As the protagonist’s metamorphosis progresses, the film itself also transforms, integrating more and more horror elements into its action movie framework. Up to this point the feel of the film is been generally upbeat and fun and avoids visually confronting any suffering; the camera’s gaze, and therefore the viewer’s gaze, is averted when the horror threatens to become too intense, as in the case of Wikus vomiting black liquid at the beginning of his mutation. We are saved from the sight of this corporeal horror by his blackout, which is reflected in the camera fading to black. With the somewhat abrupt switch to more challenging horror inflected and gory images, the mechanics of the film contribute to the feeling of instability caused by the undermining of the human male body. The audience can no longer rely on the permanence of any element of the film. As Wikus is forced to reconsider everything he previously believed to be fixed and unchangeable, the spectator is subjected to a similar feeling of instability and insecurity.
Firstly, Wikus’ corporeal integrity is threatened, as his nails and skin begin to fall away. Secondly, he begins to bleed and vomit a black liquid, a foreign substance that has no place within the human body. Here, the deconstruction of the body is used as a metaphor for the destabilisation of the whole identity of the protagonist, and in particular his masculine identity. When even the seemingly undeniable immutability of the material body is removed, everything that may once have seemed stable and natural is called into question. This trope is typical of horror cinema, and more recently science fiction cinema, to explore issues of gender, sex, sexuality and race, demonstrating that they are constructed elements of the subject’s identity, and therefore that identity is itself of a constructed nature. This denial of the immutability of identity is terrifying for both Wikus and the audience as in Western representations the male body is seen as stable and autonomous, from a socio-cultural point of view. To see the power and dominance of the white, male body called into question subverts usual Hollywood portrayals of the hero. Wikus is determined not to reveal his mistake, or his increasing sickness, for fear of appearing weak, which would undermine his leadership in a masculine environment. This effort results in failure, however, as he loses consciousness at a surprise birthday party thrown in his honour. In this scene, passing out represents Wikus reaching his most vulnerable state, as he has no control over his body and is open to manipulation by others. The loss of control is significant with regards to masculinity because “Given the extent to which control is for many men the defining mark of their masculinity, any suggestion or threat of being out of control challenges the very essence of what being a male is all about” (Clare 2001: 5).
This is also the point at which Wikus’ body is approaching a point of no return:
his DNA is now exactly half alien half human. This is visually portrayed in Wikus removing the bandages on his injured arm to reveal that the human appendage has been
replaced by an alien claw. The contrast between the hard, black powerful claw and the pale, human flesh acts as a visual metaphor for the assault on his bodily integrity that deprives him of his manhood. His humiliations, however, do not end with Wikus blacking out and soiling himself at his own birthday party. He is transferred to the hospital before being forcibly removed and taken to the Multi-National United (MNU) laboratory where he is restrained and sedated. In the world of District 9 MNU is the world’s second largest weapons manufacturer and has been placed in charge of controlling the alien population of Johannesburg. Wikus’ vulnerability is brought into sharp relief in these scenes as he is completely at the mercy of the authorities. The use of a multinational corporation as captor and antagonist here plays on contemporary paranoia and speculation about the hidden activities and seemingly unlimited power of large conglomerates. Pete Boss writes that these instances of physical helplessness in brightly-lit public-funded institutions is informed by “a paranoid and conspiracist tendency in social and political thinking” as well as the horror film’s “unquestionable obsession” with the destruction of the human body and a complex of negative images which inform popular attempts to address the problems of death and dying (1986: 15).
As a result of his incarceration, the white male, Wikus Van de Merwe, who formerly occupied a position of power, has been reduced to his most defenceless state.
This state of instability and doubt reflects what is referred to as the ‘crisis’ of the modern masculine subject. Thomas B. Byers, for example, states that the ‘the traditional subject, particularly the masculine subject, is in the throes of an identity crisis’, and goes further, claiming that this crisis is “too radical, in fact, to be contained within traditional humanist boundaries” (Byers 1995: 7). This suggests that the postmodern condition has made the successful embodiment of a masculine identity impossible, as it would require an immutable subject of unquestionable integrity, both bodily and
mental, a condition that is negated by the fractured nature of the postmodern world. The sudden change of fortune inflicted on Wikus accentuates the precariousness of the individual subject and their identity; in a matter of hours a middle-class white male has been stripped of his privileged identity and associated with the ‘prawns’, who are the focus of the MNU’s testing and rank, in Johannesburg’s social hierarchy, below the black immigrant slum inhabitants —represented in the film by the despised and marginalised Nigerian gangs. Wikus’ body is fractured, unreadable and unclassifiable, it can no longer even be termed a human body. Thus, Wikus becomes a monster, boundaries are blurred upon and within his corporeal form, marking him as a liminal presence, threatening to the normative, binary categorisation that underpins patriarchal society.
