Monstrous Proletariat

corporate dehumanization of the status quo and histories of violent dehumanization, including chattel slavery, the Holocaust, and Apartheid. The Horrors of Racial CapitalismDistrict 9 appeared in U.S. theatres on August 14, 2009.Its box office revenue reached $115,646,235 in the United States, and another $95,173,376 internationally.It was nominated for four Oscars but won none.The film is largely based upon an earlier short film by the same director, Neil Blomkamp, with a handful of differences between the two, and was produced by Peter Jackson.Sorry To Bother You had a world premiere in January 2018 with limited release to select venues throughout the spring of that year.On July 6, the film was again limitedly released to select theaters, before being released widely on July 13, 2018.Its box office revenue in the U.S. reached $17,493,096.While it was not nominated for any Academy Awards, the film received 39 assorted award nominations, winning 16 of them.Both films offer social and political commentary on enduring structural issues of late racial capitalism, and both films feature corporations and corporate officials as antagonists that transform human beings into monstrous commodities and/or deny human rights to those within the liminal space between human and non-human.The films have markedly different tones, reflecting the respective contexts from which each film emerged.District 9's severity, indexed in part from the sensibilities of documentary through the film's use of mockumentary style, suggests an ominous reading of the so-called "post-racial" late 2000's as in fact still filled with the turbulence of apartheid.Sorry to Bother You takes a far more satirical, even humorous tone through its use of exaggeration; among other things, this choice of tone serves to highlight a radical cynicism, refusing any display of shock or surprise that capitalism can perpetuate such immense atrocities.District 9 and Sorry to Bother You both employ a common narrative climax: the revelation that a white-collar employee, privileged by virtue of their acquiescence and obedience to a malevolently profit-driven corporation, has involuntarily undergone a transformation from human being into non-human or liminally human for the purposes of increased profit.District 9's plot follows the plight of Wikus van der Merwe, a white South African official for Multi-National United (MNU) as the company stands in charge of housing (in internment camps) and controlling stranded alien refugees known as prawns, who resemble insects with humanoid features.Wikus is a dutiful employee of MNU and performs acts of cruelty against the prawns, including merciless evictions and violence that amounts to infanticide.Through a careless incident with a piece of prawn technology, Wikus triggers his physiological transformation from human to prawn.When MNU discovers this phenomenon, the company is uninterested in reversing the process.Rather, in a scene with imagery reminiscent of the Jewish Holocaust, MNU performs cruel experiments upon a liminally human-prawn Wikus, using his part-prawn physiology to operate the prawn weaponry, which is protected by a "biological safety" only a prawn can engage.Sorry to Bother You follows its African American protagonist, Cassius "Cash" Green, as he struggles to stay afloat in a capitalist society.Eventually, Cash lands a job as a telemarketer with the company RegalView.The job proves initially difficult until a co-worker encourages him to use a "white voice" when speaking to customers.It is made clear in this exchange that a white voice does not reflect how white people actually sound but, rather, imitates a composure to which white people aspire.By producing an inviting persona of privilege and status, Cash becomes successful at his job and joins the inner circle of one of RegalView's top clients, Worryfree.Worryfree

Biology · Political science · Proletariat · Critical Race Theory in Education · Law · Race, History, and American Society · Genetics · Geology

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