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Mockumentary: A Fly on the ‘Stopnonsense’
1 Skeletons in the Closet
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 lm and Johannesburg’s history
in the media, because the visual history is so clearly emulated in District 9.
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 rst houses were built in 1931. It was organised through a grid struc-
ture, with wide roads and individual plots of land to be turned into gardens,
although this relatively generous allocation of space would not come to frui-
tion. The model for the township was essentially the English Garden Suburb
(Foster 2012: 51). Later models included the 51 housing scheme, rst used
by the apartheid government’s National Building Research Institute to plan the
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, eciency and modernisation were important to this vision. Cities that resulted
from this kind of planning were characterised by open green spaces, vertical buildings, trac
eciency, super- blocks, peripheral suburbs and separation of land use. Additional planning
models that inuenced township planning in South Africa include modernist movements
such as the European association (Congrès Internationale d’Architecture Moderne),
inuenced by Le Corbusier’s universalist views on mass housing (Foster 2012: 39), and mod-
els from the US such as the neighbourhood unit, the Radburn layout, and the British Milton
Keynes km grid (De Satgé & Watson 2018:42).
township of KwaThemba in the Witwatersrand. Most of the planning took
place because colonial, apartheid and, surprisingly, even post- apartheid gov-
ernment structures have sought to “govern and improve” the townships (De
Satgé & Watson 2018: 85– 94) and planners were often inuenced by best prac-
tices from the global North. The result was that planning models used in town-
ships often did not connect fundamentally with the people living there (De
Satgé & Watson 2018: 1– 6).
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 segrega-
tion 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 pregu-
rations 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, colloqui-
ally known as the father of Soweto, 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 suf-
cient 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 deciencies of that planning. Due to insuf-
cient housing in planned townships, almost from their inception, residents
often had to resort to unauthorised, informal approaches to housing short-
ages. 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
‘51’ designates the term “Non- European”, and the year this particular model was nalised,
1951 (Le Roux 2019: 274). See Hannah Le Roux’s (2019) detailed historical account of the plan-
ning models used in this township in 1951 for an explication of the 51 housing scheme.
This history is written about by Noor Nieftagodien & Sally Gaule (2012: 10) and Niq Mhlongo
(2010).
: ‘’
of townships in District 9 show how the appearance of such informal urban-
ism might seem dystopian. Informal urban practices are often regarded as a
failure of planning and government to impose and maintain order (Dovey &
King 2011: 22). Land- owning middle classes might furthermore regard land
value as threatened by the image of poverty the areas communicate to the out-
side world. I refer to informal settlements and townships along these lines, in
terms of how they have been associated with one another. There are, however,
distinctions between these designations, which must be borne in mind. Their
association with one another is perhaps the result of the particular place-
image of Johannesburg, such as the “township metropolis” that Nuttall and
Mbembe (2004: 197) reference.
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 coun-
try’s democratic era. 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. This meant that 93% of the land in the
country was unavailable for Black ownership. 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
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 dened 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, cor-
porate 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: – ) and South African History Online (The Natives Land Act 2013) for a detailed
account of these laws and the efects they had on black ownership of land.
(Natives Land Act 2013). Land ownership legislation is closely related to the
great majority of Black people becoming destitute, according to Sol Plaatjie
(1998, Natives Land Act 2013), and it has had long- term efects that are reected
in the prevalence of informal settlements in the country.
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
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).
This image was captured during protests against apartheid in South Africa. Photograph
by Paul Weinberg, 1980s.
- . . - . [..].
: ‘’
blue uniforms, by military personnel, security police, and armoured vehicles
such as Casspirs, as well as burning tyres, thronging masses of toy- toying and
chanting township residents and political leaders with sts in the air (see
Figure 1). Deborah Posel (1990), writing on broadcast news at the time, argues
that newsreels during the 1985 State of Emergency became highly stylised, and
contributed to a symbolic association between townships and violence. These
news items, broadcast by South African Television () typically used the
presence of three motifs: crowds, stone- throwing and re. The construction
of this image of violence associated with the townships at the time allowed
the actions of the government through the South African Police () and the
South African Defence Force () to appear justied, and further served to
exacerbate racist stereotypes of Black people, who were presented as acting
irrationally, violently, and without a clear political agenda.
The rst 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. 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 nal State of Emergency was declared in 1994, when conict arose in
KwaZulu Natal between and factions over the upcoming democratic
elections (States of Emergency … 2019).
Christopher Merrett (1990: 6), writing about the efects 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 efects 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
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 afected media representation of these events.
personnel, as long as they were deemed to be acting in the interests of state
security (Merrett 1990: 15). This meant that human rights were ‘suspended’, and
there were few consequences for the brutality that agents of the state might
inict on citizens, particularly Black South Africans. This history is relevant
to understanding how the township is portrayed in District 9 as a “zone of
indistinction” – an extreme dystopia where “bare life” conditions predominate
according to Akpome (2017).
