Alienation in Politics

The most “technologically-shocking” movie of the year about aliens, with slightly above average reviews, stunned audiences again this week by being nominated for yet another award. Not just any award, mind you, but the highest, most honorable movie award. Among nine other Best Picture nominees, the Academy will have to decide if the best movie of the year was (you guessed it!): District 9.

Last spring I was excited for the release of what promised to be a smart, original and possibly realistic look at aliens landing on present-day Earth. This promise was broken. Like lots of disappointing movies, I could have just let this one go and drowned my sorrows in only the finest of malt liquors, but no. This movie lingered. It lingered on critic’ top 10 lists, it lingered in the Golden Globe race and now it is being thrown back in my face by the Academy that finds new ways to offend my insecure, cinematic arrogance every year.

While I would relish the opportunity to find 30 or 40 ways to blast the visual effects of the film that ranked no higher than the best the SciFi channel can offer, I will instead show why this nomination is more shocking on a cultural level than on any personal preferences. The Hollywood elite, usually charged with the worst of crimes (liberalism), has unknowingly nominated a film that lambastes Democrats, humanizes Republicans and foreshadowed the alienation of President Barack Obama.

Several years prior to the start of the story, an alien spacecraft entered Earth’s orbit and hovered in mid-air for weeks on end before humans learned that the alien race inside had succumbed to a disease and ran out of energy. Obviously the alien race had achieved space travel, though not completely mastered it. Similarly, Republicans several years ago gained considerable advantage in politics (controlling both chambers of Congress, the Supreme Court, and, by extension, the White House). However, like the alien race that had achieved so much, the Republicans were hurt by a hard-to-explain energy shortage—which led to car manufacturers bankrupting, a stock market slump and rise in unemployment (stranded aliens were also unemployed).

At this low point for the aliens/Republicans, humans/Democrats took over in a big way. The aliens, being a disenfranchised, leaderless minority in the film, are shoved into ghettos and makeshift housing while the human try (in vain) to figure out the technological power they suddenly obtained. Meanwhile, some of the less maniacal humans try to understand the alien creatures. The protagonist of the film, a nerd named Wikus, finds himself in the alien camp as a large part of his job—and, despite some smugness, tries to work with the alien species that doesn’t quite understand humans. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the film’s Barack Obama.

While trying to understand the alien culture, Wikus/Obama becomes infected by the alien technology/ideas and slightly deformed. When other humans/Democrats see Wikus is one-tenth alien, they all freak out. The questions then become, “is he going to turn completely alien?” and “How long do we have?” Similarly, Obama ideologically morphed, slightly but visibly. Of course in this world of two cultures there can be no in between, so Wikus is hunted by the humans for his new condition and hated by the aliens for what he had represented (the face of a pushy government) during their de facto incarceration.

Wikus eventually stumbles upon a grass roots uprising. Specifically, a small space ship previously buried beneath the grass rises up to the mother ship thanks to the bond of the only loving family in the whole movie...an alien family.

Unfortunately the movie ends with enough ambiguities to warrant a sequel but--like election cycles--I don’t really want to see it because it’s just going to be bigger, louder, more expensive and have more nonsensical inconsistencies. So bravo, Academy Awards, you gave the masses what they didn’t want (more nominees) because you didn’t have what we have always asked for: modesty.