District 9: Johannesburg as Nostalgic Dystopia

Landi Raubenheimer is an academic and artist living in Johannesburg. She has published articles on South African film, photography and art in international journals and teaches at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg.

Acknowledgements


List of Figures


Introduction: Unearthing the Johannesburg Genre

  Why District 9?


  Johannesburg in the Sands of Time


  A Rosetta Stone: Nostalgic Dystopia


  A Sublime Topography


  Excavating District 9


  A Map to the Site




Part 1

District 9 in Context: Nostalgic Dystopia

1 The City in Relief

 1 District 9 and Other Representations of Johannesburg


 2 Johannesburg


 3 Dystopia


 4 Nostalgia


 5 Speculating on the Sublime

 5.1 The Post-industrial Sublime


 5.2 The Sublime in Post-apartheid and Post-colonial Contexts


 5.3 European Landscape Traditions in South Africa


 5.4 Sublime Potential




2 Digging Deeper

 1 Analogue Aesthetics

 1.1 Nostalgia for Analogue Media


 1.2 Authenticity


 1.3 Visual Effects in Film




 2 Ruin Aesthetics

 2.1 Post-industrial Ruins


 2.2 Formless





Part 2

Analogue Aesthetics

3 Mockumentary: A Fly on the ‘Stopnonsense’

 1 Skeletons in the Closet

 1.1 Township Planning and Its Discontents: Chiawelo


 1.2 Land


 1.3 The States of Emergency




 2 Analogue Landscape: A Parody of Documentary Conventions

 2.1 Low-resolution Realism


 2.2 The Incidental Landscape


 2.3 Back to the 1980s

 2.3.1 Landmarks


 2.3.2 Militarisation




 2.4 What can Mockumentary Poetics Do?




4 Township Nostalgia

 1 Analogue Nostalgia

 1.1 Subversive Resistance


 1.2 ‘Native Nostalgia’


 1.3 Constructed History




5 Sci-fi City

 1 Science Fiction Poetics

 1.1 Retrofuturism and ‘New Bad Future’


 1.2 Spaceship/Township





Part 3

Ruin Aesthetics

6 Mining Landscapes

 1 A History of Mining


 2 Post-landscape

 2.1 The Poison Belt


 2.2 Sublime and Formless Landscapes




7 Urban Ruins

 1 A Sublime Johannesburg?

 1.1 More than a Feeling


 1.2 Hillbrow: A New Jerusalem


 1.3 Ponte City


 1.4 Considering Entropy




8 White Anxiety

 1 Hegemony in Ruins




 Conclusion: The District 9 Cache


 Afterword

  Looking Back on District 9 – An Interview with Neill Blomkamp




Bibliography


Index