A few weeks back I decided to lend my father my Blu-ray for one of my favourite films of 2009 District 9. Let’s just say that he didn’t make it more than fifteen minutes into the movie before turning it off and discarding it as rubbish. He even went on to say that how the filmmaker treated the topic of the apartheid was just trivializing what is such a serious topic in our world’s history.
In this science-fiction film a ship from outer space stops over the city of Johannesburg. Eventually we go up to check out what’s going on and discover numerous malnourished stranded aliens on board. So the government decides to have special section of the town for the aliens (more commonly referred to as prawns) called District 9. D9 is policed by this private corporation MNU that just wants to harvest the aliens’ advanced technology, especially in regards to weapons. The aliens are treated as second class citizens and are forced to live in this slum. If they try to step out of line paid mercenaries can kill them on sight.
Now I remember how all the critics at the time were blasting this film for how it handled the action packed ending (which I actually liked a lot) but I don’t think I heard anyone complain about the overall idea of showing us an entire species being oppressed and forced to live in this slum against their will. The entire scenario was a massive analogy to the actual apartheid which was still happening less than two decades ago. So I guess the question of the week is:
Is it okay to discuss serious topics in society (including history) using science-fiction as the context?
The use of Science Fiction as a mask for referencing modern and historical events goes back to the early days of novels and storytelling. It's one of the genres that can get away with it, without causing a massive up rise.
Now, what does it do, I dunno.