(I originally wrote this in August of 2009, soon after seeing both the films in the question.)
I recently saw two excellent new films: Ponyo and District 9. Excellent, but very different, as anyone will be able to see. And yet, after seeing Ponyo (which I saw after District 9), I couldn’t help but notice an element common to both films: that of the character who becomes “something halfways,” a figure somewhere in between two different peoples which have a less than peaceful coexistence. It’s this common theme which I want to discuss here. (Warning: spoilers will almost inevitably follow.)
In District 9, aliens have landed in South Africa and, unable to repair their ship, have been relegated to refugee camps. After thirty years, tensions are high. The aliens are dissatisfied with their slummy accommodations, and the South African humans are sick of having the troublesome “prawns,” as they are derogatorily nicknamed, living on the edge of Johannesburg. It is decided by the MNU (Multi-National United), therefore, that the aliens should be relocated farther away from the city, into what amounts to be little more than a concentration camp.
The man in charge of evicting these 1.8 million aliens is Wikus Van De Merwe, and he does not gain our sympathy early on. He treats the aliens with contempt, tricking the majority into giving up their rights and complying, and coercing the few smart ones to do likewise by means of implied threats. In short, despite what his position should require, he appears one of the least likely candidates to become any kind of real “mediator” between humanity and the “prawns.”
And yet, that is exactly what he becomes, albeit very unwillingly. After an accident with a mysterious alien chemical, he finds to his horror that he is slowly metamorphosing into one of the aliens. Hounded by MNU agents (who plan to harvest what they view as no more than a genetic anomaly), Wikus is forced to flee all human contact and take refuge in the one place his persecuters will never find him — and also, incidentally, the one place where he would least like to be: the alien slums. He descends from his place of prominence and lives among the prawns like one of them. He eventually even teams up with one of the smarter ones he so recently threatened and evicted.
Ponyo, by contrast, offers a much more innocent vision, but one nonetheless centred around humans and a people alien to them. The latest from Japanese animator extraordinaire Hiyao Miyazaki, this tale concerns a boy, Sosuke, who finds a human-faced fish, Ponyo. Ponyo’s love for Sosuke compels her to transform herself into a human, contrary to the wishes of her father, Fujimoto, who, while once human himself, gave up his humanity to live in the ocean among the sea creatures.
Ponyo becomes the link between the humans and the life of the ocean, the humans who largely do not believe in the magic of the ocean, and the life of the ocean (represented by Ponyo’s father) which has largely given up on humans as disgustingly hopeless. And yet, through Ponyo’s decision to be human, and the love between her and Sosuke, both peoples’ conventions and assumptions are challenged, and as they are gently guided by a greater, beneficent force, they take the first steps towards reconciliation with each other.
There are key differences between the two stories, of course, even as regards their depiction of “mediators.” Ponyo’s choice to become human is completely willing, motivated by her prior love, whereas Wikus has his transformation thrust upon him, and it is through it that he comes to love the aliens. Related to this is the approach each film takes in presenting its protagonist: Ponyo has our sympathies from the start, whereas Wikus definitely does not, only becoming more sympathetic in our eyes as his transformation (both inward and outward) progresses.
And yet the result is ultimately the same: both characters willingly choose to give up something of what they had before and fully take on the nature of the other people, all because of the love they have developed for it.
It would be a stretch to call either character a “Christ figure,” even in a purely literary sense. Ponyo’s love is childlike, but many of her actions and choices in pursuit of this love are decidedly childish. Wikus, likewise, has a his fair share of character flaws, most of which are blatantly obvious to us from when we first meet him (indeed, it is one of District 9‘s greater merits that it can make such a visibly unheroic and contemptible figure into a believable protagonist), and he resists his status as “intermediate” for most of the film.
Still, both characters and their transformations point inescapably to the truth of the Incarnation, the ultimate example of an individual bringing two conflicting sides together by taking on the nature of the other side, solely motivated by his love for that people. These characters and their transformations resonate with us because they are reflections of this truth, the truth not only of the fact of the Incarnation, but of the innate weirdness of the Incarnation. Seeing the transformation of Ponyo, we may be a bit surprised or interested, as we might be seeing anything else as unusual as a fish transforming into a girl. Seeing the transformation of Wikus, we are shocked, unsettled, and possibly even genuinely disturbed.
Why then do we so often take the Incarnation for granted, a transformation made all the more utterly weird by the fact that it was not simply an instance of a creature becoming another creature, but of God becoming a creature in the fullest sense? And why, when we are moved by the childlike devotion of Ponyo to Sosuke, or the willingness of Wikus to give up everything he had so that the aliens might be saved, are we not constantly moved by Christ’s choice to not only descend from heaven and take on the nature of a servant, but also to be disgracefully killed in such a form, and indeed, by the very people he gave up everything to save?
[Note on content: Ponyo is essentially appropriate for all ages, but District 9 earns its R rating for pervasive coarse language; gory violence, as various characters are blown up by alien weaponry; intense, frightening and disturbing situations, sexual references; and drug content.)
