1 Skeletons in the Closet1
1.1 Township Planning and Its Discontents: Chiawelo
Before delving into ‘the how’ of District 9s portrayal of Johannesburg, it is important to consider the setting of the film and Johannesburg’s history in the media, because the visual history is so clearly emulated in District 9.2 Chiawelo, where District 9 was shot, was part of the later development in the greater township of Soweto, between 1955 and 1965. Soweto itself has been the subject of photographic study, as by the well-known struggle photographers Peter Magubane and Sam Nzima, and more recently Jabulani Dhlamini and Jodi Bieber. Many books have also taken Soweto as setting, such as the recent short stories in Soweto under the Apricot Tree by Niq Mhlongo (2018), or his earlier novel After Tears (2007).
Soweto was established in the 1930s as Orlando, an area for Black residents, and the first houses were built in 1931. It was organised through a grid structure, with wide roads and individual plots of land to be turned into gardens, although this relatively generous allocation of space would not come to fruition. The model for the township was essentially the English Garden Suburb (Foster 2012: 51).3 Later models included the ne51 housing scheme, first used by the apartheid government’s National Building Research Institute to plan the
At the outset, Orlando was located far from Johannesburg, to the south and the west, beyond the mines. Most of the township’s inhabitants had been relocated there from inner city slums (Foster 2012: 51). This segregation of the Black population and their removal from the urban fabric embedded segregation in the city’s character. The planning agendas employed valued order as the most desirable characteristic of urban space, with informality regarded as undesirable. Slums were often subject to forced removals, and the notion that townships themselves are slums became a substantial part of how townships and informal settlements are depicted in popular discourse in South Africa, as demonstrated in District 9’s allegorical portrayal (Wagner 2015: 47).
The squatter movement in Orlando is perhaps one of the earliest prefigurations of the removals allegorised in District 9, although the title refers to the forced removals from District Six in the 1980s. Led by James Mpanza, colloquially known as the father of Soweto,5 the movement was a response to the severe shortage of housing for Black people in Orlando. In 1944 and 1946, Mpanza led people to occupy empty spaces and newly built government houses to draw attention to the problem compellingly, and appeal to the government for sufficient housing provision. Most of the squatters were forcibly removed into camps and shelters (Nieftagodien & Gaule 2012: 10–15).
It is important to note that informal settlements and townships are not the same. Townships have a history of planning, while informal settlements may be regarded as the result of the deficiencies of that planning. Due to insufficient housing in planned townships, almost from their inception, residents often had to resort to unauthorised, informal approaches to housing shortages. The resulting settlements generally abut township areas, so they have become associated with one another, and the appearance of informality has come to characterise the popular image of townships. The various depictions
1.2 Land
Although planning rhetoric espoused utopian egalitarian living conditions, the limitations on land ownership belied such ostensible good intentions on the part of both the colonial and apartheid governments. National Planning law was changed from colonial and apartheid practices only in 1991, and was revised post-apartheid only in 2013 (De Satgé & Watson 2018: 42). As a result, the segregation entrenched in urban planning has only partially been erased and in essence townships have remained untransformed well into the country’s democratic era.7 Part of the problem also relates to land ownership. The Land Act, passed in 1913, limited “native” ownership of land to seven percent of the country’s geography, even though Black Africans were the majority of the country’s population at the time.8 This meant that 93% of the land in the country was unavailable for Black ownership.9 During the inception of the Land Act there was resistance by Black leaders, such as John L. Dube, Dr Walter Rubusana, Saul Msane, Thomas Mapikela and Solomon T. Plaatje, who formed a deputation that travelled to London and presented a petition contesting it to the British Parliament. But this did not prevent the Act from being passed
This image was captured during protests against apartheid in South Africa. Photograph by Paul Weinberg, 1980s.
cc by-sa 3.0 wikimedia commons. anti-apartheid protest. [n.d.].
1.3 The States of Emergency
While townships saw many periods of unrest and resistance to government policies in the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s in South Africa were marked by extremely violent protests in the townships as residents resisted apartheid laws around education, employment and housing. In 1985, a State of National Emergency was declared. Looking back at news footage of that time now, one sees a country gripped in a state of warfare: media images are marked by depictions of the ubiquitous apartheid police force, recognisable in their
The first State of Emergency of the decade was declared on 21 July 1985 and lasted until March 1986, with several to follow, all declared under the Public Safety Act of 1953.12 In June 1986 a further State of Emergency was instituted, and again in June 1988 (Merrett 1990: 3–12). The Emergency was eventually lifted in June 1990 in three of the four provinces that then constituted the country, and in October 1990 in the remaining province of Natal (now KwaZulu Natal). A final State of Emergency was declared in 1994, when conflict arose in KwaZulu Natal between ifp and anc factions over the upcoming democratic elections (States of Emergency … 2019).
Christopher Merrett (1990: 6), writing about the effects of the States of Emergency on censorship in South Africa, discusses them as epitomising the increasing militarisation of South African life. He further discusses one of the most pervasive effects of the Emergencies, namely the number of persons detained under their provision for detention without trial (1990: 13). By 1990, there were over 40 000 (since mid-1985). Even before the Emergencies, the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 and the Internal Security Act of 1982 legislated many human rights infringements, and restricted individuals from communicating freely and from accessing particular areas; it also permitted the detention of individuals for interrogation, even as a preventive measure on the mere suspicion of wrongdoing (Merrett 1990: 3). In addition, under the Emergencies there was a limitation on liability for the actions of security force
It is also important to note how the States of Emergency affected the country’s media at the time. According to Merrett (1990: 14–15), the effect of censorship was to cut the flow of information concerning “conscientious objection, human rights violations (detentions, political trials, assassinations and disappearances), alternative education, and grassroots organisation and methods of resistance in Black townships”. The South African media thus portrayed a skewed version of what was happening in the country. Interestingly, between January 1985 and June 1986, there was unusually explicit news coverage of the violence erupting in townships during uprisings. According to Posel (1990: 154–155), it may have been intended to assuage both anti-apartheid critiques and critiques from the right wing in the country against the government’s response to township revolts at the time. It was also during this time that the three motifs of rioting crowds, stone-throwing and fires became established as symbolic of township violence. After a brief period, by 1987 news coverage had reverted to its heavily censored mode, however, often without visual accompaniment.
