Essay On The Ethics Of Living With Aliens

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Any person will be defined as a refugee if he has been considered the same under the arrangements of various protocols by the International Refugee Organization. As a result of the events occurring before January 1951 and in the events that have taken place on the basis of race, religion, nationality or being a member of any particular social group is away from his original country and is unable to go back out of any fear or due to these fears is not ready to come back. It also includes a person who is not the citizen of a place but is a resident of a place and he is forced to stay outside of this place out of any event or fear CITATION Isa89 \l 1033 (Gunning).

This essay is about the ethical problems faced by refugees. Firstly, a brief summary of the movie District 9 is given. This movie is also about the aliens and there are several ethical issues that have been left unattended. We will take a look on most of these ethical issues.

District 9 is a movie based on the aliens living in a spaceship who come to the earth. The humans cut the ship and enter into the ship to see a large number of aliens living in that ship that is stabilized over the city of Johannesburg. These aliens are taken out of their ship and settled in a city of tents called district 9. Some scientists suggested that the command module got separated from the main ship and the reason of this incident has not yet been revealed. There were some other aliens discovered in other parts of the country and there were riots spread in these cities. The local population was not ready to accept these aliens and there were incidences of a fight between the aliens and local population. The critics have analyzed that a science fiction movie can tell us as much as a social documentary about some social issue. There are a large number of unknown worlds other than our earth and extraordinary movies can be made regarding these worlds. These refugees from some other world have been stationed at a district named district 9. Some of the local people have already seen many aliens in some areas where most of this movie was shot.

The person who has been chosen to lead the operation is Wikus Van der Merwe. This person is exposed to a strange fluid from the body of aliens which turns him into an alien. Now, this human turned alien is considered a very big biological asset for the MNU. The company has found a huge quantity of weapons that can only be handled by the aliens or someone possessing the same DNA as the aliens. The person is an asset for the companies manufacturing the weapons as this will open doors for some new technology to them. The person however will have to be killed in the process of extracting the relevant materials from him. Wikus in this case can be considered a refugee as he has come to this position without his consent and now, he is at the mercy of the company and South African government. Wikus soon meets Christopher Johnson who is an alien and had rectified a command module that will allow him and his son to operate the mother ship that has been there above the city of Johannesburg for the last 30 years.

This leads us to some comments related to a situation where some people have come to another city or country as refugees. First thing would be the distribution of resources among a larger number of people.

The first issue that is raised is that there is a lot of money spent to keep these aliens settled at this place. The second issue relates to the reason why this ship has travelled thus far towards the earth. Another issue can be raised to react to the situation when these aliens are used as a subject to some tests in the labs of the local community. These experiments are done for developing some new weapons. Some scientists revealed that their work was directed towards developing race specific weapons that will be used to target the black people in South Africa. There was another statement that revealed that there was a vaccine targeted at the black women to make them unfertile. In a particular scene, a person orders that the place which is specified for the reproduction of these aliens should be set on fire. There is a continuous protest against the district 9 which is the major residential place for these aliens. There is another ethical dilemma in the situation where Wikus will die as a result of the experiment done on him by the laboratory. The expansion of the weapons left over by the aliens is also ethically incorrect. The opening of straight fire on the aliens has been justified by some people by saying that they were attacking the forces out there so it was necessary to fire at them. Wikus also stops the fertility process of the alien eggs which is also somewhat unethical. The most important ethical issue that has been faced by the cities seems to be the financial cost that has to be borne by them in order to retain these refugees. There have been certain restrictions that have been placed by a large number of countries on the entrance of refugees in their countries. These restrictions become a part of steps to prevent the extra burden on the government to manage more people. However, there have been some negative consequences of these restrictions. One of these negative aspects is the increase in human trafficking across the borders of such countries. These restrictions were initially designed to stop people coming to these countries. This is because these people will come in and the government will have to give them shelter, food and other necessities of life. There have been weak systems to judge the status of various refugees. Some research suggests that the refugees who are the most afraid will be the most vulnerable among all. Another issue that is readily faced by the refugees is that they are not provided an acceptable level of basic necessities by the host countries. As a matter of fact, these refugees are generally related to third world countries. These countries do not have enough resources to cater to their own population. Being the citizens of third world countries, a little effort is made to rescue these refugees from the destination countries. Most of the time, these refugees die because of severe weather and unhygienic conditions.

