When You Can’t “Phone Home”: Subversive Politics Of The Foreign Other In E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial And District 9

This thesis takes a close look at the ways in which alien representations, especially in films, mirror the ways in which transnational and migrant individuals are viewed and treated. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is viewed as an unintentional allegory for undocumented immigrants in the United States, while District 9 and the fictional work of Jorge Luis Borges are conflated in order to analyze the statements being made in the film on the historical occurrences of post-apartheid Johannesburg.