In general, during the Emergencies, many accounts of what was taking place were censored. For example, after rioting broke out in Sebokeng, a report on the protests that unfolded by Johannes Rantete, an amateur journalist living there, was published by Ravan Press in October 1984, but banned shortly thereafter.13 I refer to this account again below, as it provides an insider view
2 Analogue Landscape: A Parody of Documentary Conventions
2.1 Low-resolution Realism
With this brief background on townships and their representation in the media of 1980s, District 9’s cinematography and aspects of the production design can be examined in more detail in relation to the analogue effects emulated in the film. Although District 9 is often described in terms of the science fiction genre,14 this aspect of the film is to my mind secondary to its mockumentary qualities. Much of the film mimics the appearance of a documentary, direct cinema or cinéma vérité (Nel 2012: 552), in which stylistic effects appear to be secondary to visual details, providing realistic evidence of events and spaces (Hight 2008: 205). Such realism is often characterised by an apparent lack of directorial manipulation,15 and the use of deep focus, which reveals ‘real’ details in the environment that seem incidental and not included for artistic effect (Mitchell 1992: 23–57). Adele Nel (2012) remarks on the use of such elements in District 9, noting that the film conveys an authenticity that enables it to comment on the Johannesburg of the apartheid past, as well as the contemporary city during its production in 2008. Her analysis of the film’s formal
District 9 mimics many of the documentary conventions thought to be formative in the genre by scholars such as Bill Nichols (2017): the use of location shooting (here Johannesburg), and non-actors, or in this case, the appearance or masquerading of characters as non-actors. The shooting location for District 9 was important to Blomkamp, to create the feeling of “the real Soweto”, and the film was purposely shot during winter (Holben 2009: 26).
Wikus van de Merwe is the quintessential non-actor as he appears as an everyman, who often breaks the fourth wall to address the cameraman and crew directly. Further, District 9 mimics the documentary genre’s extensive use of hand-held camera techniques. In the documentary context, it provides a sense of immediacy, since interviewees and stakeholders are followed on foot and recorded in a candid way. Also, the use of supposed found footage in District 9, particularly emulated newsreel footage, is significant. Finally, the appearance of natural lighting foregrounds the airborne pollution so prevalent in Johannesburg’s winter landscape (Nichols 2017: xi). District 9’s cinematographer, Trent Opaloch, refers to the textures of this location, as well as the quality of the winter light, thick with pollution (Holben 2009: 26).
A significant difference that sets the mockumentary apart from the documentary, however, is its agenda; rather than intending to convey a sense of objective truth or reality, it often aims to satirise or parody (Hight 2008: 205). The element of ironic humour is important in District 9, as it contributes to the contradictory experiences it invites viewers to have. It depicts a dystopian landscape, but the use of ironic humour smooths the way to the counter-intuitive nostalgia that is conveyed. It is also significant that mockumentary conventions are interspersed with elements of narrative fiction in the film, and that large parts unfold in a narrative rather than a documentary manner – further removing the film from a true documentary context (Bunch in Kapstein 2014: 169). Mockumentary as a genre may also contribute to a pleasurable viewing experience, which is very different from documentary film that primarily aims to educate the viewer. While they may appear at first glance as documentary films, mockumentary films are staged and scripted to implicitly encourage the viewer to find carefully constructed clues to their artifice as one gradually comes to realise their fallaciousness (Nichols 2017: 12).
Composited newsreel footage from the 1985 state of emergency (Rui (channel), 2008). Still from the video. (South Africa State ... 2008).
An alien levitating a minibus. Still taken from Alive in Joburg (Neill Blomkamp, 2006).
The lack of definition is also emulated in Alive in Joburg (Figure 3), Blomkamp’s short film which preceded District 9. It shares a muted palette with the newsreel footage mentioned above. Low-definition sequences abound in District 9 as well, and in such sequences the quality of analogue footage is evoked in different ways. Figure 4 is a screenshot from the introductory sequence in the film that depicts how the alien ship looked when it first arrived on earth and was stranded above Johannesburg, which imitates 1980s archive footage. Opaloch says that they allowed the focus to “go” when shooting “journalists’ material” (Holben 2009: 30), to create an appearance that is “immediate, real and rough around the edges”. He also suggests that combining such footage with visual effects created “a kind of reality that’s really unique”.