It is also important to note how the States of Emergency afected the coun-
try’s media at the time. According to Merrett (1990: 14– 15), the efect of censor-
ship was to cut the ow of information concerning “conscientious objection,
human rights violations (detentions, political trials, assassinations and disap-
pearances), 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 res 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 liv-
ing there, was published by Ravan Press in October 1984, but banned shortly
thereafter. I refer to this account again below, as it provides an insider view
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 Stafrider
journal series, which published much anti- apartheid literature and also artists’ prints
(Pefer 2009: – ). 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
: ‘’
of the unrest in the country and in townships at the time. While District 9 is
not a document of the events in the country, the mockumentary mode in
which it constructs Johannesburg conveys a sense of documentary truth or
authenticity, which dovetails with the authenticity emulated in analogue nos-
talgia, discussed in Chapter 2. Furthermore, it draws on media depictions of
real events in the country. In these ways it contributes to a particular narra-
tive viewpoint about Johannesburg: that it is dangerous, poverty- ridden and
in decay. However, as Kapstein (2014: 172) suggests, it is also an “outsider” or
voyeuristic view of township life, with Wikus as a white man venturing into
the township from his life outside it. One might even say it is an apartheid view
of the township. It is therefore important to consider diferent points of view
such as Rantete’s to contextualise the history that District 9 allegorises.
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 efects emulated in
the lm. Although District 9 is often described in terms of the science ction
genre, this aspect of the lm is to my mind secondary to its mockumentary
qualities. Much of the lm mimics the appearance of a documentary, direct
cinema or cinéma vérité (Nel 2012: 552), in which stylistic efects 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, and the use of deep focus, which reveals ‘real’
details in the environment that seem incidental and not included for artistic
efect (Mitchell 1992: 23– 57). Adele Nel (2012) remarks on the use of such ele-
ments in District 9, noting that the lm conveys an authenticity that enables
it to comment on the Johannesburg of the apartheid past, as well as the con-
temporary city during its production in 2008. Her analysis of the lm’s formal
and police ocers surveying the area. Such portrayals of township conicts 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.
features is one of the more detailed, focusing on several aspects of the cine-
matography and production design, and I refer to it again when discussing the
depiction of the landscape.
District 9 mimics many of the documentary conventions thought to be form-
ative 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 lm 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 signicant. Finally, the
appearance of natural lighting foregrounds the airborne pollution so prevalent
in Johannesburg’s winter landscape (Nichols 2017: ). District 9’s cinematogra-
pher, 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 signicant diference that sets the mockumentary apart from the docu-
mentary, 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 signicant that mockumentary
conventions are interspersed with elements of narrative ction in the lm,
and that large parts unfold in a narrative rather than a documentary man-
ner – further removing the lm from a true documentary context (Bunch in
Kapstein 2014: 169). Mockumentary as a genre may also contribute to a pleas-
urable viewing experience, which is very diferent from documentary lm that
primarily aims to educate the viewer. While they may appear at rst glance as
documentary lms, mockumentary lms are staged and scripted to implicitly
encourage the viewer to nd carefully constructed clues to their artice as one
gradually comes to realise their fallaciousness (Nichols 2017: 12).
It would of course be possible to analyse the lm quite closely by looking at generic con-
ventions at work in it, but I have selected to focus on motifs, conventions and structures
that contribute to an analogue landscape depiction.
: ‘’
One of the most important motifs in District 9 is the television newsreel. In
documentary terms, it is common to intersperse interview footage with found
footage, and edit them together in an “evidentiary” manner to provide further
proof to corroborate a particular argument about an event or place (Nichols
2017: – 18). In the case of District 9, the newsreel footage appears real, though
it is completely staged, scripted and performed by actors, not real newsreaders.
Blomkamp uses many visual techniques to achieve such a parodic authentic-
ity, and the principle of hypermediacy informs his approach. He does not seek
to conceal the artice of the newsreels, but instead exaggerates their medi-
atic qualities to draw attention to them as media artefacts of a particular time
and place, and products of specic media technologies. Newsreels from the
1980s have a characteristic appearance that is not only due to the media used
to record them, but is also attributable to the cathode ray televisions to which
they were broadcast. Figure 2 is an example of such newsreel footage, which
was broadcast during the 1985 State of Emergency and is now available on
YouTube (South Africa State … 2008). One may note its fuzziness, which could
be because YouTube videos are often low resolution, but which also evokes
Composited newsreel footage from the 1985 state of emergency (Rui (channel), 2008). Still
from the video. (South Africa State ... 2008).
the lack of sharpness in images on cathode ray screens (Connolly & Evans
2014: 54). It is further notable that the aspect ratio of the original footage, 4:3, is
incompatible with the wider screen format of YouTube, and the image seems
to have been horizontally distorted to t the online format.
