THEY LIVE! (feat. Rowdy Roddy Piper [RIP])
The modern relevance of John Carpenter's 1987 sci-fi cult classic + the competing interpretations and cognitive dissonance it elicits.
“Our impulses are being redirected. We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness that resembles sleep… The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society, and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain. Please understand. They are safe as long as they are not discovered. That is their primary method of survival. Keep us asleep, keep us selfish, keep us sedated."
By nearly every metric, John Carpenter’s They Live is a cult classic film. Complete with an everyman main character, all the necessary action of a good 80s movie, a thumping, bluesy score, enough one-liners and great dialogue to be quoted endlessly, and a thought-provoking premise that is just loosely applicable enough to permeate through every decade and era, and thus every developing value system, since its release. Despite its relatively low budget, it is engaging, fun, aesthetically interesting, and has some truly iconic scenes, imagery, and dialogue. And do I even need to mention that fight scene?
Based on the short story “Eight O’clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson, the plot revolves around a drifter, played by Rowdy Roddy Piper (rest easy, legend), who wanders through a city in an oppressive society filled with simultaneous depictions of abject poverty and material excess. While fraternizing with unhoused people in a shantytown, he notices a group of people who seem to be manufacturing sunglasses out of a church. He finds a cardboard box full of the sunglasses, and upon putting on a pair, he sees the “real” world; a black and white dystopia where billboards, magazines, and television are all subliminal messages stating “consume, obey, conform, buy, reproduce, stay asleep” and money is just pieces of paper that says “this is your god”. A radio signal is being emitted from towers with a repeated “sleep” being spoken from them. While observing the world through these sunglasses, our main character is startled to notice that many of the people he sees walking the streets have skeletal, alien faces with large, unblinking, insectoid eyes and bared teeth, moving alongside the normal humans. However, the normal humans do not realize it without the aid of the sunglasses. He begins to realize that these “aliens” are all working to enslave humanity through propaganda, subliminal messaging, a militarized police force, and radio frequency manipulation. Upon his discovery of the truth, he is thrust into ragtag crusade of rebellion against the alien forces who seek to control humanity.
“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”
They Live is a scathing critique of the pervasive capitalism, commercialism and yuppy culture of the 1980s and the Reagan era, disguised as a sci-fi action film - although nobody remembers it as anything but an allegory. Despite its on-the-nose premise and bits of silliness, it has quite a realistically tense feel to it, with credit due to the wonderfully down-to-earth performances by Roddy Piper and the remarkable Keith David, as well as the casting of real homeless people as extras who were paid and fed in exchange for their involvement.
What makes They Live so culturally relevant to this day is the obvious nod to consumer culture, rampant wealth inequality, and the exploitation of the poor and working class. The unassuming hero of the story is a homeless drifter and laborer simply called “Nada”, who, before discovering the sunglasses, spends his time selling his labor at a construction site, wandering through food lines, observing different forms of media, talking with other homeless people in squatters’ camps, as they all fume on the deteriorating state of the country. The downtrodden imagery is accentuated by repeated appearances from a bearded TV hacker, preaching dystopian prophecies of brainwashing, racial and class injustices and media control. Even before the appearance of the aliens, the film expresses a palpable feeling that something is very, very wrong.
They Live goes beyond a simple point of reference for those attempting to make a point about modern society; to some, it is the whole truth. John Carpenter himself even described the film in interviews as a documentary.
They Live was released and set nearing the end of a bygone era of upward mobility and material excess, fueled by perfumed austerity and propagandized foreign policy that promoted American supremacy in both global markets and military power. The economics of Reagan’s presidency allowed for much lower taxes and in turn, much higher sustained income for the average household, as well as a high rate of job creation and GDP, which seems to be a good thing on the surface. Pop culture was booming and the stock market from 1983 to 1987 performed handsomely. Subsequently, the 1980s were our first real foray into the form of consumerism that is synonymous with American culture today – companies were beginning to realize their full advertising and computing potential, as well as utilizing multinational opportunities for outsourcing and tax havens within global trade. Wall Street was booming and yuppie culture was born. Reagan’s trickle-down system led many to believe that support for the wealthy capitalists, alongside anti-union sentiments and decreased market and workplace regulations, would inevitably lead to continued economic prosperity for the country, and it did - temporarily. As is the standard for austerity politics in the US, this upward mobility was centered around white, middle-to-upper class people. Reagan’s involvement in flooding the lower-class streets and black communities with crack cocaine while simultaneously continuing the steadfast war on drugs is a topic for another day, but keep it in mind nonetheless.