Emulated newsreel footage. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
In this screenshot, the appearance of analogue media is emulated not only in the fuzziness of the image, or its noise, but also in the text at the bottom of the screen, which recalls the timestamp associated with video footage such as Super8 footage. Archival footage like that in Figure 5 is characterised by the qualities of the film stock and the camera used to shoot it. This screenshot
Composited archival footage depicting Johannesburg in 1974. Still taken from The kinolibrary (channel), 2017. (1974 Johannesburg Street Scenes ... 2017)
The colour palette remains relatively unchanged throughout the two temporal settings of the film – 1982 and 2010, both past and future – and representations of the contemporary city of 2010 retain the same grading (evident in Figure 6). The Johannesburg of 2010 therefore also appears dated, trapped in the past. Grading has become an established practice in digital filmmaking, allowing cinematographers to colour and digitally alter film text (Lucas 2014: 134–135). Stephen Prince (2011: 65–72) suggests that digital cinematography has become almost akin to painting: digital film can be wholly manipulated to have a particular look, especially for colour and light, and to emulate particular analogue film stock, or evoke it in a more general manner (Prince 2004: 4–5, Lucas 2014: 141–146).19 More so than chemical processes used for film (such as bleach bypass, flashing, enr and cross-processing), digital techniques
The inner city of Johannesburg. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
The ability to finely tune the colour and texture of a digital image in filmmaking is akin to the frequent use of filters by amateur photographers, and even casual users of digital photography on social media platforms like Instagram. Bartholeyns (2014: 51–67) discusses how digital photography emulates analogue characteristics using software applications available to everyday users on their smartphones. For him, smartphones have changed the nature of photography, because they make good-quality cameras available to a vast number of users, including software applications that allow the manipulation of images. Also significant are the social networks where such images may be posted in public forums (Bartholeyns 2014: 54). At the time Bartholeyns wrote, over 7 billion “retro” images were already in circulation via social networks (by now it is presumably far more), images that evoke Polaroid and Kodak camera aesthetics, such as over-exposure and vignetting, which brings to mind
Introductory sequence. Still taken from Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (Ralph Ziman, 2008).
Analogue media (instead of digital media) can also be used in a manner which draws attention to the medium itself. One can see a hypermediatic use of analogue technologies in the film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (Figure 7).
The use of older model film cameras lends the title sequence a gritty feel, which shares some features with amateur photography such as that of the Lomography movement, popular around the time of the film’s making. The movement was already well established by 2006 and embraced “dirty” photography, with imperfections, glitches, defects and the like, valued by the mostly amateur practitioners who enjoyed using it (Minniti 2020: 79–86). The plastic lenses on the toy cameras that sparked the movement and its name – Russian lomo lc-a cameras from the 1980s – often result in images that lack the crisp and sharply focused appearance of the new digital cameras at the time. The Lomography movement evolved from the early 1990s as a reaction first to the ‘serious’ practices of amateur photography, and by the late 2000s it opposed the ‘cold’ and clinical character of digital photography. Users embraced the physicality, unpredictability and imperfections of the photographs produced by analogue cameras. As with analogue nostalgia, the analogue medium was valued for its sense of materiality, and was associated with authenticity. What such a practice represents is not an urge to recoup purely analogue processes and abandon digital media: it was brought about by the advent of the digital turn, and in this way was beholden to digital media’s prominence. Sergio Minniti (2020: 90) explains that practitioners often shared their photographs online, scanned into digital format, embracing digital media’s ability to be shared widely with ease. He describes it as a new practice, which combines
Documentary photographic practices at the time make use of a complex interaction between analogue and digital media as well. An analogue colour palette, as evident in the images above, is employed in the widely disseminated photographs taken of Johannesburg between 2008 and 2011 by Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse in their extensive project of photographing Ponte City. Their photographs were taken on medium format film cameras and were then digitally retouched before they were printed onto film negative again. The Mamiya medium format cameras they used have been produced since the 1970s and are thus also historical cameras, prized for their lens quality. The photographers chose to retouch their images digitally, however, so, like District 9, they evoke an analogue sensibility that is complicated by digital media processes. Importantly, one cannot equate the myriad ways in which digital and analogue technologies and techniques are used in these diverse instances with any one process. What seems more important is the ethos that informs the outcome: the entanglement of digital and analogue media technologies, techniques of use and processes, which results in an analogue aesthetic. The effect of the analogue aesthetic in District 9 in particular relates to the documentary qualities it evokes, and the sense of authenticity that results.
Across the contemporary and historical depictions of the city (Figures 4, 5, 6 and 7), the colouring of the images lends them a smoggy, polluted and, most importantly, dated appearance. It is noteworthy that District 9 does not only use digital media technologies and processes to evoke analogue media, however; it also employs production design and cinematography to emphasise these effects, using the hazy winter light that enhances the washed-out look associated with analogue film. The process to achieve this appearance is thus not purely digital, and visual effects such as digital grading are used in conjunction with what is filmed to create a nostalgic portrayal of the city.
News footage depicting violence in Johannesburg. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
In District 9 there are many temporal shifts, and it is not always clear which era the film is portraying. For example, the newsreel footage is ambiguous in this regard. In the footage depicted in Figure 8, the low definition of analogue newsreels has been translated differently from that in Figure 4, appearing less fuzzy than the footage of the alien craft. This is a representation of ‘current’ news footage, in other words, set in 2010, and thus not intended to simulate analogue newsreels, although it is not always entirely clear in the film. Lucas
Ponte City visible from the rooftop of San Jose. Still taken from The Battle for Johannesburg (Rehad Desai, 2010).
It is clear that in the three films District 9, Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema and The Battle for Johannesburg, digital and analogue media are often used in conjunction and in ways that emphasise mediatic qualities. As already mentioned, Bolter and Grusin (2000: 48) refer to the process of digital media that references analogue media as remediation. For them, digital media borrow from analogue media, and analogue media in turn incorporate digital media and its functions. This seems typical of the early years of the 2000s, when the transition to digital cinema processes was not yet complete (Whissel 2007: 2–4). But, in fact, the relationship between analogue and digital media has remained reliant on remediation.
