at 8:28 PM on September 16:
——————
Absolutely true. It was a complete surprise. The bulk of the aliens are moronic, vile, violent troublemakers. To be blunt, a lot of their behavior, especially in the news clips at the beginning of the film, show the lower IQ aliens to be similar to blacks in behavior - as in when demonstrating that what we see as a tragedy, they find amusing. Of course there’s the smarter alien(s) too, but this film was different in that you get the idea that there was a ‘bell curve’ so to speak among the aliens when it comes to brainpower, just as there is in humans.
If anything, the movie showed that the aliens and humans should be separated just as certain peoples should be separated. Nothing pro-immigration at all. Very surprising. The director (and his friend who co-wrote the screenplay with him) grew up in S. Africa, and one can’t help but feel that they took what they witnessed in Soweto and elsewhere and ‘applied’ factual conditions and behaviors to create the alien’s ‘culture’.
The Nigerians in the film are a small bunch of gangsters who believe in cannibalism, are very violent, superstitious, impulsive, ignorant, and are childlike in many ways. In other words, they behave like hundreds of millions of everyday Africans in the real world.
One can’t help but note that Peter Jackson, the director of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy produced this feature, nursed it along. I have to believe this fellow may have a good idea as to what’s really going on the West. After all, Tolkien did. That’s one reason he wrote the “Lord of the Rings” books. Go ahead, look it up. He was a racialist.
The lead actor in “District 9” did a great job of playing a sort of nerdy/everyday family man tossed into unusual circumstances (to say the least).
I admit I’m confused now as I heard that this movie was very anti white and was a metaphor for supporting third world immigration. I haven’t seen it. If you’ve seen this movie, what is your take on it?
The problem is that it depicts Africans too accurately. It also depicts more or less how society would react if a couple million aliens from a kaput ship were marooned in Johannesburg. The aliens are depicted as rough, and most are uneducated, but the main characters are a white guy and the aliens’ most brilliant scientist who have to team up to get an enzyme soup back from some big corporation. That’s all I’ll say to prevent from spoiling it too much.
This movie is a science friction and I do not understand what the fuss is about. In every movie, there is bound to be at least a line that relates to our kind or the things we do both in secret or in public. I think both Nigerians and south Africans should be proud that they are beginning to be recognized and accepted on the big screen even if to a small extent.
