Political Seafood: What's Real in District 9

Attention: Contains spoilers.

District 9 is well worth seeing. It may look sensationalist and sci-fi (it does star prawnish aliens slumming it up in a militarized Johannesburg) but it contains enough realistic elements to keep the plot current, and often scary, in the way that catastrophic news is scary, subverting our everyday ease with the knowledge that well being is ephemeral.

The basic story takes place 20 years after an alien ship has broken down in the sky above Johannesburg. Well intentioned humans have retrieved the ill and starving aliens and established them in filthy refugee camps that are eerily reminiscent of both the post-Katrina FEMA trailer parks and the real slums of Johannesburg. As the aliens grow despondent in the face of unemployment, racism, interment in refugee camps, and permanent estrangement from home, they begin to act out, sometimes committing acts of violence against humans. As you can guess, the South African populace and government respond to the aliens' behavior with that particular blend of militarism, ownership and fear of the unknown that is the trademark of the modern nation state. When the movie begins, the alien affairs branch of the government (MNU) has decided to issue eviction notices to the alien inhabitants of District 9 and move them all 250 kilometers outside of the city.

If you know a little about the history of apartheid then you will get this reference to the independent homelands that the white South African government set up as a means of sequestering, denationalizing and controlling black South Africans. Like the alien homeland being established in District 9, these homelands were policed; likewise, both homelands devolved into crime-ridden ghettos full of angry people. The sociopolitical disaster that was apartheid evolved into a protracted and violent struggle for black independence, but it is not this struggle that the movie copies as the plot progresses. Instead, the movie seems to follow the more recent violence in South African slums between black South Africans and illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe. In the past year Zimbabweans and other aliens have been murdered and burned out of their homes by furious citizens afraid that the immigrants are taking the few jobs available in South Africa's weak economy.

This intra-slum violence is referenced in the relationship that District 9 explores between the aliens and a Nigerian gang squatting in District 9 in order to supply the aliens with desired goods (cat food, for some reason) and acquire alien weaponry (which no human can actually use). The Nigerian boss also engages witch doctors, who tell him that murdering and eating the flesh of the aliens will allow him to acquire their strength, intelligence, and ability to use their advanced technology. Ritual amputations and murders like this do still occur in parts of Africa today, and the movie makes a strong visual statement about the barbarity and idiocy of such "magic."


Alien rebellion is mentioned in the film, but the true focus is on the fears and actualization of miscegenation, and on the ways in which we tend to underestimate the abilities of people when we don't speak their language or understand their culture. The film highlights the political tactic of impoverishing people in order to disenfranchise them; its images of aliens corralled into fenced compounds resonate because there are people in South Africa and elsewhere who really live this way. I referenced Hurricane Katrina earlier; what violence and hopelessness are we engendering by treating our own citizens like aliens, too antithetical to the American dream to touch?


It's impressive that District 9, a mock-umentary that indulges in human-alien sex humor, sight gags, and stereotypical characterizations of shady, sadistic government agencies and brutish soldiers, manages to be simultaneously hard-hitting and entertaining. While the government and military characters are painted with broad strokes, the main characters--Wikus, a clumsy MNU officer, and the ironically named Christopher Johnson, alien genius--are given pathos and greater dimensionality. Wikus's horror at turning into an alien and his growing, grudging respect for Christopher, while well-trodden movie fodder, are sincere and engaging. And Christopher defies alien film convention by eschewing violence; if anything, Christopher's technical genius and self-appointed savior role mark him as the movie's hero.

District 9 doesn't do anything new as a blockbuster sci-fi film, but it's the first high budget fantasy I've seen that acts so simply as an allegory for contemporary political and humanitarian issues without being polemical or contrived. The viewer isn't lectured to by the film's focus on human inhumanity; rather, she is implicated in it, and forced to watch what we do to ourselves and our own.

And we wonder why extraterrestrial life won't come to Earth.

Bon Le Weekend

It's been a day of labor, grading and housework, but now I'm listening to Ella and Miles Davis and relaxing as the mingled scents of basil, mint and roasted tomato swell in my apartment, mixing with the cooling evening breeze.

It's a beautiful night.

