Wikus van de Merwe is the protagonist in District 9, he is represented immediately in the opening scene of the film as a pen pushing office worker. His transformation in this film with how people treat him as soon as he reaches the body horror phase relates to the Apartheid in Johannesburg, people immediately avoid and alienate him from the rest of humanity due to his differences. This links to the discrimination and conflict between the black and white people during the Apartheid.
Genre Conventions
District 9 contains conventions of both Sci-Fi and documentary style genres, this is known as a hybrid.
The genre conventions of Sci-Fi are:
- Polysemic narrative: there is more than just one meaning than the obvious aliens vs humans plot, there is a deeper meaning to the film, which is how people discriminate against differences, namely the Apartheid between black and white people in the region where this film is set.
- Body Horror: As the film progresses, Wikus, the protagonist, transforms from a human into an alien "Prawn". This transformation involves scenes of gore as his teeth and finger nails fall out and this alien arm is produced. These scenes partly pay homage to another film called "The Fly" of the same genre, where a human transforms into a Fly due to a scientific experiment gone wrong.
Genre conventions that are of a documentary style are:
- Characters acknowledge the camera