In the Hollywood context, many filmmakers still employ the digital intermediate to some degree, and most films are made with references and interactions between the digital and analogue media paradigms. Jamie Clarke
In being shot digitally, but evoking analogue film technologies, District 9 is situated on the brink of media change between the two paradigms. The temporal context is characterised by a preoccupation with analogue media: the older paradigm is emulated to evoke a sense of authenticity but, as it is a source of cheaper, dated technologies and techniques, it can also lend films and photographs a dated quality. District 9, along with film and photography at the time, thus evidences the new ways analogue and digital media become imbricated with each other late in the first decade of the 2000s.
2.2 The Incidental Landscape
I now return to the mockumentary qualities of District 9, which are characterised by more than the material quality of analogue footage sparked by the analogue renaissance. Apart from newsreel and archive footage, there are also many
Many of the interviews in District 9 are staged and include ‘expert’ interviews at the beginning, similar to those in documentaries, such as the one at the beginning of The Battle for Johannesburg (Figure 10). This aspect of the film mimics documentary conventions related to the mode of interactivity that is explained by Hight (2008: 205), and to the evidentiary editing of the expository model that Nichols (2017) identifies. Expert knowledge and institutional discourse are drawn on to establish the supposed truthfulness or authenticity of the information represented. As a documentary, The Battle for Johannesburg makes use of interviews with experts such as Lael Bethlehem, the Director of Urban Renewal of the city council (Figure 10), and Nathi Mthethwa, then Director of Inner City Development. Using an observational fly-on-the-wall style, the film also follows stakeholders, such as Shareezah Sibanda from the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, as she liaises with tenants in bad buildings to improve their plight, and Nelson Katame, leader of the Residents Committee of San Jose, one of the bad buildings investigated in the film.24 Desai’s oeuvre is not conventional, and he often adopts a participatory mode of documentary (as Nichols defines it [2017: 132–158]), by inserting himself into scenes as the narrator, and also by positioning himself as someone with a point of view and a stake in the events that unfold throughout his films (Dlamini 2019: 41). In The Battle for Johannesburg, he recounts several nostalgic reminiscences of Johannesburg’s inner city, specifically Hillbrow, from his younger days, for example. The general tone of the film is often nostalgic and seems to advocate for the revival of Hillbrow, to restore it to its former state. The Battle for Johannesburg is thus not a film that provides a text-book comparison with District 9’s parody of the documentary genre, since it also seeks to subvert
Interview with Lael Bethlehem, director of Urban Renewal. Still taken from The Battle for Johannesburg (Rehad Desai, 2010).
In mockumentary films, documentary techniques are emulated, but with added complexity, since they are also parodic. The conventions applied in District 9 are typical of the interview format that depicts interviewees as talking heads, and uses text on the screen to emulate documentary conventions, evoking the reportorial model and observational mode, such as those used later by Desai in The Battle for Johannesburg.25 In District 9, interviews that recall documentary modes and models serve as mockumentary motifs. In the interview with the character Grey Bradnam (Figure 11), the resolution of the image appears different from that in the newsreel and archive footage (such as Figure 4). Different stylistic devices convey changes in temporal setting, although this
Interview with Grey Bradnam. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
Another style of interview is discernible in the intermittent interviews with Wikus, which is also how the film commences. In one of the first scenes (Figure 12), Wikus attaches a microphone to himself, and addresses the camera directly, apparently speaking to the camera operator or interviewer.26 The strategy is repeated later in the film as well, which reinforces its generic orientation. The technique suggests that this is not a fiction film; it is a true story. The text at the bottom right of the frame is notable again, indicating the documentary context. Also included in the shot in Figure 12 is the open plan office where Wikus works, which shows many incidental details that emulate cinéma vérité. For example, the background includes signage on the wall to the left, hanging askew, and a whiteboard that juts out behind Wikus. Alongside these details, the office employees appear to go about their business unhindered, and the
Wikus interviewed at mnu headquarters. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
Using hand-held cameras to evoke particular effects is not new; since the 1990s with the release of the Blair Witch Project (Myrick & Sánchez 1999), it has become a more widely used strategy.28 In Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (Ziman 2008) and The Battle for Johannesburg (2010), it emphasises the immediacy of the action genre. The latter film uses it in low-resolution sequences when interviewees are tracked as they walk through buildings. At various stages, the director/narrator is shown driving through Johannesburg, as a hand-held camera films him and the surrounding city from inside the car. The strategy establishes the importance of the actual city to the documentary, and also provides a tangible sense of how middle-class citizens, like Desai, traverse the city by car. Viewers witness the problems in the city – and see the city itself – in areas that are perhaps less familiar.29
In District 9 hand-held shots evoke the camera techniques of live news journalism in particular (Nel 2012: 552). Typically, in situations of violent conflict, journalists and camera operators have to be mobile. This is evident in the opening shots of the official District 9 trailer from the initial scenes, and later when Wikus first visits the alien settlement. In many scenes the camera is operated by someone following a character from behind. Hight (2008: 209) suggests that the hand-held camera, along with grainy footage and other flaws, conveys a sense of amateur video, which, importantly in District 9, suggests the authenticity of newsreel footage. The interview in Figure 13 shows Wikus addressing the camera directly again, apparently unaware of conflict erupting behind him, to humorous effect. He admonishes the alien on the left who pushes an mnu officer around,30 telling him in a rather thick accent to stop “prod[ding]” the officer. Although I do not focus on the film’s characters here, it is relevant that the treatment of Wikus is parodic to the point of caricature. He speaks English with an exaggerated Afrikaans accent that plays into stereotypes of Afrikaner identity (Jansen van Veuren 2012: 581–582). He is the butt of the joke, as his surname Van de Merwe indicates: Van der Merwe is a common surname used for the daft everyman Afrikaner character in South African humour.31
Interestingly, Wikus may be compared with one of the interviewees in The Battle for Johannesburg, Gerald Olitzky, a property developer (and owner of Olitzky Property Holdings), who is questioned about his project of rejuvenating San Jose. In one encounter he is shown arguing with building residents who accuse him of taking advantage of them because they are poor. Like Wikus with the aliens in District 9, he wants to evict them while trying to avoid conflict, and the encounter serves as an index of the racial tension that underpins land ownership and the history of segregation in Johannesburg, and the country in general.
