Tuesday 9/3/21 - Neill Blomkamp and meaning

Neill Blomkamp is the director behind the films District 9, Elysium and Chappie. What made me decide to look at Blomkamp is how his films not only perfectly capture this dark and dystopian atmosphere but how he also explores different themes that I feel are very important. When I initially watched his films they were very interesting but also felt slightly disturbing, whilst I didn't fully grasp why I now know. It's because the themes he covers and his portrayal of them could realistically happen or actually have / still are happening. Despite his films being pretty futuristic and science fiction, by looking at these themes Neill Blomkamp helps to ground them. One major theme in particular is what it means to be human.

District 9 represented Apartheid, the segregation against those who weren't white in South Africa. This was a huge racist issue that lasted 50 years despite many being strongly against the law. It banned relations between white people and people of colour. It meant those who weren't white were forbidden to be present in certain areas and would need documentation. Public facilities and transport also were heavily segregated. I was glad to know that Blomkamp used this as the basis for District 9 because whilst Apartheid is no longer a law in South Africa, Racism is still very prominent in the world.

Elysium looked at the idea of the divide between social classes to a much more extreme extent compared to how it is now, the 99% vs the 1%. In real life there is a very small percentage of people who have a wealth bigger than the combined wealth of the majority of the world's population. In the film they take this and twist it so that a small percentage of people with the most money live aboard a space station in Earth's orbit whilst the rest of the population live on Earth in very poor conditions and with little money. Another very important issue as people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have such a high amount of money that both is near impossible to make and is more than any one person needs. All this happens whilst millions are living in poor conditions with little to no food and a lack of education or other rights such as healthcare.

Chappie was a bit different, it didn't look at themes that are as big in the world like the previous two films. Instead it looked at two ideas. In an interview with WIRED Neill Blomkamp said'If I had to distil what the movie is about, it's two things. The first is the idea that consciousness of any form is the most sacred thing in the Universe, because without it there isn't anything to comprehend the Universe. So consciousness has to be protected. And the second theme is the whole nature-versus-nurture discussion. The idea of a blank slate, of an uncor- rupted, uninfluenced thing that has been brought into the world, that can be given a set of values and be taught to go in any direction you want to teach it, versus how much of what it does is innate. But there isn't anything about oppression or anything like that.' (Godfrey, 2015).

This was the most interesting film to me, not to say the others weren't also very interesting, because of how unique the meaning behind it felt and how well it was executed in the film. The idea of consciousness is a really complex topic, especially in terms of AI, how Blomkamp handled it was superb.

This brings me to the idea of implementing meaning and depth into my work. It's what makes work more interesting and entertaining, I feel I did this effectively with my previous projects. My first project showcasing the future's pros and cons alongside it's portrayal in different media and my Memento project looking at dealing with Death. To help push myself outside of what I'm used to I want to explore themes I haven't exactly looked at. This could be the ones looked at in Neill Blomkamps films. Or it could be how Ridley Scott explored the idea of the existence of God in the Alien prequel duology or in his episodic series Raised By Wolves.

Bibliography:

Godfrey, A. (2015). Neill Blomkamp interview: the master of “social sci-fi.” WIRED. [online] 4 Feb. Available at: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/neill-blomkamp [Accessed 9 Mar. 2021].

History.com Editors (2010). Apartheid. [online] HISTORY. Available at: https://www.history.com/topics/africa/apartheid.