The Hysterics of District 9

A German, an Italian, and Van der Merwe were on death row. The warden gave them a choice of three ways to die: to be shot, to be hanged, or to be injected with the aids virus for a slow death. So the German said, “Shoot me right in the head.” Boom, he was dead instantly. Then the Italian said, “Just hang me.” Snap! He was dead. Then it was Van der Merwe’s turn, and he said, “Give me some of that aids stuff.” They gave him the shot, and Van der Merwe fell down laughing. The guards looked at each other and wondered what was wrong with this guy. Then Van der Merwe said, “Give me another one of those shots,” so the guards did. Now he was laughing so hard, tears rolled from his eyes and he doubled over. Finally the warden said, “What’s wrong with you?” Van der Merwe replied, “You guys are so stupid. I’m wearing a condom.”

Van der Merwe joke circulating on the internet

Every south african has a favourite Van der Merwe joke. Van der Merwe, the archetypal thickheaded Afrikaner, has been the beloved brunt of South African humour for decades. Alongside the adoption of apartheid as official government policy in 1948, Van der Merwe emerged as its foolish functionary, so it is no coincidence that the protagonist of Neill Blomkamp’s film District 9 (2009) is the bumbling Wikus van de Merwe (played by Sharlto Copley), a walking Van der Merwe joke (for more on Van der Merwe, see articles by Sandra Swart and Deborah Posel). A petty bureaucrat (petty in every sense), he works in the Department of Alien Affairs at mnu, Multi-National United, the evil epitome of global corporate capital. But we like Wikus, despite his ineptitude, his nepotism, and his bigotry. So who is the joke on? In his director’s commentary, Blomkamp repeatedly tells us that he finds certain moments in the film humorous, and they are often the most gruesome or graphic moments that push the characters and viewers into heightening horror. Opinion varies on whether District 9 is funny: in Safundi’s roundtable on the film, Stefan Helgesson finds it “genuinely funny—the alien infatuation with cat food being just one example of its absurd humor” (174), whereas in her article on masculinity in District 9, Claire Sisco King writes, “Absent comic relief, District 9 produces a decidedly different sensibility … [T]he tone of District 9 remains intense and stressful, inviting not laughter but anxiety, terror, and even disgust…. This visceral experience invites viewers to suffer (rather than laugh) with onscreen characters” (83). Consciously or not, then, director Blomkamp is pointing out the fine, often vanishing, line that splits hysterics between what is hysterically funny and real hysteria. Not coincidentally, the title of a government parody playing the comedy circuit in South Africa these days, “Mass Hysteria,” also collapses the distinction. Featuring such faux leaders as the Minister Who Swears to Tell the Truth and the Minister of International Affairs and Pan-African Children, it is so titled because, says the co-producer, ‘ “Mass Hysteria’ is what South Africans are best at … whether it’s a penis or a march, we love a reason to scream and shout” (Gilbertson).

Since apartheid ended, South Africa has experienced a wave of incidents of alleged mass hysteria, mostly among schoolchildren in underprivileged areas (see Kapstein). If, under apartheid, South Africa was in a state of panic, with professional agitators and members of the Third Force planted to spur on violent protests against the regime so as to be able to represent black South Africans as out of control and with whites worrying about a “total onslaught,” then postapartheid South Africa is a nation in hysterics. District 9 allows us to examine the distinctions between, and the overlaps among, the hysterically funny, hysterical anxiety, and mass hysteria not only as they pertain to a South African sensibility and setting but to an emerging, specifically South African, breed of science fiction. Ultimately, District 9 suggests that both hysteria as condition and sci-fi as genre...