My interest, however, is in how documentary conventions construct the landscape of Johannesburg as “real” in District 9, The Battle for Johannesburg and Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema. The landscape shown in the interviews reads as incidental: it is the ‘actual’ landscape, and just happens to be in the shots with the interviewees. As I have mentioned, Johannesburg’s informal settlements and townships are recognisable in District 9, even to someone who has not lived in them, and this is equally true for Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema and The Battle for Johannesburg. The films thus encourage one to see their portrayal of Johannesburg as credible (Nel 2012: 551). Recognisable elements in the landscape facilitate recognition. In the shot in Figure 13 from District 9, for
Wikus addresses the camera while a prawn argues with an mnu officer. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
Lucky and Zakes near electricity pylons. Still taken from Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (Ralph Ziman, 2008).
Although Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema has a very different generic context, it also relies on the incidental landscape of Johannesburg to establish a sense of recognisable of setting. This is perhaps more in line with how the film noir genre came to rely on on-location shooting in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s (Olsin-Lent 1987). In Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema the incidental landscape is ubiquitous as the whole film was shot on location, without any sets. The screenshot in Figure 14, for example, shows the pylons alongside abandoned mining headgear. Mine waste areas are in close proximity to Soweto, where the township scenes were shot. The landscape reinforces the element of verité evoked at the beginning of the film, which references true events as the inspiration for the plot. Like District 9, Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema appears to have been shot during winter, and the smog and dust in the air make the landscape seem washed-out, while the abandoned structures give it a post-industrial quality.
Johannesburg from the Southwest. Photograph by David Goldblatt, 2003. Archival pigment inks, 98.5 × 123 cm.
courtesy the david goldblatt legacy trust and goodman gallery
There are many other comparisons one could make between Goldblatt’s photograph and the landscape in these shots. One of the most pertinent aspects is not just the motif of the pylons but the analogue language evoked. Goldblatt is known for taking analogue photographs. He experimented with some digital photography toward the end of his life, but he claimed to feel
2.3 Back to the 1980s
2.3.1 Landmarks
District 9 also makes use of several other techniques to evoke a 1980s feeling. One of the most important is the use of motifs that relate to the period from a cultural perspective. Many of the motifs are iconically South African, which further reinforces a sense of place (Kapstein 2014: 165). Many buildings in Johannesburg’s inner city, along with other structures and infrastructure, such as roads, power plants and the mining industry’s abandoned equipment, are not only recognisable but now seem arrested in the state they were in before the fall of apartheid.32 The white flight from the inner city in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s means that numerous buildings in the city are no longer maintained, and have fallen prey to opportunistic landlords who illegally sublet apartments, in effect giving rise to slums (Beavon 2004: 244–245).33 In this sense Johannesburg may be thought of as a time capsule, and its depiction in District 9 evokes the past almost by default. The feeling of nostalgia that has tainted parts of the city is reflected in other films and media representations, as well
Joburg Heritage Walking Tour [n.d.]), which focus on the little-known architectural histories of the inner city. They include, for example, the city’s Art Deco buildings, and other formerly important buildings, such as the Rissik Street post office, now abandoned and gutted, opposite the languishing Johannesburg city library, itself falling into disrepair.34
The mothership next to Ponte City as it leaves earth. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
One of the most important landmarks in District 9, which appears in many shots and sequences, is the notorious skyscraper Ponte City (Figure 16). Its principal designers, Mannie Feldman, Manfred Hermer and Rodney Grosskopff, conceived the building, begun in 1975 and finished a few months before the Soweto uprising the next year (Kruger 2006: 150), as a modernist beacon of progress. According to Kruger (2006: 143), the building resembles Betrand Goldberg’s Marina City (1967) in Chicago, which she suggests is a city that inspired apartheid architecture; both cities grew from nothing and have an appearance of wealth. Federico Freschi (2019: 67) describes 1960s architecture in South Africa as symbolic of the projected success and progress of the
As a familiar landmark in the Johannesburg skyline, Ponte City appears repeatedly in District 9, and also in Alive in Joburg and many other films, such as The Foreigner (Maseko 1997), Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema and The Battle for Johannesburg. Ponte City fell into decay in the 1980s and 1990s and has since seen several waves of renovation that have met with limited success (Josephy 2017: 67–85, Ponte City 2022). Around the same time that District 9 was being shot, photographers Subotzky and Waterhouse were documenting the building, which coincided with a project to clear its atrium, where enormous heaps of rubble and garbage had accumulated, as is visible in Subotzky and Waterhouse’s images from the time (Figure 17).35 Svea Josephy (2017), who
Cleaning the Core (360 Degree Panorama), Ponte City, Johannesburg. Photograph by Mikhael Subotzky, 2008.
copyright mikhael subotzky and patrick waterhouse, courtesy goodman gallery.