The lack of denition is also emulated in Alive in Joburg (Figure 3),
Blomkamp’s short lm which preceded District 9. It shares a muted pal-
ette with the newsreel footage mentioned above. Low- denition sequences
abound in District 9 as well, and in such sequences the quality of analogue
footage is evoked in diferent ways. Figure 4 is a screenshot from the introduc-
tory sequence in the lm that depicts how the alien ship looked when it rst
arrived on earth and was stranded above Johannesburg, which imitates 1980s
archive footage. Opaloch says that they allowed the focus to “go” when shoot-
ing “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 efects created “a kind of reality that’s really unique”.
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 lm stock and the camera used to shoot it. This screenshot
An alien levitating a minibus. Still taken from Alive in Joburg
(Neill Blomkamp, 2006).
: ‘’
is from 1974, yet one can see a pronounced resemblance between this his-
torical depiction of Johannesburg and stills from District 9 (Figures 4 and 6).
Giuseppina Sapio (2014) notes that contemporary practitioners working in dig-
ital media often emulate the aws of analogue media to evoke its character.
These aws include low delity, noise, motion blur, distorted colour due to age-
ing lm stock, and so on. In cinematography after 2000, computer- generated
imagery () increasingly aimed to emulate the efects of poor craftsmanship
in cinematography (Lucas 2014: 149). Writing on the digital turn in cinematog-
raphy – the transition from analogue to digital cinematography – Christopher
Lucas (2014: 149) suggests that such aspects became associated with authen-
ticity, and with a lm- look, or photorealism. The aim of the digital lm was
now to emulate the lm medium. The strategy of emulating analogue aws is
used by Blomkamp throughout District 9, and was not only implemented in
post- production, but also during lming. Along with manipulating camera
focus, Opaloch mentions, for example, that they allowed highlighted areas to
Emulated newsreel footage. Still taken from District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
I refer to resolution as the digital equivalent of low delity in the case of District 9, which
is a digital text.
The lm was shot on digital cameras and printed onto lm stock, a process discussed by
Kristen Whissel (2007: 2) as commonplace in the era of the digital intermediate.
become overexposed in shots that were meant to look like 1980s journalistic
footage (Holben 2009: 30).
The colour palette remains relatively unchanged throughout the two tem-
poral settings of the lm – 1982 and 2010, both past and future – and rep-
resentations 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 lmmak-
ing, allowing cinematographers to colour and digitally alter lm text (Lucas
2014: 134– 135). Stephen Prince (2011: 65– 72) suggests that digital cinematog-
raphy has become almost akin to painting: digital lm can be wholly manipu-
lated to have a particular look, especially for colour and light, and to emulate
particular analogue lm stock, or evoke it in a more general manner (Prince
2004: 4– 5, Lucas 2014: 141– 146). More so than chemical processes used for lm
(such as bleach bypass, ashing, and cross- processing), digital techniques
Composited archival footage depicting Johannesburg in 1974.
Still taken from The kinolibrary (channel), 2017. (1974 Johannesburg Street Scenes ... 2017)
Like scholars mentioned earlier, Prince (2004: 80– 85) refers to “digital video” when refer-
ring to digital lmmaking, and thus uses the term lm to imply the use of analogue media
technologies in analogue lms. I use the term lm in relation to both digital and analogue
: ‘’
make it possible for the cinematographer or visual efects artist to target par-
ticular elements in a shot and alter them in isolation. Prince (2004: 27– 33) sug-
gests it enables much greater subtlety in how colour efects are achieved, and
as a result approaches a more realistic efect.
The ability to nely tune the colour and texture of a digital image in
lmmaking is akin to the frequent use of lters by amateur photographers,
and even casual users of digital photography on social media platforms like
Instagram. Bartholeyns (2014: 51– 67) discusses how digital photography emu-
lates 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 signicant 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 cam-
era aesthetics, such as over- exposure and vignetting, which brings to mind
The inner city of Johannesburg. Still taken from District 9
(Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
media, since I am looking at a cinematic (lm) text; moreover, in the context of District 9,
video would imply video footage, instead of “digital video”.
