District 9: Johannesburg as Nostalgic Dystopia

Landi Raubenheimer (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

243 Seiten

2024
Brill (Verlag)
978-90-04-52543-6 (ISBN)

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Delving into District 9’s iconic portrayal of Johannesburg, this book offers a distinctive vantage point on visual imaginaries of the post-apartheid city as both nostalgic and dystopian.

The film District 9 made waves as an allegory of apartheid on the big screen, but it has not yet been given its rightful place as a landmark depiction within broader visual cultural studies of Johannesburg and cities in the Global South.

In this book, Landi Raubenheimer argues that District 9’s portrayal of Johannesburg reverberates within a larger body of representations of the city, collectively shaping a unique visual ‘idiom’ for the post-apartheid city as nostalgic dystopia. Delving deeply into District 9, Raubenheimer brings to light the fascination that images of the city as nostalgic dystopia has held for filmmakers, photographers, viewers, and lovers of Johannesburg alike.

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

Erscheint lt. Verlag	28.11.2024
Reihe/Serie	Contemporary Cinema ; 10
Verlagsort	Leiden
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 235 mm
Gewicht	1 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft
ISBN-10	90-04-52543-2 / 9004525432
ISBN-13	978-90-04-52543-6 / 9789004525436
Zustand	Neuware