The Help vs. District 9

I’m a big movie fan; I’ll pretty much watch any genre and enjoy something about the movie. I recently plumbed the depths of HBO and came across a movie I always wanted to see in theaters but never got the chance: District 9, a film symbolically about aliens, set in Johannesburg with ties to apartheid South Africa. It was fantastic. Then about a week afterwards, I went to see The Help, a new movie about maids in Jim Crow Jackson, MS that got great reviews from my parents and friends, and it was also excellent.

For some reason, when I think about either film, the other always pops into my head, so I've decided to compare and contrast these two movies together to see why that might be. The Help vs. District 9, a showdown of less-than-epic proportions. I have race and racism on the brain because we’re reading The Poisonwood Bible in English class and both of these movies have an interpersonal-racism theme, so it seems appropriate.

Similarities:

1. Both used most white characters as “bad guys”, and even some of the white characters that were supposed to be “good guys” had character flaws that made them less appealing to the audience. In District, Wikus Van De Merwe (the main character) was dangerously racist, despite his views being tested as he slowly turned into the race he oppressed. In Help, Celia Foote was a sweetheart and had the best of intentions, but her speech was annoyingly squeaky and she acted without thinking, getting drunk at a party and making a fool of herself.

2. Both narrowed in and focused on a few members of the protagonist race, using Minny and Aibileen in Help and two nameless “Prawns” (a crude name for the alien race, pictured below) in District. This built a connection between those few characters and the audience so that the viewers wished them the best by the end of the film.

3. Both films utilized the strong feelings that go with history to their advantage: Americans often still feel shame at the behavior of their parents and grandparents in the beginning of the civil rights movement, and I've talked to a South African friend who says his country still regrets apartheid. Choosing to set the movies with direct and indirect connections to these times added symbolism and an answer to “who cares?”

Differences:

1. The most shocking and important difference between these movies is the level of symbolism: while Help used actual black actresses to play African American maids, District turned the blacks in South Africa into a race of aliens that, thirty years after their arrival, were

thrown into a ghetto and oppressed. Not only were they clearly not human, but they were repulsive looking. In short, when watching The Help, the audience saw the characters as they were in real life. But in District 9, we saw the blacks as disgusting, inhuman creatures, exactly how they might have looked through the eyes of a racist South African at the time. The symbolism other-ized the Prawns to enhance the movie.

2. Another important difference was the violence level of the movies. While The Help was poignant in its own way, it focused on a war of words as the main character Skeeter wrote her exposé on the plight of the Jackson maid. In District 9, the filmmakers chose a more drastic approach as the Multi-National United company used Wikus’ alien arm to murder innocent Prawns with their own weapons, as an example. I haven’t yet decided which approach was better, if one was at all. I’m not convinced there is a definitive answer to that question.

If you’ve seen these movies, do you agree? Disagree? Let me know!