1960– 1980s family photography (Bartholeyns 2014:51). Processing photographs
in this way enables users to instantly evoke the same nostalgia that family pho-
tographs do, often with no real link to the past. In the case of fashion blog-
gers, such as Khumbula, the Sartists and I See A Diferent You, there are further
implications beyond the evocation of historicity, which I discuss later. Further,
the technique is echoed in contemporary lmmaking, with a comparable nos-
talgic efect. This begs the question: why do users employ lters to age their
photographs in the rst place? In Chapter 2, I referred to Caorduro (2014) and
Niemeyer’s (2014) argument that it is to emulate the authenticity associated
with analogue media. In District 9 this takes on another layer of nuance in
terms of the mockumentary genre, which already parodies the authenticity of
a documentary – itself a questionable notion – while at the same time pro-
viding a sense of authenticity by mimicking analogue lm to evoke a nostalgic
sense of Johannesburg in the 1980s.
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 lm Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (Figure 7).
See John Corner (2015: 148– 149) for a discussion on the veracity of this genre.
Introductory sequence. Still taken from Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (Ralph
Ziman, 2008).
: ‘’
Whereas District 9 was shot digitally, Gangster’s Paradise was shot entirely on
Aaton 16- and 35- mm cameras, and the cinematographer used old lm stock,
along with Russian Konvas 35 mm cameras with lenses and a 16- mm
Bolex, to shoot the material for the title sequence. The latter is constructed
with time- lapse sequences that depict the inner city, focusing on urban decay,
against a foreboding cloudy sky. The washed- out colour palette is visible here
too, and the time- lapse sequences with their ickering quality result in a look
that recalls low- budget amateur lmmaking and photographic techniques
such as Lomography, as well as aws such as frame jitters, overexposure and
the like. Budget constraints may have motivated the use of vintage analogue
cameras, but they are used to accentuate the gritty appearance of the inner
city. Ziman recounts his thoughts at the time: “no cleaning 20 years of grime of
the windows or picking up rubbish” (Ziman Steals the Screen 2008).
The use of older model lm 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 lm’s making. The
movement was already well established by 2006 and embraced “dirty” pho-
tography, 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
- 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 rst 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 digi-
tal 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
Interestingly, the lm 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 lm,
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.
older technologies with “new media artifacts, contexts and practices” (Minniti
2020: 90). The title sequence of Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema is a product
of its time: although it is produced with analogue technology, it represents
a development within the digital context, in which hypermediacy becomes
important and emphasises analogue aws and imperfections, along with an
analogue character in general.
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 dissemi-
nated 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 lm cameras and
were then digitally retouched before they were printed onto lm 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 pro-
cesses. 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, tech-
niques of use and processes, which results in an analogue aesthetic. The efect
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
efects, using the hazy winter light that enhances the washed- out look asso-
ciated with analogue lm. The process to achieve this appearance is thus not
purely digital, and visual efects such as digital grading are used in conjunction
with what is lmed to create a nostalgic portrayal of the city.
In District 9 there are many temporal shifts, and it is not always clear which
era the lm is portraying. For example, the newsreel footage is ambiguous in
this regard. In the footage depicted in Figure 8, the low denition of analogue
newsreels has been translated diferently 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 lm. Lucas
: ‘’
(2014:143– 146) notes that, during the early 2000s, lmmakers in Hollywood
often experimented with the then new generation of digital cameras to make
lms. At the time, they were inferior to lm cameras, but directors such as
Steven Soderbergh used them to make documentary- style lms, and to cre-
ate what Lucas (2014: 141) terms “low- resolution realism”. District 9 follows
a similar approach, especially in the constructed newsreel footage. There is,
for example, distortion in the image in Figure 8, which makes ghostly outlines
visible, particularly in the street pole to the right, and the silhouette of the boy
standing to the right of the Casspir; however, the efects could also be inter-
preted as digital aws, denoting digital footage. On the other hand, Opaloch
(Holben 2009: 26– 28) describes the use of earlier generation digital cameras
such as the 1 to shoot footage that represents analogue footage in District 9;
early digital cameras’ shortcomings were used paradoxically to evoke analogue
aws. There is thus a complex relationship between analogue media and dig-
ital media in the lm, with digital cameras used – though not exclusively – to
shoot footage that would eventually appear to be analogue.
News footage depicting violence in Johannesburg. Still taken from District 9
(Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
He takes the term from cinematographer M. David Mullen.
The technique of evoking realism through the appearance of low- resolution
footage is similar to documentary lmmaking techniques, such as those evi-
dent in The Battle for Johannesburg (Desai 2010), although the intention was
very diferent because it is a documentary rather than the imitation of one. In
this case there are many instances where the camera oscillates in and out of
focus, because the camera operator is walking alongside or behind the narrator
and interviewees. There are many low- resolution sequences in the lm, prob-
ably due to budget constraints, and because a small hand- held digital cam-
era seems to have been used at times, as in the shot of Ponte City (Figure 9).