One of the most poignant ideas behind They Live is that the upward mobility of the time it was released is essentially a product of socioeconomic payola; the more you contribute and turn a blind eye to the status quo, the more you are compensated for your passivity and active perpetuation. Many of the unhoused humans in the film are recruited by the “aliens”, who reward them with wealth, status, and a seat at the table. The truth in this concept is that in real life, the less you fight against the systems in place, the more value you add to it, the more you prop up the status quo - the more potential you have to be rewarded through money and social status. To this day, we live in a reward-based faux-meritocracy that perpetuates itself by paying individuals for its continuation, and equally factors in the opposition by threatening it with homelessness, starvation, and criminal punishment if it doesn’t comply; coerced participation. This is the idea behind the militarized police that chase Nada, and eventually raid the headquarters of the sunglass-wearers in the film, labeling them a terrorist group; a concept that could be applied easily to the treatment of communist/socialist/anarchist groups of the 1950s and beyond.
Continue reading below.
Cognitive Dissonance in Competing Interpretations
There are many, many ways to interpret They Live beyond the surface, and that is part of the brilliance and also the biggest issue with it. While being a fascinating allegory, the metaphoric aspect of the story is just nonspecific enough so as to fit into nearly any worldview, and therefore causes a form of cognitive dissonance in both opposing sides of the story, no matter which respective side you take.
For now, let’s assume that you, the viewer or the reader, believe yourself to be the on the human side - the sunglass wearer - watching and awakening to this dystopia.
On one hand, if you consider yourself to be on the human side, the concept of They Live may inspire a belief that the only possible cause of this power structure is a form of perverted humanity, something “other” that is pure evil. Something that seeks to enslave every human, and is therefore not human at all. If you follow this viewpoint, no matter your personal values or beliefs, you are on the correct side - either the victim or the hero - simply because you are not a part of said other that is controlling and brainwashing the real humans. Many American Christians hold this self-righteous belief, that they alone are walking the narrow path to salvation, and all differentiated ways of living or religious beliefs are wrong, evil, or part of a Satanic agenda. This is the cause of thinking behind the distastefully Antisemitic “Lizard People” conspiracy that many people buy into - “the Jews run the world” theory. The narrative of They Live can be easily hijacked by white supremacists, Nazi sympathizers, religious zealots, and the like. It would also not be a stretch to say that QAnon adopted their theories from a similar vein. In 2017, John Carpenter took to Twitter to denounce the seizing of his movie’s meaning by these groups.
“THEY LIVE is about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism. It has nothing to do with Jewish control of the world, which is slander and a lie.” - John Carpenter
In the real world, you may look at the power structures and systems set in place as a whole and feel that it can only be something so incomprehensibly evil that there’s no way actual human beings could be the cause of it. It could only be aliens or demons who are terraforming the Earth, sapping it of all its precious, natural resources before they move onto the next planet. Despite the bits of truth to this idea, this is the birth of many conspiracy theories, nationalism, xenophobia, fascism, terrorism and even radicalized leftism. While it is not a reach for the average person - regardless of religious or political background - to view the ruling class as evil, pertaining to real life it is very easy for religious zealots to superimpose themselves into the film as the righteous humans, in constant but meager opposition to the devilishly powerful elite “aliens”. Consider that the headquarters of the human rebel force is a church, and one of the main members is a preacher. I don’t think that John Carpenter intended for the rebellion to be related to the Christian identity, but the comparison can no doubt be drawn easily by self-righteous but misunderstanding Christians. However, the concept can be just as easily taken over by secular Illuminati-based theorists without the religious connotation as well.
