The political allegory in Neill Blomkamp's directorial debut is so obvious that it's barely even a metaphor: alien refugees living in South Africa are shepherded into ghettos and kept away from the rest of the population, who refuse to give them any real rights, let them exist in squalor and routinely treat them like criminals. Sounds familiar... The apartheid metaphor in District 9 isn't particularly subtle, but it is powerful. Despite being absolutely bleeding obvious that the film was about white South Africans being absolute monsters, the government of Nigeria decided they were the real victims in District 9 it was they that banned the film from being released in the country. There are a couple of Nigerian characters in the film, admittedly, but the government's insistence that they're depicted as criminals and cannibals is rather baseless, as is their contention that Sony, Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson all need to apologise for them painting all Nigerians with the brush.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