I had quite a lot of leftover sundried tomato pesto from the other night, and all day recipe possibilities have been percolating in the back of my mind. I finally decided upon a roasted tomato tart with wilted radiccio and kalamata olives, resting on a liberal layer of pesto and nestled into a whole wheat olive oil crust. I'm serving the tart alongside a roasted patty pan squash and herbed chickpea salad (basil, chives and mint) in a lemony dressing. I'm finishing the tart with a balsamic reduction to add just a trace of sweet verve.

I am so excited for T to come home to this pretty, pretty meal, and I don't care how Donna Reed that is.

My culinary life has changed since discovering Chocolate and Zucchini, which I know is already very popular, but oh my goodness I was late to the table. Clotilde is responsible for the tart crust and is the inspiration for the squash salad. I was persuing her recipe index and can't wait to try a variation on her lentil apple salad (I might make mine more Indian than French inspired, because I have red lentils and Nigella seeds) and the zucchini and mushroom crumble (to do away with the green club our friend Yael thrust upon us the other weekend--her squash plants are palaeozaic--and the sad creminis languishing in the fridge). I must admit that I also love the blog because "Clothilde" is my pseudonymous title of choice when I have to write staff recs for really embarrassing books, and I take a lot of delight in its mixture of Flaubertian bourgeois exoticism and mothball old-ladyness. Chocolate's Clotilde is no doddering old lady, but she's a devastatingly good cook.

But oh, T is home and it is time to eat.

Bonsoir.

The Ramona St Keep

One day I will own and operate a little restaurant that isn't much more than a cozy hole in the wall. The tables and chairs--maybe 8 tables total--will all be rustic and mismatched, as will the tableware and glasses. I'll buy the stuff at rich lady rummage sales and I'll call my restaurant the Ramona St Keep in honor of our town's own Beverly Cleary, and here is what I'll serve.

In the mornings I'll make buttery yellow eggs served with seasonal vegetables, sweet roasted roots in the winter, crisp poached asparagus in spring, heirloom tomatoes and corn and patty-pan squash with bacon in the summer. Eggs come with biscuits some days, some days rich Irish soda bread, studded with fennel seeds or dried currants. For people who don't eat eggs I'll offer one or two alternatives, like an ever-changing breakfast panino--figs, parma ham and goat cheese one day, spinach, garlic and feta the next--and house-made granola with Greek yogurt. Strong coffee. Strong tea that comes to the table in a pot. Maybe on Sundays a wicked Bloody Mary. In a pitcher.

Lunch will be a stream-lined affair, with one daily soup and 2-3 blue plate specials. I'll cook what's on the market and according to whimsy, but it will be lovely comfort food. Creamy roasted tomato soup with my own special red chili grilled cheese, zucchini-corn cakes, curried chicken salad stuffed into hot naan, lemon risotto topped with butter-laced crabmeat. Warm bread twists folded with salt crystals and garlic.

No suppers. I like to spend evenings cooking for my family.

I think the trick will be to keep it simple. Find a rotating menu that I can make sublimely and stick to it. (Experiment at home only.) Get cute waitstaff. And have a little place, so that I don't get too stressed out. And make arrangements with local farmers to get fresh everything.

I'm really serious about this. In the last two years of thwarted ambition and career hell, with the resultant malaise of mediocrity settling over me, I have only genuinely enjoyed a few things. And cooking for other people is one of them. And I've found myself growing unaccountably jealous of the Portlanders I see, not older than me, running their own foodie businesses and seeming, well, happier than I am. And I think to myself, why the f**k am I lugging boxes around for management I despise when I could be at home elbow-deep in flour? And so, I need a plan to get myself elbow-deep in flour and happiness.

I'm going to start taking some cooking classes to bone up on skills I have but need to improve upon, like shaping artisan bread and cooking for a large number of people. (Can you even take a class on that?) I want to start making my own chutneys and pickles, too, and I'll need to start ferreting some money away. I'll also need to read up on running a successful small business.

But--unless life gets in the way, which it does do--this is my new 10-year plan.

At 38, I will own a thriving little business that smells like cinnamon and carmelized onions and pays more than my crap job at the warehouse.

You'll come, won't you?