Polysemy

Like any great form of media many texts are open for interpretation. Polysemy is when a sign or a text is open to many different levels of understanding and often has certain levels of ambiguity. The film, district 9, has underlying themes that are not ambiguous but how they are interpreted can be. Being an American, the first time I saw the film I instantly thought of immigration problems in the United States and I later learned more about the apartheid and saw strong ties to that as well. Blomkamp had a desired message for the film that was mainly directed to be about the apartheid but because it is a fictional, sci-fi action film, it only contains underlying messages that are left to be interpreted by the viewer. Does this film also have something to say about racism or segregation in general? Absolutely, it need not be constrained to a single countries struggle or a societies problem. General message like xenophobia can be interpreted many different ways and can pertain to many different situations throughout time.
There are many ways this film can be interpreted even among South Africans. Steve Sailer for Takimag.com believes that Blomkamp made the film in order to show, “black South Africans saying the same intolerant things that his own people were universally condemned for saying…” He goes further quoting Blomkamp as saying, “Another part of recent South African history that isn’t world news is that the collapse of Zimbabwe has introduced millions of illegal Zimbabwean immigrants into South African cities. Now you have this powder-keg situation, with black against black … [W]e woke up one morning to find out that Johannesburg was eating itself alive. Impoverished South Africans had started murdering impoverished Zimbabweans, necklacing them and burning them and chopping them up.” Sailer believes the film can mean a number of things but one thing he is getting at is that Blomkamp may have made a relation between the black South Africans and the aliens to historical events between Zimbabwean immigrants and black South Africans. This can easily be seen in the film from its documentary style of shooting. Almost all of the civilian actors that interact with the aliens (the Nigerian gangsters) as well as the general public are black. I personally don’t know if this is right but it is an interesting view of the film and proves the point that all texts are polysemic and can be interpreted a number of different ways.

Sailers article can be read at http://www.takimag.com/article/alien_nation/.