Carpenter's They Live and the US today

 

            Carpenter’s They Live is one of my favorites, definitely top five.  Why does it resonate so with me?  It presents a world where secret, alien forces control mankind – to the alien’s benefit and mankind’s detriment.  Throw in Roddy Piper as protagonist engaging in five-minute fights and issuing declarations re: running out of bubblegum and you have stellar cinema.

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum”

 

            So today, or in the Reaganite eighties that the film capped off, it is easy to image our leaders – political and from industry – being in disguise, a powerful skyscraper-top energy beam cloaking their appearance/befuddling the minds of men. 

            Now, let’s say that in our realm (i.e. non-Carpenter-scripted) there is no alien based collusion with America’s leaders.  And no leaders are really reptilians in disguise.  No, we just have naked greed for money and power operating in the world, the world of humans and human nature.  A bullet stops the mind-control machine in Carpenter’s world – what shuts off the beam in ours?

The world revealed for what it is.

            It is nice to imagine there is some beam, something out there commanding us to OBEY, WATCH TV, and CONFORM that could be shut down, revealing the world in a way to truly spark outrage and dissent.  Of course one man’s conformity is another man’s peace – who is critical of what in what way and does that necessitate action?

            Remember the Great Recession a few years ago?  With the banks and the loss of investments and the loss of real estate values and all that?  The dissent that was spurred by those times has passed, at least popularly.           

Bulldozer and cops move in on the They Live shantytown.
 

They Live riot police!

 

Police TSD@ Occupy shantytown.
 

Occupy police line.

            Bless his heart, former-Gov. Jesse Ventura has offered his explanation for why folks are not more outraged and thusly act on that outrage.  Part of the appeal of They Live is that there is a concrete solution: at least when Piper’s character John Nada caps the control broadcast-beam the aliens are revealed in all their scariness.  From there you can only imagine the reaction of the folks within the film – revolt, revolution, the OBEY and CONFORM signs written on everything revealed.  It seems like the actions of Wall Street that caused the Great Recession would have served a similar galvanizing purpose.