As well as being probed and penetrated during his hospital stay, Wikus’ body is bent to the will of others, he is forced to use alien weaponry to kill first pigs and then
‘prawns’, all the while crying and pleading. Wikus’ body is no longer his own property, it is now owned by MNU. This, of course, is a frightening prospect for any subject, male or female, but is particularly telling when what is represented on screen is a white male, the subject perhaps least accustomed to being controlled, also the subject with the most to lose in terms of privilege and status. The multinational taking ownership of the body plays on fears of losing control over the corporeal, in the vein of horror films featuring possession or nightmarish paralysis, as, for example, in the case of someone waking up during surgery unable to move or cry out. To refer again to Boss, he argues that the impulse by filmmakers and audiences to rehearse the loss of this control is so strong that “the coherence of accepted patterns of film language is frequently relegated to a position subordinate to the demands of presenting the viewer with the uncompromised or privileged details of human carnage” (1986: 15). This fact has
become ever more present in contemporary film, especially with the rise of the torture porn genre in the 2000s, which centres white, middle-class subjects deprived of agency undergoing horrific and graphic visceral torture. As Catherine Zimmer has observed of the genre’s deployment of a rapidly changing proliferation of torture images presented as captured on video in horror film, “surveillant representation and the proliferation of images of violence enhance torture narratives and, indeed, become a part of the deployment of power in torture scenarios” (2011: 92 emphasis in original). In the case of District 9, the camera takes a detached view of Wikus’ bodily torture, with narrative giving way to the intensity of the images accompanied by the protagonist’s incoherent pleas and cries. The shots are short and mostly filmed in close-up, using a variety of cinematic techniques including a shot of a screen showing the real time feed from four security cameras; hand-held camera shots, as well as point of view shots allowing the viewer to see through Wikus’ eyes. These rapid changes of viewpoint and camera quality deny the audience any stable position from which to observe the actions of the scientists, while the close-ups of damaged flesh inspire repulsion in the viewer. This destabilisation disorientates the spectator, heightening the sense of fear. It also contributes to the audience’s understanding of Wikus’ plight: he is not rooted in any stable identity, and the viewer is denied a stable viewpoint. Catherine Zimmer argues that “the narrative formations of surveillance and torture insist on the production of boundaries only to blur them” (2011: 104). Although the scientists impose a boundary between themselves and their subject in the form of CCTV cameras and screens, their emotionless reactions to the torture they enact acts to blur the boundary between the erstwhile monsters —Wikus and the aliens— and themselves as human. The detached nature of the shots of torture viewed not just through the lens of the film camera but also through the screen replaying security camera footage, reflect the absence of
empathy on the part of the scientists and medics. They are unaffected by Wikus’
suffering and begging, continuing their work regardless and showing a cold detachment, in a way that enhances the distance between the body of the torturer and that of the victim, in this case, Wikus. Their ignoring of his pleas and bored expressions represent
“The most radical act of distancing”, a “disclaiming of the other’s hurt” (Scarry 1985:
57). In this way, while Wikus’ status as human is undermined by his transformation, at the same time the audience is invited to question the humanity of his captors, thereby beginning a questioning of what it means to be human that remains present throughout the entire film.
Wikus’ imprisonment represents the key moment in the development of an alternative masculinity. The shots of the surgeons preparing to remove his heart are cut with shots of his boss telling his wife that Wikus will probably not survive septicaemia, as “he never was very strong”. It is at this point that with a cry of rage, Wikus, using his alien claw, slaps the surgeon’s tool out of his hand, freeing himself from the operating table. Shirtless, he wrestles MNU employees out of the way before taking a hostage, shouting “you a big fucking man, huh?” His genetic mutation seems to have triggered a process giving him masculine qualities more reminiscent of Rambo than of Wikus the bumbling civil servant we have seen so far. To anchor his new masculine strength to his transformation, it is made clear to the audience, by way of a close-up, that he is restraining the scientist with his alien claw. His state of undress can be read as a reference to 1980s action film starts like Stallone and Schwarzenegger, who are famous for revealing their muscular torsos, thereby creating an action movie trope equating nakedness with an aggressive masculine performance. Dyer argues that naked men on screen must perform aggressive behaviours in order for their bodies to be viewed as active rather than passive objects, thereby avoiding the sexualisation of the male form.
“it remains the case that images of men must disavow this element of passivity if they are to be kept in line with dominant ideas of masculinity-as-activity” (Dyer 1982: 66).
This belies a fear of the feminisation of the male body, for if it were to become sexualised it would be objectified in the same way as a female pin-up. This is unthinkable for the male action hero who is considered by many to be the embodiment of masculinity. But where does Wikus fit into this schema? The director includes Wikus’ naked torso in order to imply a savagery and lack of control intended to shock the viewer with his abrupt and total change in character. In the same article of 1982, Dyer explains that the black male nude is presented in settings, poses and actions that suggest notions of “the jungle, and hence savagery” (68). Something similar is at work here, but instead of the black body being animalised, or jungle-ised, it is the white body that is linked to these ideas. This is indicative of Wikus’ transformation into ‘Other,’ as regards his previous identity of the white middle-class management of MNU.
