The District

Ok. I need to post on this because this film was just so... disturbing. So of course I sat there wonder, why is this so disturbing to me and I came back with three possible explanations -

1) It's showing me something I didn't want to see.
2) It's so unconventional, I don't know how to process it.
3) It's honest.

Yes. Despite its crazy, out of this world sequences, (of particular note, the slo-mo mammoth killing scene) The District might be more painfully truthful than everything we've seen this semester. Until I read Aniko's article, I was overwhelmed with being unable to process what this meant. I'm going to have to re-watch this in order to digest it and formulate an intelligible essay. Right now, I'm not even sure where to begin.

Overall, the film presents an ADHD conglomeration of characters, theme, genre, and production forms. The characters represent a rainbow of stereotypes - from the geeky Jewish son, the martial-arts prodigy Chinese restaurant owner, to the 'white trash' pimp. The fantastical genre starts out an animated rap-infused musical comedy, morphs into a geopolitical satire, and somehow manages to insert conventional science fiction tropes and Shakespearian romance. Even the style represents some odd, Valley of the Uncanny, animation that borders between 2D and 3D. Indeed, it discovers some dimension in between (1.5D?) where it resembles a complex multicultural space as displaced from reality yet inherently reflective of it. The District is post-modernism at its best and worst, bringing together such a large mess of ideas and topics, it loses sight of what it ever sought out to do in the first place.

It did remind me of South Park in its tone, pace, ridicule of political figures (like Bush), and mockery of ethnophobia and bureaucratic corruption. And indeed this show as become infamous for Parker and Stones political infused comedy. But this was a TV show, and has much more time to experiment and explore various issues over a longer more immersive format. Switching from our studies of TV to film, reminded me how much more powerful TV is at tackling a wider array of issues.