“Head down any number of online wormholes, and you’ll soon discover that skeptics of all political persuasions embrace the allegorical significance of They Live, regardless of their political wing, views and opinions” - from Tommy Caroll’s video essay on They Live
On the other hand, imagine the world from the perspective of a person who holds that power, or strives to hold that power. If profit and power is your motive, it is very easy to see the average citizen - the working class, the consumer, the laborer - as nothing but a degenerate, an easy mark, who needs to be controlled, or for all intents and purposes, subhuman. It’s the same ideology that considers indigenous and colored people to be “uncivilized”, the same ideology behind colonialism. It breeds a sort of sociopathy, where human emotions, empathy, collective good simply get in the way of the bottom line. Although it can be theorized that many people, many companies who seek profit and power do not realize that they are purely seeking profit and power, rather they misguidedly believe that profit and power is a byproduct of the “good” that they’re doing.
In an odd perversion of class consciousness, many of us have the belief that if we too can figure out how to exploit others properly, build our own business or empires, we too can escape the chains of wage slavery and become one of the slave masters - and that is the ultimate goal of so many people; we will happily lay down our humanity in order to receive the economic payola. In the film, the ‘aliens’ recruit humans; one of the homeless men shown earlier in the shantytown is later shown at the alien meeting, wearing suit and tie, drinking fancy wine and talking about how “we all just want a taste of the good life”.
It’s the same mentality that breeds hustle culture, or in other words, capitalist apologists, wannabe entrepreneurs, or delusional pre-millionaires. The ones who are still fully reliant on giving away their labor while supposedly working towards escaping wage slavery through side hustles, entrepreneurship, and minimization of time and energy spent on anything but money-chasing. This sort of faux-capitalist class has a distinguishable disconnect between themselves and the working class. They see themselves as higher than the working class, and often look down on anyone who isn’t pulling their own bootstraps. The mentality is “if you want to change your situation, it just requires hard work and determination, and only you can do it”, an individualized misconception of how human beings have come to prosper in the first place. These kinds of people are the heroes of their own story, and everyone else is just a side character. This is also a form of cognitive dissonance - believing that there is something wrong with the system as a whole while also believing that it is entirely on the individual to change things.
Who are the real heroes? Who are the real slaves?
One of the very misguided metaphors of They Live is how, once the sunglasses are on, everything is black and white. It becomes so easy to see the “real” game and how the issue with the world is simply that an alien other is controlling and influencing our every move in order to keep us in a state of slavery and waking sleep. But this facile viewing is what makes it so undemanding for people of all backgrounds or political beliefs to take the narrative and run with it in their own echo chamber; everything becomes black and white, good or evil, right or wrong, me versus you. It takes away all the nuance of civilization and human existence.
One of the more nuanced points that the movie makes, however, was illustrated in a video essay by Rob Ager of Collative Learning. It reminds us that there are moments in the film when our main character, with sunglasses on, sees the alien creatures fraternizing with humans, buying the same magazines that humans do, and generally being just as oblivious and susceptible to the propaganda as humans are. The aliens are depicted as blanked out, almost hypnotized, entranced faces with unblinking eyes; they do not think for themselves, they work congruently as a hivemind alongside the relatively pensive human. Rob Ager’s video asks, why would this powerful race of aliens aiming for world domination fall for the same subliminal messaging that they themselves create? Why would they waste their time being friends with humans if their aim is purely just to turn them into slaves? You could say that it’s just to keep up the ruse, so that humans don’t realize that they’re being enslaved, so as not to draw attention to the differences between them. I think the more likely explanation, and the one that the film intended, is that the aliens truly are just as oblivious as the humans are.
