{"id":764,"date":"2009-08-23T19:53:09","date_gmt":"2009-08-23T19:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/08\/this-week-i-had-the.html"},"modified":"2009-08-23T19:53:09","modified_gmt":"2009-08-23T19:53:09","slug":"this-week-i-had-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/08\/this-week-i-had-the.html","title":{"rendered":"Constant Immigrant: District 9 Review and The Lazarus Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week I had the opportunity to read and see two radically different narratives about the traumas of immigration<\/a>, and I thought I’d offer each a short review<\/a>:  the movie was District 9<\/a> by South African<\/a> Neil Blomkamp<\/a> and the novel was The Lazarus Project<\/a> by Bosnian <\/a>American Aleksandar Hemon<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"district9.jpg\"<\/a>\"hemon-lazarus-cover.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n


\nDistrict 9 has a great premise – a War of the Worlds<\/a> story turned right
\non its anthropocentric head. No alien invasion story, this movie is all
\nabout starving alien refugees (set in Johannesburg, South Africa, the
\nshadow of apartheid<\/a> is almost too obvious here) and the
\ncorporate-controlled human a-holes who oppress and profit off of said aliens. Move over 3rd world, we found a new race to rape, pillage and plunder. Even though they come in a spaceship that looks almost
\nidentical to  Roland Emmerich<\/a>‘s Independence Day (the movie also
\nincluded a preview for Emmerich’s sure-to-be-stupid 2012<\/a> where a
\nTibetan Monk<\/a> high in the Himalayas awaits an impending world-ending
\ntidal wave. What’s with Emmerich? Does he need therapy? He seems
\nincapable of making anything other than cheesy apocalyptic blockbusters
\nlike The Day After Tomorrow), the aliens of District 9 turn out to be
\nthe good guys, and the humans are the villains. <\/p>\n

The premise seems highly plausible: if aliens did land on Earth, would
\nour xenophobic fear-mongering dominate the interaction? After watching
\nsome healthcare town halls and seeing Michelle Malkin<\/a> top the New York
\nTimes Bestsellers Lis<\/a>t this week, I’d say it’s more than likely. We are not the
\ngood guys in this one, and that truth feels eerily accurate in the
\ndocumentary-style set-up of this film. Unfortunately, the plot
\ndevolves from great premise into an ultra-violent shoot-’em-up over the
\nlast half hour. Maybe the writers just ran out of steam and enrolled in
\nthe all-too-popular when-in-doubt-blow-stuff-up school of
\nscreenwriting, but in the end the mediocre finish of the movie borders
\non unintentioned irony. In setting out to make a great commentary on the
\nviolence, fear, and greed of the human race, District 9 actually just
\nturns into an ultraviolent movie made by (profit-driven) humans. If you
\nwant to give them credit for meta-irony, go ahead. Judging from the great reviews this movie received, the film was given a lot of credit for something I missed. And I’m a fan of sci-fi!<\/p>\n

The Lazarus Project, on the other hand, is possibly the best book I’ve
\nread in 2009. It follows a writer – a Bosnian immigrant<\/a> to Chicago who
\nis undoubtedly the author’s avatar  – as he gets a grant to research
\nand write about an Eastern European immigrant to Chicago wrongfully
\nkilled by the Chicago Chief of Police one century earlier, in 1908. The
\nparallel narratives work together wonderfully. The feelings of fear,
\nxenophobia, and not having any place in the universe called home are
\nalso brilliantly evoked in this novel. As a writer, I can always tell
\nwhen I really like a book – the books I love are the ones that make me
\nwant to write right now<\/i>, to just get out a pen or typewriter (if
\nI owned one) and start flowing or banging keys on the spot. Hemon is a
\nwriter’s writer – craft and heart galore. <\/i>There were a few
\nmoments in Hemon’s novel that I wanted to actually prostrate to his honesty and
\ncommunicative prowess. If you are looking for a good novel to finish
\nout your summer, check this one out.<\/p>\n

I find the themes of immigration and homelessness, anchorlessness, to
\nbe deeply Buddhist. In fact, the Tibetan word for Sentient Being could
\nmore literally be translated as “commuter.” We could further that idea
\nby saying that we sentient beings are “constant immigrants.” I had the
\nexperience this week to encounter two narratives that approach the
\nsadness and trauma of being an immigrant sentient being from two very
\ninteresting angles.<\/p>\n

Let’s have a late-summer roll-call. What are you reading, watching, or
\nlistening to that seems vaguely Buddhist? Or, even better, what are you
\nchecking out this August that isn’t Buddhist at all?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I had the opportunity to read and see two radically different narratives about the traumas of immigration, and I thought I’d offer each a short review:  the movie was District 9 by South African Neil Blomkamp and the novel was The Lazarus Project by Bosnian American Aleksandar Hemon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media","category-buddhism"],"yoast_head":"\nConstant Immigrant: District 9 Review and The Lazarus Project - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/08\/this-week-i-had-the.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Constant Immigrant: District 9 Review and The Lazarus Project - 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