Cinematographer Jonathan Kovel (2022) explained that often many diferent
cinematographers work on a documentary lm, which is probably why the
footage varies so much in technical appearance in this lm. The variation as
well as the low- resolution sequences convey a sense of grittiness in The Battle
for Johannesburg, which accentuates the setting of slum buildings in the inner
city, where most of the documentary is set. Kovel (2022) recalled that Desai was
very clear about wanting to portray the architecture and character of the inner
city. There appears to have been little manipulation of the equipment other
than to enhance the sense of immediacy and grit, however, which accords with
the documentary agenda.
It is clear that in the three lms 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 bor-
row 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 lmmakers still employ the digital inter-
mediate to some degree, and most lms are made with references and inter-
actions between the digital and analogue media paradigms. Jamie Clarke
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 lms.
Although one would therefore expect his own vision to have translated into the lms,
Kovel indicated that he was intent on making the two diferent 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.
: ‘’
(2017: 105– 123), for example, writes about the nostalgia for craftsmanship
and shooting strategies associated with analogue media in the 2015 Oscar-
nominated lms in the cinematography category. He argues that each of the
digitally shot lms strives for a lmic (analogue) quality, by using on- set tech-
niques to create a sense of “digital realism”.
In being shot digitally, but evoking analogue lm technologies, District 9 is
situated on the brink of media change between the two paradigms. The tempo-
ral 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 lms and photo-
graphs a dated quality. District 9, along with lm and photography at the time,
thus evidences the new ways analogue and digital media become imbricated
with each other late in the rst decade of the 2000s.
2.2 The Incidental Landscape
I now return to the mockumentary qualities of District 9, which are character-
ised by more than the material quality of analogue footage sparked by the ana-
logue renaissance. Apart from newsreel and archive footage, there are also many
Ponte City visible from the rooftop of San Jose. Still taken from The Battle for Johannesburg
(Rehad Desai, 2010).
variations on the interview format in the lm, which notably constructs
the landscape as incidental and as the ‘actual’ setting of the lm. This con-
tributes to the sense of an authentic Johannesburg landscape in District
9, which is similar to the way the city is portrayed in documentary lm
around the same time, in The Battle for Johannesburg, for example, and in
documentary photography.
Many of the interviews in District 9 are staged and include ‘expert’ inter-
views 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 lm
mimics documentary conventions related to the mode of interactivity that is
explained by Hight (2008: 205), and to the evidentiary editing of the exposi-
tory model that Nichols (2017) identies. 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 y- on- the- wall
style, the lm 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 lm. Desai’s oeuvre
is not conventional, and he often adopts a participatory mode of documen-
tary (as Nichols denes 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 lms (Dlamini 2019: 41).
In The Battle for Johannesburg, he recounts several nostalgic reminiscences
of Johannesburg’s inner city, specically Hillbrow, from his younger days, for
example. The general tone of the lm is often nostalgic and seems to advo-
cate for the revival of Hillbrow, to restore it to its former state. The Battle for
Johannesburg is thus not a lm that provides a text- book comparison with
District 9’s parody of the documentary genre, since it also seeks to subvert
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 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.
: ‘’
some generic conventions, but there are many correspondences that may be
productively read side- by- side in the lms.
In mockumentary lms, 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. In District 9, interviews that recall documen-
tary modes and models serve as mockumentary motifs. In the interview with
the character Grey Bradnam (Figure 11), the resolution of the image appears
diferent from that in the newsreel and archive footage (such as Figure 4).
Diferent stylistic devices convey changes in temporal setting, although this
Interview with Lael Bethlehem, director of Urban Renewal. Still taken from The Battle for
Johannesburg (Rehad Desai, 2010).
Nichols (2017: 105– 125) identies various “models” adapted from other media forms,
paired with what he calls cinematic “modes”, in the articulation of the documentary lm
genre. I do not consider these distinctions in more detail here, although one could attempt
to interpret the lms under discussion in such a way. See also John Corner (2015: 147).
is complicated by the consistent use of digital cameras to shoot both high-
and low- resolution sequences. The news and archive footage discussed above
reference the 1980s, and allude to analogue media, or low- resolution realism.
Conversely, the interview in Figure 11 is clearly set in 2010 because it emulates
digital footage, which is sharper and more dened.
Another style of interview is discernible in the intermittent interviews
with Wikus, which is also how the lm commences. In one of the rst scenes
(Figure 12), Wikus attaches a microphone to himself, and addresses the camera
directly, apparently speaking to the camera operator or interviewer. The strat-
egy is repeated later in the lm as well, which reinforces its generic orientation.
