Saturday, August 24, 2013
"Fatty Boom Boom" & Elysium
One of the first questions that popped into my mind after watching "Fatty Boom Boom" is what the hell was that? I came across the South African group Die Antwoord while trying to dig deeper into Neill Blomkamp's Elysium. It turns out that Die Antwoord's frontman, Ninja, was Blomkamp's first choice for the role played by Matt Damon. I learned this via a review by Steve Sailer that I read after I watched the film.
Sailer claims the "American culturati's hive mind" has got Blomkamp, who also directed and co-wrote District 9, all wrong. According to Sailer, Blomkamp is a "young Boer refugee" and his new movie is "about the horrors of mass immigration and nonwhite overpopulation". It is, like District 9, "another Malthusian tale" by Blomkamp, "a gun-loving Afrikaner whose movies are based around his fear that the rapid breeding of Third Worlders threatens to bring down civilization". I'm not sure if Sailer is right about Blomkamp or his cinematic intentions but he makes a compelling case and his review put the film in a different light for me.
Sailer also opines that "Elysium would have been more interesting with either" Eminem or Ninja in the lead and refers to Die Antwoord as "a satirical Afrikaner duo who are always on the verge of getting denounced as racist." I'd never heard of Die Antwoord before and was intrigued. Below is Die Antwoord's "Fatty Boom Boom" video. Following that is their response to some comments on the video by YouTube users (you can also watch a 'making of' video here).
The last video is an illuminating video essay by Chris English entitled "Wat Kyk Jy: Die Antwoord and the Appropriation of Jane Alexander's Butcher Boys". Jane Alexander is a South African sculptor whose 1985/86 work, The Butcher Boys, is widely recognized as an artistic critique of South African apartheid.
Sailer claims the "American culturati's hive mind" has got Blomkamp, who also directed and co-wrote District 9, all wrong. According to Sailer, Blomkamp is a "young Boer refugee" and his new movie is "about the horrors of mass immigration and nonwhite overpopulation". It is, like District 9, "another Malthusian tale" by Blomkamp, "a gun-loving Afrikaner whose movies are based around his fear that the rapid breeding of Third Worlders threatens to bring down civilization". I'm not sure if Sailer is right about Blomkamp or his cinematic intentions but he makes a compelling case and his review put the film in a different light for me.
Sailer also opines that "Elysium would have been more interesting with either" Eminem or Ninja in the lead and refers to Die Antwoord as "a satirical Afrikaner duo who are always on the verge of getting denounced as racist." I'd never heard of Die Antwoord before and was intrigued. Below is Die Antwoord's "Fatty Boom Boom" video. Following that is their response to some comments on the video by YouTube users (you can also watch a 'making of' video here).
The last video is an illuminating video essay by Chris English entitled "Wat Kyk Jy: Die Antwoord and the Appropriation of Jane Alexander's Butcher Boys". Jane Alexander is a South African sculptor whose 1985/86 work, The Butcher Boys, is widely recognized as an artistic critique of South African apartheid.
Labels: art and literature, film & television, music, South Africa, video
