REPRESENTATION IN D9

Question 1

what is wrong with existing corporations?

Answer 1

• NESTLE: in 2013 were accused of depriving a Pakistani area of water by repurposing the well for their bottled water companies
• hard labour for little money to make the rich richer
• small businesses have a hard time taking off because of massive corporations owning everything and keeping public attention
• lockheed martin only offer financial support to politicians who spend on defence in order to keep themselves in business
• in competition with eachother

Question 2

how is MNU represented?

Answer 2

• state relies on the corporation as a government funded enforcement arm
• MNU represents the type of corporations who partner with governments
• negative portrayal on MNU can be seen as representing the danger of governments - particularly in their outsourcing of militaries and bureaucracies to private contractors which inevitably turns them into government funded corporations
• suggesting the government makes wrong decisions and puts its people in harm indirectly through corporations
• production -> distribution -> exhibition

Question 3

real nigeran statistics

Answer 3

• statistically has more poor people (living on $1.90 a day) than india
• non covid years: 1 in every 5 children in the world who didn’t go to school lived in nigera - most of them being girls

Question 4

how are nigerians represented?

Answer 4

storytellers who believe in superstitions and magic (voodoo). they believed that the power of the aliens would live within them if they ate the aliens.

Question 5

what was the nigerian response to their representation?

Answer 5

• offended by the film, and asked that district 9 stopped being played in cinemas as it ‘denigrates the countries image’
• minister dora akunyili asked sony for an apology - as the film displays nigerans as cannibals, criminals and prostitutes
• eugine khumbanyiwa plays a gang leader with the nickname obasanjo, which is also the surname of former nigerian president olusegun obasanjo. minister akunyili took offence to this as she felt this was an obvious piece of evidence that d9 is belittling nigerians
• khumbanyiwa says “its not like nigerians do eat aliens”