Charges that Neill Blomkamp’s science fiction blockbuster District 9 was racist began popping up almost immediately upon the film’s release back in August. Considering the film features an in-over-their-head South African government that allows a mega-corporation to quarantine and exploit an entire alien race, one may assume the obvious core parable for apartheid was at the heart of the racism charges, but aliens-in-a-concentration-camp was not the bullseye of most accusations. The actual problem some people had was with the portrayal of a Nigerian gang that illegally traded alien technology when not mutilating and devouring unsuspecting aliens in crude shaman-led rituals intended to imbue them with extraterrestrial powers, so to speak.
Nothing much came of the hullabaloo until recently, when the film found its way into Nigerian movie theaters. According to a BBC report on the matter, “The information minister said she had ordered the Nigerian film and video censors’ board to ask all cinemas to stop showing the film and to confiscate it. “I have also formally written to Sony Pictures Entertainment, the company that produced this film, demanding an unconditional apology for this unwarranted attack on Nigeria’s image,” she added.”
Filed under: Sony, Exhibition, Movie Marketing, Politics
Continue reading Surprise: Nigerian Government Bans ‘District 9′
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