The technique suggests that this is not a ction lm; 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 oce 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 oce employees appear to go about their business unhindered, and the
Interview with Grey Bradnam. Still taken from District 9
(Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
In fact, he addresses someone he calls “Trent”, which happens to be the rst name of the
District 9 cinematographer.
: ‘’
stark uorescent lighting contributes to the idea that there is no production
design and directorial staging in the scene. In The Battle for Johannesburg, such
incidental details include local children playing outside in the background
during the interview with Bethlehem, for example. In District 9, the impression
created by incidental details is reinforced by the camera’s movement, employ-
ing a jerky zoom motion that implies the use of a hand- held camera. In shots of
Wikus, the documentary mode switches between a ‘y- on- the- wall’ style and
formal interview strategies. The former observational mode, is often associ-
ated with providing an account of events as they unfold for the viewer, with the
outcome unknown to the lm crew, as is evident in The Battle for Johannesburg.
This approach conveys a voyeuristic perspective, which in the case of District
9 has additional signicance, since the lm is a mock exposé on the apartheid
era and its murky history. Viewers may feel as if they are seeing “what really
happened” (although of course this is both a parody and allegory of apartheid’s
history). Such a voyeuristic view of the atrocities committed during the apart-
heid era, however, would carry the danger of exoticizing or even glamorising
Nichols’ (2017: 132– 136) book on documentary is a seminal source on the genre.
Wikus interviewed at headquarters. Still taken from District 9
(Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
the era and its history if it were a documentary lm, but the parodic qualities
of District 9 mitigate this to some extent.
Using hand- held cameras to evoke particular efects 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. In Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema
(Ziman 2008) and The Battle for Johannesburg (2010), it emphasises the imme-
diacy of the action genre. The latter lm 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 lms 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.
In District 9 hand- held shots evoke the camera techniques of live news jour-
nalism in particular (Nel 2012: 552). Typically, in situations of violent conict,
journalists and camera operators have to be mobile. This is evident in the open-
ing shots of the ocial District 9 trailer from the initial scenes, and later when
Wikus rst 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 aws, conveys a
sense of amateur video, which, importantly in District 9, suggests the authen-
ticity of newsreel footage. The interview in Figure 13 shows Wikus addressing
the camera directly again, apparently unaware of conict erupting behind
him, to humorous efect. He admonishes the alien on the left who pushes an
ocer around, telling him in a rather thick accent to stop “prod[ding]”
the ocer. Although I do not focus on the lm’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.
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.
is an acronym for Multi- National United, a ctional security organization based in
South Africa, and responsible for security in the alien camp District 9 (Brott 2013: 31).
The signicance 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).
: ‘’
Helen Kapstein (2014: 155) describes Wikus as “a walking Van der Merwe joke”
and discusses the use of humour in District 9 in some detail.
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 rejuvenat-
ing 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
conict, and the encounter serves as an index of the racial tension that under-
pins 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 set-
tlements 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 lms thus encourage one to see their por-
trayal 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 ocer. Still taken from
District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
example, electricity pylons are visible behind Wikus. These iconic pylons are
familiar motifs in Johannesburg’s contemporary landscape, and are also cap-
tured in Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (Figure 14).
Although Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema has a very diferent generic con-
text, 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 lm
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 land-
scape is ubiquitous as the whole lm was shot on location, without any sets.
The screenshot in Figure 14, for example, shows the pylons alongside aban-
doned 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 lm, 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.
Lucky and Zakes near electricity pylons. Still taken from Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema
(Ralph Ziman, 2008).
: ‘’
The electricity pylons and other elements in the background of the screen-
shots in Figures 13 and 14 are also visible in Goldblatt’s photograph of mine
waste areas alongside the highway that leads into Soweto from the inner city
(Figure 15). The reeds (Phragmites communis) and Pampas grass (Cortaderia
selloana) in Figure 14 and Goldblatt’s photograph are characteristic of the
sparse ora found in mine waste areas, which were planted during the 1950s to
curb some of the air and water pollution caused by the mine dumps (Reichardt
2013: 100).
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
Johannesburg from the Southwest. Photograph by David Goldblatt, 2003.
Archival pigment inks, 98.5 × 123 cm.
most comfortable with the view camera tripod photography for which he was
known (Douglas 2018). He described the camera as one of the most primitive,
which requires the photographer to shoot under a black cloth. Furthermore,
the chemical process that lends the image such a specic washed- out quality –
the bleach bypass process – is particular to analogue developing techniques.
This silver retention process used in photography and lm creates a pallid,
desaturated appearance (Prince 2004: 27). While I have suggested above that
District 9’s colour palette is based on (or inspired by) analogue lm, one may
also note a resemblance to analogue photographs of the city and the processes,
like bleach bypass, used for analogue photography. I would argue, however,
that District 9, and portrayals like it, do not aim to faithfully emulate particular
kinds of lm stock, media or chemical processes. Rather, a generalised ana-
logue character is constructed, one that is not faithful to any specic ana-
logue quality or medium, but serves chiey to emphasise the nostalgia already
implicit in the idiom.