The building is a dubious beacon of progress. If anything, it represents the ambiguity of Johannesburg itself, as a place that is home to many people, but also has substantial problems that most citizens are aware of, even if they are not directly affected by them. Josephy (2017: 70) argues that Subotzky and Waterhouse’s project captures both the positive mythology of the building as envisioned in its planning, and the negative mythology around its demise, as well as the sense of homeliness and mundanity of the everyday lives of its residents. Such a building probably evokes mixed feelings of both belonging and shame in South African viewers who see it in representations. In the title of her article on the building, Josephy describes the building as “Acropolis now”, ominously evoking the film Apocalypse Now (Coppola 1979). The title of course also evokes the Acropolis in Athens, an iconic and classical urban landmark on a hill, which is now a ruin. In Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema, as Ziman explains in an interview, the building is compared with the Biblical Jerusalem, a shining city on a hill, which the character Lucky ironically calls a new Jerusalem (that never comes to fruition) (Lehman 2011: 114, 123; Mututa 2020: 211). In 2010, in a socio-medical research project entitled “Visual Hillbrow”, Emilie Venables (2011: 124–143) interviewed hiv-positive men who lived in Hillbrow. They were asked to take photographs and make cognitive maps, as well as narrate their feelings about living in the area. Many of them conveyed mixed feelings, regarding the neighbourhood as unsafe, unhealthy and rife with social problems, while at the same time being proud of its landmarks (the Hillbrow Tower, for example) and thinking of it as home. Ponte City might evoke comparable mixed responses from residents of the building and citizens of Johannesburg in general. Ponte could be interpreted as a symbol of the apartheid regime, evoking negative connotations, and it could also be regarded negatively because of its sordid afterlife in post-apartheid Johannesburg. As one of the most iconic buildings affected by white flight, it might furthermore be seen as symbolic of white anxiety, symbolising a white fear of the loss of hegemonic supremacy (Gabay 2018: 1–45), which I consider later in relation to the mining landscape.
Discussed at length in Venables’ research, the Hillbrow Tower also recurs as a landmark in District 9, Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema and The Battle for Johannesburg. Originally called the J.G. Strijdom tower, after a Nationalist Prime Minister of the 1950s, it is one of the most recognisable buildings in the city, visible to the left of Ponte City in Figure 16. Completed in 1971, it was built by the Post Office as a telecommunications signal tower. Like Ponte, it was an engineering feat, with its ambitious 270m height, and it cost R2 million to erect this landmark (Brodie 2008: 161). The building was initially open to the public,
The mnu headquarters with mine dumps in the background. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
Another recognisable building in District 9 is the Carlton Centre, constructed through a partnership between Chicago architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and local firm Rhodes, Harrison and Hoffe, to echo the First National Bank building in Chicago by Perkins and Wills (Kruger 2006: 143) – another instance of apartheid architecture drawing inspiration from Chicago. In the film it serves as the mnu headquarters (Figure 18). Wagner (2015: 57–58) describes how it rises above the camp (or township) and serves as a symbol of the bureaucratic control of the apartheid regime. In the background of Figure 18, one can see mine dumps, a reminder of the financial underpinnings of buildings such as the Carlton Centre, which was once the tallest building in Africa.
2.3.2
In Figure 8, a still image from District 9, one can see the emphasis on militarisation and the security police presence, which in District 9 (and Alive in Joburg in Figure 4) resembles the actual vehicles and police in 1980s media. A similar police vehicle also appears in Gangster’s Paradise. The Casspirs, security vehicles used by the police during the historical States of Emergency, were ubiquitous at the time, and also appear in historical documentary photographs and newsreel footage, as well as in Goodman Mabote’s illustrations for Rantete’s 1984 account of the Sebokeng rebellion.36
The vehicles, omnipresent in 1980s imagery of Johannesburg, are emulated in the 2010 mnu vehicles in District 9 (Figure 19). The effect is a conflation of past, present and future. Blomkamp may thus be said to amplify the analogue nostalgia in District 9, the “nostalgising” (Niemeyer 2014: 10) of the present, in the content of the film as well as its visual effects. Similar to Instagram filters that endow contemporary photographs with a sense of historicity and create an “instant past” (Bartholeyns 2014: 51–69), Johannesburg, depicted here as the science fiction city of the future, is simultaneously the city of the apartheid past. Temporality collapses in the analogue aesthetics at work here, rendering the future as the past, which casts the present in a nostalgic light and also suggests that not much has changed from the country’s past to the present. Many scholars that have written about the city have made the point that there are disturbing parallels between the geopolitics of apartheid Johannesburg and democratic Johannesburg.37
mnu vehicles that resemble Casspirs. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
A militarised quality is also emphasised in Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema and The Battle for Johannesburg, in the latter through the opening scenes where the eviction agents known as Red Ants38 are clearing a slum building with military fervour. In Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema, there are numerous portrayals of the security measures that abound in District 9 as well: barbed wire, security gates, militarised vehicles, uniformed security guards and police, and so forth. All three films seem to reference the carceral character of the city, which has engaged the attention of scholars interested in the city. It is
Still taken from Rewind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony (Gerhard and Maja Marx, 2007).
image courtesy of gerhard marx
2.4 What can Mockumentary Poetics Do?
Wikus addresses the camera while an informal structure burns behind him. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
It is part of the complexity of depictions like District 9 that they may contribute to damaging stereotypes of South African cities. As with any representation, this is a particular view of what townships are like. This landscape of siege depicts Johannesburg as trapped in a state of crisis, a living dystopia or zone of indistinction, a landscape utterly broken. An important aspect of the mockumentary genre is that it complicates the sense of realism. This realism is important in the broader idiom, reinforced in the use of documentary techniques in Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema and The Battle for Johannesburg, in which the actual setting of the city lends the depictions a sense of the “real” city. They also focus on the dystopian qualities of the city, however, and portray the contemporary demise of Hillbrow and the bleak future of the city: from both a fictionalised and a documentary perspective District 9 provides a more complicated portrayal, due to the ironic and self-reflexive qualities of the mockumentary genre.
