In the film District 9, humans derogatorily call the aliens “Prawns.”
The term is used for the insect-like extraterrestrials stranded over Johannesburg after their mothership arrives above South Africa in 1982. The aliens are officially treated as refugees, but human authorities confine them to District 9, where they become the targets of exploitation, segregation, and public hostility. “Prawns” reduces an intelligent extraterrestrial population to a supposedly filthy pest.
The word is linked to the Parktown prawn, a large king cricket found in parts of South Africa and commonly regarded as a pest. That local reference helps ground the film’s fictional prejudice in a recognizable cultural setting. The aliens’ human-assigned label also echoes real-world racist and xenophobic language.
Twenty-eight years after the mothership’s arrival, Multinational United is hired to forcibly relocate the aliens to a remote labor camp. Wikus van de Merwe leads the operation, but his exposure to alien biotechnology gradually changes his body and perspective. “Slimies,” “Reptiles,” and “Bugs” are not the film’s canonical term.