district 9 discussion | Quick Homework Help

Sympathy is a feeling of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. Sympathy is a sentiment experienced by an onlooker. In contrast, empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being (a human or non-human animal) is experiencing from within the other being’s frame of reference, that is the capacity to view the world from another’s perspective and place oneself, by an act of imagination, in another’s position. It used to be assumed that the empathy was a uniquely human trait, but recent research has shown that some other social animals have a capacity for empathy (see, for instance, the work of primatologist Frans De Waal). The evolutionary development of empathy has been tied to its value in complex social environments where understanding others and making alliances boosts social status, security, and mating opportunities. Moreover, the capacity for empathy is now seen by many anthropologists as the necessary biological foundation for ethics.

Do the South Africans in the film District 9 express empathy towards the Prawns? Is Wikus empathetic? How do his feelings about the Prawns evolve over the course of the film? What makes it difficult to empathize with the Prawns? In what ways does the film conspire to create empathy in the audience?