To take this a step further, one could say that the “aliens” are not aliens at all. They are perverted, unliving versions of humans who have only one instinct and no critical thought. There may be some merit to this theory, seeing as how the “aliens” were written as “the living dead” or “zombies” in the original screenplay. Maybe, just maybe, the title of They Live is actually in reference to the humans themselves. The “aliens” are the ones who are not alive - and all the control and brainwashing is a tactic to transform the humans into the same hivemind, unliving thinkers that the “aliens” are. They yearn for humans to be like them; the living dead in waking sleep. “They live, we sleep”. We, as humans, are alive; we can think critically, we can experience the beauty and complexity of being a living individual. This idea begs the question, is our staunch human individualism actually a good thing? Is it better for us to be self-serving individualists, and inadvertently worse for us to be hivemind thinkers whose only motive is the greater good for our entire species? Capitalists, neoliberals, anti-leftists, and conservatives everywhere could seamlessly appropriate the narrative to their liking using this reasoning.
Just like in real life, it is likely that the money and status hungry don’t automatically assume that what they’re doing is wrong. Neoliberal propaganda of the late 1970s onward, and anti-leftist sentiments birthed during the Cold War and McCarthy era have taught us from a young age that the free market is sacred and the individual pursuit of wealth is one of the most noble endeavors. Often times through wealth-fetishization, the “powers that be” have tricked many of us into behaving based off of one instinct: pursue wealth, no matter the cost. It’s almost like zombies; their only instinct is to consume flesh and they will stop at nothing in order to eat. In other words, the people who have fallen for this trick don’t necessarily see the system of control and propaganda as a bad thing, if they even see it at all. It’s so deeply and subtly engrained in all of us that we often have a complete inability to comprehend what’s wrong with it, or if we begin to see it we will reason with ourselves in order to justify our own preconceptions. To the vast majority, the material comfort that our civilization affords us can be enough incentive to continue to buy into it without question. This is a point that I think many viewers miss while watching and applying the film’s metaphor to their own life and worldview. It is not just black and white, good and evil, right and wrong - none of us can fully say that we are the good guys or the bad guys. Sometimes those who support and thrive off of continuity of the status quo are just as much enslaved as those who are the obvious victims of it.
With all that in mind, is there any way to correctly interpret the film other than through the lens of class struggle? There is a blatant aspect of class warfare, as stated in one of the rants by the TV hacker - “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery”. The obvious truth is that the ruling class is attempting to control the vast majority of people. No matter which way you spin it, we are facing this today more than ever. John Carpenter himself was a vocal critic of Reaganomics and the idea that supporting the wealthy will ultimately benefit the lower and middle classes. He wholeheartedly believed in the premise of his movie, that rampant consumerism and unchecked capitalism was turning Americans into submissive slaves, sleepwalking through life and blindly obeying the ruling class. But the ideas presented in his movie can be taken, albeit subtly, much deeper and beyond the blatant class struggle which is, again, another version of “good vs. evil”. We have to remember that most people, both wealthy and poor, have very little class consciousness, if any at all, so most people will find othering interpretations within it. Generally speaking, leftist (not liberal) theories have to be dug for before the algorithm is trained.
Side Notes:
Anti-Establishment Groups
Another fascinating side note to consider when calculating the reaching implications of the film is the anti-establishment groups who could easily take on the “heroic” aspect of They Live. For example, the doomsday prepper community, the 5 Percenters, certain right-wing militias, Antifa-style leftist groups, and many more. I have worked my way around real life communities, often times black nationalist groups, or white, Torah reading narrow-path Christians who formulate their beliefs around the idea that they are “chosen ones” or children of god. Sometimes these communities call regular people “bots”, many of them believe that they are being gang-stalked, and walk around with an air of knowing paranoia and a perpetual look over the shoulder - similar to the rebel group in the film. This mentality breeds a disconnection with the average person, and almost always completely forgoes class consciousness in favor of the distinction of being a chosen one. Doomsday preppers more than likely have a worldview that is very collapse-aware. They notice all the signs of coming apocalypse and dystopia, they try their best to become self-sufficient and operate outside of the system, they want to survive every possible outcome, they like to live on homesteads and stay away from the grid as much as possible. And yet, they consume consume consume exponentially more than the average person. They generally buy thousands of dollars worth of groceries per month in order to sustain their material comfort, they follow news media infinitely more than the average person, and at the same time they consider themselves to be these anti-establishment badasses who are fighting the system as lone wolves and small militias. The irony is quite poetic. But very often, in my experience with and knowledge of the prepper community, they are almost always relatively wealthy white people who own land and perpetuate the status quo in the work, in order to be rewarded with the monetary access to food storage, homestead land, guns and ammo, and common prepper gear. It’s a very interesting dichotomy, and I think it speaks to one of the main points that They Live is trying to make: we are all slaves to the system in one way or another, including those who perpetuate the system - and including those who try to fight the system - whether we realize it or not. There is no real way to unplug, and if you can’t beat ‘em, what are you to do?
