I loved it. I thought it funny, poignant, challenging, iconoclastic (of many science-fiction conventions), and thrilling. It's also really violent imagery and an 11 on the gross-out chart.

As far as popular opinion goes (i.e. overheard comments, friends, facebook and blog posts) i would expect such to be riddled with all the contradictions of common sense. The thing that disturbed me most about my glimpse of popular opinion was the silence of the audience in the first half hour to 45 minutes when i seemed to be the only one laughing. I figure that the humour was either too subtle or that people were utterly ignorant of the history of apartheid South Africa - though i think you could substitute knowledge of any authoritarian/draconian regime (or read Kafka, for heaven's sake) in order to see the mocking farce with which the film portrays bureaucrats and pundits alike. I grant that as an anti-apartheid activist throughout the 80s and early 90s and as someone who visited townships while the apartheid state still existed, i a not your average viewer. However, the satire that courses through this film shouldn't need that much historical knowledge or experience in order to be appreciated. Of course, maybe i'm wrong about that.

I think the film succeeds on many fronts. Wikus van de Merwe is a brilliant character - as blissfully clueless and evil a bureaucrat as you get. His self-satisfied and gleeful description of the "popping" sounds of the alien eggs that he has just burned (as though they were so much garbage) is a scene that even in the midst of the satirical humour still moved me with horror and sorrow. Every example of monstrosity (whether bureaucratic or visceral, literally) served, ironically, to humanize the convincingly non-human aliens. I think the film pulls a fast one on the audience which i suspect leaves people emotionally confused if not disturbed: the aliens are disturbing and scary to look at - insectile, segmented bodies covered in chitin and filled with ichor (and did you catch those two pulsing lung-like extrusions in their lower abdomen? Ick!) How many of our insectophobic buttons were pushed in this film? I think the film pulls no punches in making these aliens extremely difficult to identify with. And yet, it is obvious in the first few minutes that these creatures are pathetic, oppressed and very thinly disguised representatives of any oppressed group in human history. How many of us overcome the distasteful imagery (and the conventions offilm) to grant this meaning to these "people"? Or do we suspend judgment, maintain cool distance to see what will happen and whether the film will give us something prettier to identify with?

The reward for overcoming this challenge to our training is the simultaneously poignant and gripping sequence in which the wee ship is rising to safety, intercut with the parent and child looking exhausted, fearful, worried - as any parent and child would be in such circumstances. The film succeeds here in being completely unpredictable - will thy make it? Will they get blown out of the air at the last second? You'll have to go see to find out. Suffice to say, i didn't breathe for a good few minutes.

I also think the film is messing with expectations of heroes with the transformation of Wikus van de Merwe from preening, naively self-congratulatory aparatchik to self-sacrificing defender. (Incidentally, "van de Merwe" is a common Afrikaner name which is also part of a joking tradition akin to "Newfie" jokes. Of "Van" or "So-and-so van de Merwe" are told many of the same jokes of bufoonery, stupidity and nonsense that you find somewhere in many cultures of the world. This is strong clue of the satirical bent of this film that is perhaps a subtlety lost on most international audiences.) The story manages almost to run its entire course before van de Merwe, running for safety, finally makes a pro-active gesture, finally transforms from flight to fight. And, while his body is most alien, his actions are the most humane. Is that what the film is, perhaps rather pessimistically,saying: that to find our humanity in a world in which genocide and corporate greed have been normalized, we must become, to our fellow citizens, virtual aliens? I am certainly reminded of when i returned to Canada from a youth exchange program with Haiti. I was 19 and i returned asking questions about poverty and our (i.e. mine and Canada's) implication in that poverty. More than a few friends abandoned me with one literally saying, "chris, when you left you were normal and now that you're back you're a marxist." And i'm not even sure i'd read Marx at that point. I do fancy that returned somewhat more humanized. And as tentative as that might have been, it was still profoundly threatening to many of my peers. Of course, i found new peers.

As for your question, Tricia, i don't think this film differs from much art when it comes to people's reactions to it (stupid movie or not) nor is about stupidification. How much subversive art is treated as stupid by people who are doing their utmost to avoid having to face the dissident and disturbing content if such work? Missing the point of art is a time-honoured, hegemonic tradition. Nor do i agree with Steve's assessment of violence and the poor pedagogy of film.

The visceral violence is all contextual and sound as far as the narrative is concerned. And, like many such stories, the visceral violence exists in contrast with the more subtle (and entirely more horrifying violence - at least it should be more horrifying) casual brutality of the corporate weapons profiteers - willing to experiment, Nazi-like, on living creatures; willing to murder with ease to advance their greed; willing to commit genocide to win their comfort and power. How does that compare to dismembered body parts, blood and ichor? The latter is gross, distasteful, stomach-churning, perhaps. But the former should chill us down to our bones. Does it?

The pedagogy is no poorer and no better than most art. The pedagogy does not lie within the work, but within the relationships within which the work exists - which, in this instance, include this exchange. I'm not a fan of thinking like "Film buffs and critics (like us) are active viewers, mentally and emotionally alert--we watch in order to expand our worlds--to learn." Of course, i am disappointed over and over again by mass audiences failing to pick up meanings that i think wonderful, transformative, hopeful. But i vigorously insist on being hopeful that people are capable (often in surprising moments) of being "mentally and emotionally alert." I would sooner be disappointed a thousand times in order to avoid the risk of not being alert for the rare moment of connection. And, who knows, maybe those moments are less rare than we think.

I would definitely nominate this film for awards. I think that Sharlto Copley's performance as van de Merwe was unforgettable and a career-maker and i expect we're gonna see more of him in the years to come. And the story is original in a number of ways, though the 1988 Alien Nation introduced the trope of down-and-out refugee/"working class" aliens, to the big screen. We'll see what the global awarding machine has to say about it.

I agree with you, Tricia, that the film does indeed lead us "to think more deeply about the world." As such, it is in the very best tradition of film as cultural commentary. Many things in this film are disruptive of hegemonic notions (e.g. preening bureaucrat to self-sacrificing changeling) and thus challenge people's common sense in a number of ways. I've read Donaldo's stuff for years and have a deep appreciation for his scholarship and politics. But i'm afraid that, while i appreciate what "stupidification" is naming, i'm not crazy about the term. It's not a word i could use very effectively with many of the populations with whom i work - new Canadians, public housing residents, youth and seniors. The word certainly has a certain caché and, for many of us, is instantly recognizable for what it is mischieviously naming. But, it's neologistic playfulness aside, it plays similarly to the phrase "false consciousness." Again, i respect Althusser's project, but "false consciousness" is a term that is virtually useless to me as an organizer and popular educator. I tend to favour the gramscian language of "common sense." While stupidification tends to imply that it is an act done by oppressors to the oppressed - i.e. sort of unidirectional (and i'm certain Donaldo is not intending it to be interpreted thus), i find "common sense" to be a more compassionate (and accurate) naming of the hegemonic dance in which the consent of the mass of people is usually in advance of the need for either persuasion or coercion by the coalition of ruling class interests.

Common sense is a term that can be unpacked into its constituent elements of bad sense, good sense and nonsense. Which, i think, makes it easier both to respect (with a Freirian ethic) that every person has good sense (i.e. experience and understandings of the world worth affirming) and to identify, if not disrupt, the bad sense. District 9 is loaded with pokes and prods at hegemonic common sense. But common sense, like hegemony, is resilient and armed with many defensive tactics one common one being the ne you mention: "That was the stupidest film...". Once such a trope is invoked the person need not think further - everything is dismissed. Just how disruptive of common sense is this film is to be seen.

peace

chris