There is a slight difference between a refugee and an immigrant. An immigrant may have come to the country to earn his living and his situation may not be as miserable as a refugee. A migrant may also have more opportunities available as compared to the refugee. However, both these outsiders are not seen positively by the local residents because their tax payments are spent on them and all other resources are also consumed by them.

Cohen presented seven theses in his Monster’s theory and in the following lines, we will apply that to the scenario of refugees and immigrants. The Monster’s body is a cultural body which means that similar to a monster that comes out at any point in time after its demolition, the culture will also revive itself and come back with some similar and some different characteristics. In this scenario, the story is based in South Africa and historically, this country has been known to practice racial discrimination. The ethical situation of decreasing fertility in black women shows the same culture again.

The culture of a country goes away after creating mass destruction. In this scenario, there have been many instances where the culture has destroyed some aspects of human and alien lives. The officer did not have any problem in destroying the eggs of the aliens. Although they may have been a threat to the life of the citizens but it was a completely unethical act. The monster as a culture escaped after the destruction was completely done. Another instance is shown in the start of the movie where the humans have entered the space ship by cutting a piece of it. This interference created a huge mess for the citizens of Johannesburg but the monster as a culture took the backseat afterwards. The return of these aliens basically shows the attitude of the citizens towards their Black Country fellows.

A monster is not easy to categorize as humans and there is no set rules and regulations through which these aliens may have evolved. This absence of set pattern will mean that monster will show up at the time of some crisis in the society. The movie under consideration depicts that aliens are shifted outside of the city which is showing the attitude of the society towards the minorities especially those who were racially different. The time of the movie is such that the South African society was going through radical changes in terms of the racial discrimination and the same has been shown by representing the blacks as aliens.

The monster always develops itself at the brink of differences between two or more classes. The major differential aspect in the movie is the race. Although the aliens that have been shown are different in many other aspects such as flesh, blood etc. They are a different to a large extent as compared to the normal human beings but they have been living with them and are using the various resources especially the land on which they are living. Some similar differences among the cultures have also been shown in the holy book of Bible. These differences can also be studied between the Jews and the Christians all across the Europe. In the replacement regime, a political figure was unwillingly forced to participate in a medical experiment just as the main character of the movie has been forced.

The monster warns that the humans should refrain from intruding their lives. This is very true in the description of movie as the intrusion in the space ship has brought many disadvantages to the city of Johannesburg. One of these disadvantages is the start of more illegal activities in the city. Again this is a representation of the black people as they are generally known to be involved in more illegal activities. Most of them do it because they are generally very poor and they cannot afford as good a life as the whites.

The monster is linked to some or most of the forbidden activities and all such activities are then associated with one specific class or race that are the black in this case. The basic theme of this association is that it becomes easier for the other race to make them responsible for any act that is forbidden even if it has been undertaken by some people in the majority race CITATION Jef \l 1033 (Cohen).

Works Cited

BIBLIOGRAPHY Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. "http://ptfaculty.gordonstate.edu/rscoggins/Cohen,%20Monster%20Culture%20(Seven%20Theses),%203-20.pdf." n.d. http://ptfaculty.gordonstate.edu/. <http://ptfaculty.gordonstate.edu/rscoggins/Cohen,%20Monster%20Culture%20(Seven%20Theses),%203-20.pdf>.

Gunning, Isabelle R. "Expanding the international Defintiion of Refugee: A multicultural view." Fordham International Law journal (1989): 35-85.