The Fight Scene
Never have I seen such a slow-burning, long, and drawn out fight scene in a movie. I suppose in large part to Rowdy Roddy’s history as a pro wrestler, it looks as though it goes beyond Kayfabe and these actors are genuinely causing damage to each other. I can’t imagine getting slammed to the ground and it not hurting, at least, but the actors do it countless times in this scene.
Even the lengthy fight scene between the two main characters is a metaphor - they have us fighting against each other and seeing the enemy in our peers rather than focusing that energy towards our actual enemies. However, it also may serve a similar purpose to Fight Club. The characters seem to be getting a certain cathartic enjoyment out of kicking the shit out of each other, even letting a laugh and smile slip here and there; unleashing so much built up steam and frustration at a society that treats human beings the way it does, and not having anyone who’s actually deserving to take it out on, therefore turning that anger onto each other.
Bitter Truths and Sweet Fallacies
So who is this movie really for? Who is the enemy, who are the good guys, who are the real slaves?
I think the point of the film, at least the conclusion that I’ve come to, is that the lines are purposely blurred so as to remind people of all classes, racial groups, and political leanings that they are susceptible to the tricks of the ruling plutocrats and subliminal advertising; to remind us that we are all enslaved in one way or another. The point of the film is to raise questions that don’t need to go answered immediately, that are meant to hold a mirror up to our own contributions to, or subtractions from, this system. The point is to make us think and question, and be wary of not only consumerist and hyper-capitalist society, but also be wary of our own conclusions drawn from such worldly observations.
The truth of They Live, and the relevant part of it to this day, is that capitalism and consumerism has gone far, far overboard in its control over us. Commercial advertisement and corporate overlord-ing is rampant to the point of inescapability. The internet, with it’s grand goal of global, free communication, has turned into a propaganda machine and tool for advertising and censorship. Mainstream media and its beneficiaries and pundits will say anything to rile you up over issues like gender transitioning, gay marriage, black history being taught in schools, all while most people are struggling to put food on the table. The shantytowns, the drifters, the dirty faces, the sweeps on the homeless encampments all elicit a palpable sense of of dread and desolation, knowing that these are all features of our real lives and not simply a part of a movie plot - it seems as though we feel and see more and more of this every day in the real world. It’s all rather disconcerting, especially when there are multi-billionaires out there and corporations who have gained record profits during pandemic and inflationary times. On top of the recuperation and co-opting of social movements, the guise of inclusivity that is used to trick people into supporting companies, the push towards human self-identification with products and brands, and the personification of faceless corporations. Biblical levels of propaganda and subliminal messaging in advertisements is a real thing, not a conspiracy or a fictional storytelling device; the theme behind the film is tangible and perceivable in our everyday lives.
