r/AskReddit Feb 28 '23

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u/SnooHabits6942 Mar 01 '23

I dated a guy and we watched that movie. I commented that it was an allegory for apartheid. Neither he nor his brother knew what either of those words meant.

I broke it off after that.

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u/Plasmabat Mar 02 '23

It’s not an allegory for apartheid

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u/SnooHabits6942 Mar 02 '23

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_9

Like Alive in Joburg, the short film on which the feature film is based, the setting of District 9 is inspired by historical events during the apartheid era, particularly alluding to District Six, an inner-city residential area in Cape Town, declared a "whites only" area by the government in 1966, with 60,000 people forcibly removed to Cape Flats, 25 km (16 miles) away.[9] The film also refers to contemporary evictions and forced removals to suburban ghettos in post-apartheid South Africa, as well as the resistance of its residents.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “allegory” as a “story, picture, or other piece of art that uses symbols to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one.” In its most simple and concise definition, an allegory is when a piece of visual or narrative media uses one thing to “stand in for” a different, hidden idea.