"District 9" movie poster
(Creative Commons licensed - rockinfree)

In late June 2006, I met up with a friend in Frankfurt, Germany for two weeks of backpacking through Central Europe. Having never been much of a soccer fan, other than playing the sport recreationally for several years, I saw the FIFA World Cup as a nice addition to our travels, though not the inherent purpose. With typical American soccer-ignorance, the fans to us became almost part of the scenery everywhere we went; it wasn't until much later that I realized we had witnessed something quite fantastic.

During my first night in Frankfurt, I found myself surrounded by chain-smoking Italian fans along the Main River, where a giant two-sided screen had been erected in the waterway, which allowed viewing from grandstands on both banks. Later, I shared beers at a makeshift table in the middle of a cobblestone street, and watched a small TV set with Brazilian fans in swimsuits who danced impromptu Samba during the commercial breaks. That night I was crammed on a Prague-bound train with cars and cars full of Korean fans wearing team jerseys and carrying flags. The next day, I followed a man wrapped in the Mexican flag through Prague's famous Jewish cemetery. Then, I chatted with two Chilean soccer players in a small square, while we sat around a projection of the coverage and watched German fans painted in yellow, black and red yell for their team on the big screen. 

Far from many fears of nationalistic and racial violence (aside from one minor conflict among British fans in Cologne), the World Cup experience was one of the most uplifting global events I ever witnessed, before or since. Most incredible of all, to be sure, was the evening my friend and I wandered through Munich's Hofbrauhaus. Each table in the giant bier hall hosted lively groups of all nationalities, all in good spirits. Having avoided the tension of a live game in the stadium, I'm sure our experience was skewed. However, reports on the 2006 World Cup were positive for the most part, even highlighting German patriotism as an important step in overcoming the dark nationalism of their past.

As the qualifying results for next year's World Cup trickle in and South Africa completes the necessary infrastructure to host the large-scale event, some of the same questions of national identity and the possibilities of violent conflict - in a country where immigrants are largely discriminated against - are being investigated. And, in incredibly timely fashion, this summer's surprising sci-fi blockbuster, "District 9," has brought many of these questions into the popular global conversation.

To summarize: the film takes place in present-day Johannesburg. It has been almost 20 years since the arrival of an alien ship, which sits stranded above the city, and its passengers have been relegated to a fenced-off slum within the city. There they live in squalor, surviving on raw meat, scavenged trash, and cans of cat food (which becomes as addictive as a drug to them) and are consequently exploited by Nigerian gangs who share the residential slum areas with the aliens. Their behavior is misunderstood and feared by the upper classes and the story begins with the hatching of a government-sponsored corporate initiative to move the aliens to another area outside the city, where presumably they would cause less trouble. The metaphors of racial inequality in "District 9" are obvious, and for a country that abolished state-sanctioned racism only 15 years ago, they are important. South Africa is showing the world that, as a nation, they are taking part in critical reflection about this painful history.

Next year's tournament will be the first time the World Cup soccer competition has landed on the African continent, and resulting issues of racism are inherent. Interestingly, some of the strongest concerns at the 2006 World Cup in Germany were surrounding neo-Nazi groups from the United Kingdom and other European countries, but Germany achieved a successful event by retaining an attitude of positivity and encouraging patriotism over nationalism. Similarly, I believe that South Africa's willingness to address its deep-seeded internal conflicts in such an open forum (the blockbuster summer film) will do much to set the tone for next year's event.

If we don't talk about our collective history, events like the World Cup have the potential to re-open old wounds. But as the world's most popular sport and one of the most widely attended and publicized popular events on Earth, the Cup has more potential to bring us all together than to push us further apart.