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. The white ight 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 apart-
ments, in efect giving rise to slums (Beavon 2004: 244– 245). 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 reected in other lms and media representations, as well
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 ight 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 ight.
: ‘’
as popular walking tours organised in the city (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 oce, now abandoned and
gutted, opposite the languishing Johannesburg city library, itself falling into
disrepair.
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 prin-
cipal designers, Mannie Feldman, Manfred Hermer and Rodney Grosskopf,
conceived the building, begun in 1975 and nished 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 architec-
ture in South Africa as symbolic of the projected success and progress of the
The post oce was vacated in 1996 and stood empty until it fell victim to a re in 2009. It
is currently under renovation (Joburg’s Rissik Street … 2016).
The mothership next to Ponte City as it leaves earth. Still taken from District 9
(Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
Afrikaner nationalist government and the values of a sophisticated, inter-
nationally relevant Afrikaner identity. While the peak of this architectural
phenomenon might have been the 1960s, Ponte City espouses many of the
modernist preoccupations that the apartheid government expressed in adopt-
ing the International Style, which had some references to contemporary
Brazilian architecture as well. With its cylindrical design and perched on top of
a hill in Berea, next to the neighbourhood of Hillbrow, the 54- story skyscraper
was both futuristic and forward- looking, and aforded its well- to- do white res-
idents singularly amazing views of the city (Josephy 2017, Brodie 2008: 161). By
1996, however, the residents of the building were all Black, and many were from
other African countries. The demographic change took place from as early as
1976 in the larger area of Hillbrow, a suburb close to the , but only by 1985
was the inux of Africans signicant. By 1993 62 percent of the residents in
Hillbrow were African (Morris 1999: 53). A similar change had gradually been
taking place in adjacent Berea, where Ponte City is located.
As a familiar landmark in the Johannesburg skyline, Ponte City appears
repeatedly in District 9, and also in Alive in Joburg and many other lms, 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 enor-
mous heaps of rubble and garbage had accumulated, as is visible in Subotzky
and Waterhouse’s images from the time (Figure 17). Svea Josephy (2017), who
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).
Cleaning the Core (360 Degree Panorama), Ponte City, Johannesburg. Photograph by Mikhael
Subotzky, 2008.
,
.
: ‘’
analyses this project in some detail, proposes that it represents a “portrait” of
Johannesburg.
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 afected 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 res-
idents. 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”, omi-
nously evoking the lm 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 - 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 prob-
lems, 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, evok-
ing 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 afected by white ight, 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 Oce 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,
and even had a revolving restaurant at the top, but it was closed to visitors for
security reasons in 1981. As early as 1982, Paddi Clay and Glynn Grieth had
already described it as a drop- of point for prostitutes in their book Hillbrow
(1982). Josephy (2017: 68) describes Hillbrow in the 1980s as a “grey area” of
interracial mixing, with a growing reputation for prostitution, gangsterism and
crime in general. I have mentioned the link between white ight and inner-
city decay in the 1990s, but the crime rate in the and adjoining areas was
already high in the 1980s, and Hillbrow is invariably presented as having a tar-
nished reputation related to social ills and moral decay – a testament to the
persistence of social reputations of place, or indeed place- images.
Another recognisable building in District 9 is the Carlton Centre, con-
structed through a partnership between Chicago architects Skidmore, Owings
and Merrill and local rm Rhodes, Harrison and Hofe, 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 lm it serves as the headquarters (Figure 18). Wagner (2015: 57–
58) describes how it rises above the camp (or township) and serves as a sym-
bol of the bureaucratic control of the apartheid regime. In the background of
Figure 18, one can see mine dumps, a reminder of the nancial underpinnings
of buildings such as the Carlton Centre, which was once the tallest building in
Africa.
The headquarters with mine dumps in the background. Still taken from District 9
(Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
: ‘’
2.3.2 Militarisation
In Figure 8, a still image from District 9, one can see the emphasis on militari-
sation 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 vehi-
cles used by the police during the historical States of Emergency, were ubiqui-
tous 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.
The vehicles, omnipresent in 1980s imagery of Johannesburg, are emulated
in the 2010 vehicles in District 9 (Figure 19). The efect is a conation 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 lm as well as its visual efects. Similar to Instagram lters
that endow contemporary photographs with a sense of historicity and create
an “instant past” (Bartholeyns 2014: 51– 69), Johannesburg, depicted here as the
science ction 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 sug-
gests 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.
