{"id":749,"date":"2009-08-16T22:58:03","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T03:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=749"},"modified":"2014-06-19T14:28:06","modified_gmt":"2014-06-19T18:28:06","slug":"i-prefer-my-prawns-well-seasoned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=749","title":{"rendered":"I Prefer My Prawns Well-Seasoned"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"district_nine\"I saw District 9<\/em> yesterday.\u00a0 This gory bore won an 88% rating at the Tomatometer?\u00a0 As well as rave reviews from intelligent, well-educated people across the age spectrum?\u00a0 Once again, as with Star Wars<\/em><\/a>, I find myself wondering if I’m in a parallel universe.<\/p>\n

After a gritty documentary-style start with an interesting premise, the film abandons all pretense of depth or subtlety and becomes a derivative, unrelenting splatterfest.\u00a0 Toss Alien Nation<\/em>, The Fly<\/em> and Enemy Mine<\/em> in a bowl, add a splash of Cry, The Beloved Country<\/em> and Starship Troopers<\/em>, mix a bit of E. T.<\/em> and Close Encounters<\/em> — not forgetting Kafka’s Metamorphosis<\/em> with some Robocop<\/em> dressing and a pinch of Chaplin via Wall-e<\/em>… and you get an idea of what a jumble of recycled clich\u00e9s District 9<\/em> is.<\/p>\n

Coherence, scientific or any other kind, is non-existent.\u00a0 The aliens are insectoid and seem to have castes differing in mental capacity, yet all appear to be male (since they reproduce by laying eggs, either females or hermaphrodites would be prominently represented or they would have a queen; and if the latter, the humans could have stopped their reproduction cycle by killing her).\u00a0 They have bio-weapons that humans cannot use — yet the aliens can’t use them either until the mutating human’s genetic signature begins to match the weapons’ trigger setting. Their ship has remained stubbornly dead for twenty years, but activates instantly when the plot demands it.\u00a0 The black fluid one of them creates is good for everything, from powering ships to altering DNA.\u00a0 Two individuals with totally different physiologies become buddies.\u00a0 There’s also the obligatory precocious tot (addressed, with numbing predictability, as “son” by “his father”).\u00a0 The upper-caste aliens have completely human motives and responses.\u00a0 All the humans except one are single-note stereotypes.\u00a0 And the quasi-sympathetic anti-hero undergoes a Lamarckian change that’s as bogus as the uplifting life-lesson that accompanies it.<\/p>\n

\"district9\"The cruelties of segregation, the plight of refugees, our treatment of Others — those are burning subjects.\u00a0 So is the question of how we would interact with sentient aliens.\u00a0 None of them gets real treatment here.\u00a0 Instead, the film manipulates its viewers into feeling virtuous by being superficially “daring”.\u00a0 District 9<\/em> is neither science fiction nor social commentary; it’s violence porn — or, as producer Peter Jackson himself called it on io9<\/em>, splatstick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw District 9 yesterday.\u00a0 This gory bore won an 88% rating at the Tomatometer?\u00a0 As well as rave reviews from intelligent, well-educated people across the age spectrum?\u00a0 Once again, as with Star Wars, I find myself wondering if I’m in a parallel universe. After a gritty documentary-style start with an interesting premise, the film […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6,10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-biology-and-culture","category-science","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}