The vulnerability of this white, middle-class male identity —and, consequently, the racial and species hierarchy of the film— is highlighted by the loss of Wikus’
corporeal integrity through the rupture of a series of somatic boundaries. Firstly, his skin is damaged, thereby breaking down the border between interior and exterior. As Halberstam argues in Skin Shows (1995), the skin is what ensures that our body remains contained, protecting it from exterior contamination and even collapse, but at the same time it represents a site of anxiety, as something that must be protected at all costs.
“Skin is at once the most fragile of boundaries and most stable of signifiers” (163). The skin is all that stands between the maintenance of a healthy, normative body and bloody horror, as is made very clear in District 9 in the gory eviscerations of both human and alien characters. The vulnerability of the skin, and therefore the interior/exterior and the life/death boundaries, are constantly present in the mind of the viewer during these
violent scenes. The rupturing of Wikus’ skin is visually brought to the fore, as hard, black protuberances break through the skin from within the body, so that which should remain inside becomes visible on the exterior. This sight, as well as that of Wikus peeling off his skin to reveal the black shell underneath provokes physical repulsion in the viewer, a reaction typically produced by body horror texts. Xavier Aldana proposes three areas of shared concern in the genre: “anxieties surrounding transformation, mutation and contagion” (2014: 54). As Wikus is infected by a foreign body, and undergoes a transformative mutation, all of these anxieties are foregrounded in District 9, which makes it, to my mind, a body horror text.
Figure 6 Multiple boundaries are destabilised in Wikus’ body. Here a hard black exoskeleton erupts from beneath his human skin and his eyes turn an alien yellow
District 9 borrows heavily from David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) in its use of body horror, with the bodies of the two films’ protagonists being contaminated by gothic technology and, as a result, beginning to disintegrate. In fact, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) and Wikus Van de Merwe undergo a very similar process of painful corporeal transformation. Both are shocked to find their fingernails falling off and the colour and texture of their skin is changing, and, in a clear reference to The Fly, Wikus
first begins to realise the reality of his transformation when looking in the bathroom mirror, just like Brundle. Neill Blomkamp establishes this close link with Cronenberg’s film in order to highlight not only the similarity of the two films’ themes, but also the differences. Whereas in District 9, Wikus’ mutation immediately robs him of his strength and virility before endowing him with superhuman power and a successful masculinity, The Fly’s Seth Brundle is initially stronger, healthier, quicker and smarter than ever, before eventually suffering a regression, which is clearly based on the effects of a deadly disease (Mathijs 2003). Cronenberg’s film is ultimately a dark, pessimistic portrayal of the dangers of masculine pride, with little or no space for imagining an improved or alternative future for masculine bodies. The mutated, hybrid body of the protagonist is ultimately doomed and must die. In District 9, however, Wikus’ body becomes a site of resistance, allowing for invention and experimentation in new physiological configurations, in an attempt to construct an alternative model of masculinity.
This is not to say that it is only worthwhile attributing importance to the films’
differences, however. The common theme of liminality, the investigation of the border that separates masculine and feminine, human and animal, self and other is key to any reading of District 9. Both works linger on the in-between stage of the male protagonists’ transformations, the point at which it is difficult, or impossible, to say whether they are more human or more animal/alien. The two texts revel in the confusion brought about by contamination, the destruction of identity by an outside force, wresting control away from the masculine subject. This is one of the main points of convergence: the white, male subject losing control not only over events, but over his own body, that which we believe to be uniquely ours, non-transferrable, unchangeable.
According to Xavier Aldana, the heightened sense of corporeal vulnerability in contemporary body horror cinema is attributable to “a noticeable shift towards materialist understandings of the human that see us as constituted largely by our sentient bodies” (2014: 20), which can appeal to “a generation that has largely left the spiritual world behind and prioritised the material reality of the body” (26). Aldana argues that as a result of this shift in contemporary thought, horror films have in turn become more grounded in the material, resulting in visceral scenes of torture, mutilation and degradation of the human body. All of the above are present in Wikus’ experience in District 9, highlighting the concern with the vulnerability of the flesh to outside interference, and therefore the fragility of binaries. Once the Other is no longer separated from the self by a protective layer of skin, it has colonised the subjective space of the body, denying all attempts to separate self and other. This negation of the border between self and other is repeatedly emphasised throughout the film, for instance in the moment in which Wikus steals through the fence that separates Johannesburg from District 9, them from us, self from other, which effectively subverts the literal and the metaphorical border. The fact that Wikus’ metamorphosis makes the binary definition of his identity impossible is reflective of the complex racial relationships of contemporary South African society. Just as any attempt to categorise Wikus’ body according to normative binary thinking is doomed to failure, so is the separation and hierarchisation of races and species within the film.
Abjection, as in many horror texts, undeniably plays a key role in the destabilisation of boundaries in District 9. Julia Kristeva (1982) describes abjection as that which lies “beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable” (1). This abject “filth is not a quality in itself, but it applies only to what relates to a boundary”,
Abjection, as in many horror texts, undeniably plays a key role in the destabilisation of boundaries in District 9. Julia Kristeva (1982) describes abjection as that which lies “beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable” (1). This abject “filth is not a quality in itself, but it applies only to what relates to a boundary”,