To what end does District 9 employ mockumentary techniques then? How does this relate to nostalgic dystopia more generally? One of the most obvious answers to these questions is that the documentary qualities of the mockumentary genre dovetail with the fetishization of authenticity that analogue nostalgia is known for. The genre allows the film to simulate a documentary of apartheid Johannesburg, in a depiction that resembles many of the contemporary portrayals of the city in film, photography and popular media. In other words, it constructs a war-torn dystopian city that closely resembles aspects of the actual city, a quality shared by the other films discussed, as well as by the documentary photography and archival footage that District 9 evokes. The use of humour inherent in the mockumentary genre makes District 9’s landscape visually palatable and it is instrumental in the film’s ironic reflective nostalgia. Although the city depicted in the film is dystopian, it is also the childhood home of many South Africans of a certain generation, such as Blomkamp, and Moloi who grew up in Soweto (Vundla 2017), along with authors Jacob Dlamini
Craig Hight (2008: 209) suggests that the mockumentary genre contributes to the complexity in the exchange “between analogue and digital forms of mediated reality” in contemporary filmmaking. In District 9 specifically, the mockumentary qualities enable the viewer to engage less with an ethical consideration of apartheid (the film’s allegorical content), than to savour its humour and nostalgia. Hight argues that mockumentary replaces the documentary genre’s call to action with a “call to play” (Hight 2008: 211, emphasis in original text). While I would not suggest that District 9 is easy to watch or even enjoyable, or that play is a viable ethical response to apartheid’s history, the call to play seems blatant in the film. I would argue that the mockumentary qualities of District 9 enable the contradictory aspects at work in the idiom to come to the fore and, what is more, makes it possible for them to coexist. If not for the humour brought to the film by its mockumentary conventions, it might be far more difficult to digest any of the nostalgia it evokes.
Johannesburg as mockumentary city can thus more easily be tolerated for its dystopian character, so that one may think of it nostalgically, or even with a touch of ironic humour. To me, this is most emphatic in relation to the landscape rather than to apartheid history as such. An aspect of District 9 which is also interesting in terms of the mockumentary genre, is that the site of the most violent encounter is also the site of redemption or transformation. The township landscape, here depicted as washed-out (in colour) and ruinous, also becomes the site where Wikus ultimately finds a reluctant belonging and redemption. In this way, the film permits the township setting to be recast as the site of salvation. This is significant from an allegorical point of view. While scholars have suggested that the alien character Christopher Johnson has Christ-like attributes, or that Wikus attains a form of redemption through his bodily suffering, the landscape has not often been considered in this light. I argue that the redemptive aspect here is more than just a white Afrikaner man being cast as an anti-hero who eventually gives up his status as white man, to be saved by the ‘other’, the alien Christopher. The landscape is integral to situating redemption and transformation in a complex contradictory
A ‘stopnonsense’ is the vernacular expression used in townships for pre-fabricated boundary walls, which are very common.
I cannot do justice to the rich history and the academic discourse around the topic in my brief outline, but further discussion is not within the purview of this book.
The notion of the English Garden Suburb was informed by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act in the UK (Foster 2012: 39–41). This Act envisioned a particular image of a ‘good city’ as one that was ordered using plans, a technocratic implementation of these plans, and laws that would facilitate further order in how land was designated for use through zones. Aesthetics, efficiency and modernisation were important to this vision. Cities that resulted from this kind of planning were characterised by open green spaces, vertical buildings, traffic efficiency, super-blocks, peripheral suburbs and separation of land use. Additional planning models that influenced township planning in South Africa include modernist movements such as the European association ciam (Congrès Internationale d’Architecture Moderne), influenced by Le Corbusier’s universalist views on mass housing (Foster 2012: 39), and models from the US such as the neighbourhood unit, the Radburn layout, and the British Milton Keynes km grid (De Satgé & Watson 2018:42).
‘ne51’ designates the term “Non-European”, and the year this particular model was finalised, 1951 (Le Roux 2019: 274). See Hannah Le Roux’s (2019) detailed historical account of the planning models used in this township in 1951 for an explication of the ne51 housing scheme.
This history is written about by Noor Nieftagodien & Sally Gaule (2012: 10) and Niq Mhlongo (2010).
See Richard de Satgé & Vanessa Watson (2018: 47) and Marie Huchzermeyer (2011: 71) for more on the image of informal settlements.
See Mayekiso (1996) and Myambo (2011, 2018).
The Act defined a “native” as “any person, male or female, who is a member of an aboriginal race or tribe of Africa; and shall further include any company or other body of persons, corporate or unincorporate, if the persons who have a controlling interest therein are natives” (The Natives Land Act 2013).
Earlier colonial Acts had also laid the foundations for the dispossession of land, and for the control of land by the government. See Vusi Gumede (2015: 87–96), Njabulo Ndebele (2010: ix–xiv) and South African History Online (The Natives Land Act 2013) for a detailed account of these laws and the effects they had on black ownership of land.
For further information, see a recent review of spatial inequality produced for parliament entitled The Role of Land Tenure and Governance in Reproducing and Transforming Spatial Inequality (De Satgé et al. 2017).
Toy-toying refers to the protest ‘dance’ performed in townships at the time; see Hilary Sapire’s (2013) discussion of resistance to the apartheid regime and the history of the anti-apartheid ‘struggle’.
See Christopher Merrett (1990: 3) and Deborah Posel (1990: 154) for more on how the States of Emergency affected media representation of these events.