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 Ants 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 lms seem to reference the carceral character of the
city, which has engaged the attention of scholars interested in the city. It is
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).
also evident in other representations produced at the time. An example is the
artwork entitled Rewind: A Cantata For Voice, Tape and Testimony, an inter-
active video directed by Gerhard and Maja Marx (2007), and with music by
Philip Miller in 2007. In the video (see Figure 20) countless images of town-
ship houses emphasise doors, windows and security measures, such as burglar
bars, barbed wire and security gates. The images highlight township planning
in the uniformity of the design of the houses, but also how the plans have been
subverted by residents and homeowners, who closed doors and windows, and
made other alterations to suit their needs.
2.4 What can Mockumentary Poetics Do?
What does the landscape constructed through District 9’s mockumentary
poetics look like? This landscape is recognisable mostly for its quality of being
under siege and in decay. It is a landscape marked by barriers, military technol-
ogies, and general signs of deterioration and destruction. Opaloch describes
the landscape of Chiawelo looking like a war zone (Holben 2009:26), and
Blomkamp arms this in a 2012 interview, saying that the environment was
dicult to shoot in, with pollution, broken glass and rusted barbed wire every-
where (Smith in Nel 2012: 552). In District 9 there are ubiquitous references to
newsreel footage from the States of Emergency, with recognisable aspects of
the infamous landscape depicted in the media from the 1980s. One thinks of
vehicles that resemble Casspirs. Still taken from District 9
(Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
: ‘’
Still taken from Rewind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony (Gerhard and Maja
Marx, 2007).
Wikus addresses the camera while an informal structure burns behind him. Still taken from
District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009).
scenes of destruction, such as in the screenshot in Figure 21, that depicts rag-
ing res, pervasive dust, brown polluted skies and a washed- out appearance
that echoes the ominous tone of the news itself. The landscape is characterised
by watchtowers, surveillance and other forms of militarisation. Nel (2012: 552)
describes it as an “African ghetto” that is claustrophobic and dirty, character-
ised by informal housing and “nightmarish labyrinths and alleys”, with the
lthiness exacerbated by repulsive unhygienic cattle carcases for sale. It truly
is an “abject cityscape” (Nel 2012 550). While it has the feeling of reality, it is
important to note that this is a reductive distortion, which may contribute to a
false portrayal of townships as remorselessly hellish.
It is part of the complexity of depictions like District 9 that they may con-
tribute to damaging stereotypes of South African cities. As with any rep-
resentation, 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 real-
ism 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 ctionalised and a documentary perspective District 9 provides a more
complicated portrayal, due to the ironic and self- reexive qualities of the moc-
kumentary genre.
To what end does District 9 employ mockumentary techniques then? How
does this relate to nostalgic dystopia more generally? One of the most obvi-
ous answers to these questions is that the documentary qualities of the moc-
kumentary genre dovetail with the fetishization of authenticity that analogue
nostalgia is known for. The genre allows the lm to simulate a documentary of
apartheid Johannesburg, in a depiction that resembles many of the contem-
porary portrayals of the city in lm, 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 lms 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 lm’s ironic reective nostalgia.
Although the city depicted in the lm 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
: ‘’
and Niq Mhlongo, who both grew up in townships – and probably like many
who watch the lm. In District 9 the look of analogue media enables one to
engage nostalgically with the landscape despite its dystopian qualities. The
lm can be forgiven for foregrounding the problems of this dicult landscape,
because it is not actually a documentary. It sparkles with false historicity and
simulated authenticity through digital visual efects. The simulated element is
not hidden from view but aunted through hypermediacy, made apparent in
the digital emulation of analogue qualities in the lm.
Craig Hight (2008: 209) suggests that the mockumentary genre contrib-
utes to the complexity in the exchange “between analogue and digital forms
of mediated reality” in contemporary lmmaking. In District 9 specically,
the mockumentary qualities enable the viewer to engage less with an ethical
consideration of apartheid (the lm’s allegorical content), than to savour its
humour and nostalgia. Hight argues that mockumentary replaces the docu-
mentary 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 lm. 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 lm by its mockumentary conventions, it might
be far more dicult 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 land-
scape 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 nds a reluctant belonging and
redemption. In this way, the lm permits the township setting to be recast
as the site of salvation. This is signicant 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 sufering, 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 inte-
gral to situating redemption and transformation in a complex contradictory
context. It contributes crucially to the “rewriting” of post- apartheid history
that Blomkamp attempts in District 9 (even though it should be approached
with scepticism and critique). The landscape is infused with elements that
make it unbearable to look at – violence, destruction, poverty, abject sufering
and decay – but incongruously it evokes feelings of familiarity and nostalgia
and nally transformation through Wikus’ dubious redemption.