The fallacy of They Live lies in the fact that the true threat to humanity is very unlikely to be some secret cabal of aliens or reptilian beings hell-bent on world domination. In fact, the reptilian/alien narrative oversimplifies the truth and disconnects us from actionable solutions. If we focus on the shadowy cabal idea, we’re less likely to take to the streets, organize, vote, build communities, and actively fight against neoliberal political and social agendas as a whole, and instead target specific groups of other humans and label them the enemy. Stories like the reptilian conspiracy, or the Illuminati/Freemason conspiracy, etc. are a way for people to easily wrap their head around an endlessly complex, intertwining political and economic landscape that involves billions of human beings, thousands of years, and hundreds of competing political and religious viewpoints from the perspective of hundreds of different countries and regions; with the strings of our history being pulled by a tiny minority ruling class that desires power and profit over the standard of living and liberty for the vast majority who produce and consume. There are millions of twists and turns in the story of civilization, so many that it makes the Illuminati theory seem like a children’s book. That is the appeal of these conspiracies; it is a much easier to understand the simplification (despite the fact that these conspiracies are still relatively complex), and the truth is that none of us fully understand what is going on. The truth is not black and white.
To simplify and summarize an essay on one of my all time favorite campy 80s movies that I think way, way too much about: They Live is not about reptilians, or Jewish people, or woke politics taking over, or the so-called “gay agenda”, or non-Christians being evil. It is purely a critique of capitalism, greed, corporate domination, and consumer culture - nothing more, nothing less. If you find yourself reading too far into it and thinking that there is some other race, cultural identity, orientation, or religion that is your enemy, and that you are on the correct side, chances are you have misinterpreted the film, misplaced your anger and disillusionment, and are feeding into the polarization that is meant to keep the working class at bay; a political and cultural polarization that is curated to prevent us from fighting the real enemy. We are all the losers under this system, everyone from white American Christians and conservatives, Neo-Nazis and Antisemites, to progressive minded liberals, people of color, atheists, and revolutionary leftists. All of us have lost, that is except for the ruling class, the few who hold all the capital and will do absolutely anything to preserve their stranglehold on it.
At the end of the day, in the simplest nutshell, this is a struggle by the average citizen of the world against a small class of people that believe themselves to be higher than them; the ruling class, the rich, elite, power hungry people. If you find yourself believing that this ruling class is not human, you are likely interpreting the film and our current circumstance disingenuously, and liable to act in destructive, misinformed, and ignorant ways. In order to better ourselves as a whole, we have to see ourselves, all of us, as human - fallible, oblivious, corruptible, sometimes good, sometimes evil. If you forget that even the greediest and most evil humans are still human, it is far more possible for you to inherit some of their same character traits and behaviors.
In order to prevent making the same mistakes of the past, it is imperative that we understand the nature of ourselves, the nature of humanity, and the nature of the threat against it.
Next stop on the Silk Road… The Nature of the Threat
Quick epilogue. I have to admit, this movie isn’t nearly as fun to watch as it was when I was a kid. Not because it isn’t great, but because this shit hits too close to home nowadays. I want to note a very important section from a quote in this movie. “They are safe as long as they are not discovered. That is their primary method of survival. Keep us asleep, keep us selfish, keep us sedated.” This is true, in a sense. Up until now, the primary methods to keep the wrongdoings of the ruling class under wraps is invisibility and distraction, the less people know, or the more they distract themselves from it, the less opposition “they” have. But they no longer have these methods of self-defense anymore because almost everybody is exposed to the corruption, injustice, and downright evil coming from this plutocracy and socioeconomic dominion. We are to the point where if you choose to ignore it, you are a part of that evil as well, and likely only complicit because you are a beneficiary of it. The distraction method is also losing its power because this level of abuse has gone too far; people are no longer able to successfully distract themselves, it is a creeping feeling that is near impossible to ignore. Though many of us aren’t quite radicalized yet, everyone is to the point of undeniable world-wariness. The “powers that be”, whatever you want to call them, no longer have the defense mechanism of cover, so they will undoubtedly up their game and become more direct in their actions, as we’re beginning to see. You know what that means; we have to be direct in our actions as well. It is past the point of theory and discourse. Direct opposition and offense is looming. With that being said, it is important to focus to batten down the hatches and pad our defense in these moments. Community and organization, backup food sources and medical supplies. Keep those things in mind right now.
I love you all. Thank you for reading.
𝕊𝕀𝕃𝕂 ℝ𝕆𝔸𝔻 𝔾𝕆𝕌ℝ𝕄𝔼𝕋
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