Ravan Press was established in the 1970s by Peter Ralph Randall, Danie van Zyl and Beyers Naudé. They published anti-apartheid literature, and later went on to publish Njabulo Ndebele’s book Fools and Other Stories (1983). They were also known for the Staffrider journal series, which published much anti-apartheid literature and also artists’ prints (Peffer 2009: xv–xxii). Rantete’s account entitled The Third Day of September (The Sebokeng Rebellion of 1984), was published as a book in the Storyteller Series on 14 October, but soon afterwards police raided Sebokeng, and Rantete was detained for some time. Police demanded the colour photographs from Ravan Press, and the book was banned in December. After an appeal on this to the Publications Board, distribution of the book was resumed in January 1985, but it appeared this time with black and white sketches by Goodman Mabote (Rantete 1984, The third day … 1985: 37–42). These sketches may be less confrontational than the colour photographs but make for interesting comparison with the media images distributed at the time. The illustrations provide detail on the events unfolding, emphasising the role of the police and authorities, often depicting Casspirs and police officers surveying the area. Such portrayals of township conflicts appear in documentary photography by well-known photographers in South Africa as well, such as those working under the umbrella of the Afrapix group, but are largely absent from South African media publications at the time, as discussed earlier.
See Lorenzo Veracini (2011), Mireille Rosello (2016: 43) and Adele Nel (2012).
John Corner (2015) and Stella Bruzzi (2015) provide more insight into the genre’s conventions.
It would of course be possible to analyse the film quite closely by looking at generic conventions at work in it, but I have selected to focus on motifs, conventions and structures that contribute to an analogue landscape depiction.
I refer to resolution as the digital equivalent of low fidelity in the case of District 9, which is a digital text.
The film was shot on digital cameras and printed onto film stock, a process discussed by Kristen Whissel (2007: 2) as commonplace in the era of the digital intermediate.
Like scholars mentioned earlier, Prince (2004: 80–85) refers to “digital video” when referring to digital filmmaking, and thus uses the term film to imply the use of analogue media technologies in analogue films. I use the term film in relation to both digital and analogue media, since I am looking at a cinematic (film) text; moreover, in the context of District 9, video would imply vhs video footage, instead of “digital video”.
See John Corner (2015: 148–149) for a discussion on the veracity of this genre.
Interestingly, the film also opens with a shot of a helicopter over the skyline, like District 9. Here the policemen in the helicopter are after the gangster protagonist of the film, Lucky Kunene. The helicopter hovers over Hillbrow, where he is hiding from the police, leading up to the moment where he is shown wounded and bleeding on his bed in a slum building.
He takes the term from cinematographer M. David Mullen.
I interviewed Kovel online in 2022, when he explained in detail his involvement with both The Battle for Johannesburg and Berea. Interestingly from the point of view of the nostalgic dystopian idiom they share, he was the cinematographer for both these films. Although one would therefore expect his own vision to have translated into the films, Kovel indicated that he was intent on making the two different directors’ visions come to life, and that he was following their direction rather than exercising his own creative voice, although his involvement is nonetheless noteworthy.
Bad buildings are described by Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon (2022) as a designation that became widespread in use by policymakers and journalists during the period leading up to South Africa hosting the 2010 fifa World Cup. It refers to buildings in a state of decay or dereliction. His book entitled The Blinded City (2022) focuses on such occupied buildings and their residents over a roughly ten-year period from 2010. He engages with these buildings through interviews with residents, presenting their stories of hardship and survival.
Nichols (2017: 105–125) identifies various “models” adapted from other media forms, paired with what he calls cinematic “modes”, in the articulation of the documentary film genre. I do not consider these distinctions in more detail here, although one could attempt to interpret the films under discussion in such a way. See also John Corner (2015: 147).
In fact, he addresses someone he calls “Trent”, which happens to be the first name of the District 9 cinematographer.
Nichols’ (2017: 132–136) book on documentary is a seminal source on the genre.
Hight (2008: 208–209) and Lucas (2014: 143–146) each discuss this technique in some detail.
Desai seems to suggest that viewers would be middle-class citizens, like himself.
mnu is an acronym for Multi-National United, a fictional security organization based in South Africa, and responsible for security in the alien camp District 9 (Brott 2013: 31).
The significance of Wikus’ name in relation to the well-known jokes is remarked on by Dennis Walder (2014: 151), Adele Nel (2012: 554, 561) and Keith Wagner (2015: 52).
By now I mean the time of writing: 2016–2022. However, this condition has existed in the inner city since the early 1990s (Beavon 2004: 244–245).
The term white flight refers to the sudden departure of white residents from an urban area, and is not limited to Johannesburg; the term is also often used in relation to Detroit in the 1950s to 1970s (Jay & Leavell 2017). See also Brodie (2008: 97) and Saks (2010) for more on Johannesburg’s white flight.
The post office was vacated in 1996 and stood empty until it fell victim to a fire in 2009. It is currently under renovation (Joburg’s Rissik Street … 2016).
See also South Africa’s Tower of Trouble (2014), for an independent short documentary on the revival of the building, as well as Subotzky’s website for a text on the building by writer Ivan Vladislavić (2014).
Visual artist William Kentridge also produced an etching in 1989 entitled Casspirs Full of Love, commenting on the States of Emergency and the political tensions in the country at the time.
Scholars such as Mellissa Thandiwe Myambo (2011), Mzwanele Mayekiso (1996: 13), Aghogho Akpome (2017), Martin Murray (2011), Jayne Poyner (2011) and Jennifer Robinson (2010) have considered the lack of geopolitical transformation in the city.
The Red Ant Security, Eviction and Relocation Services are known for enforcing evictions in the country. They are often associated with the terrorisation of residents (Neille 2020).