``They Live'' -- B-Grade... Or Beware?

Stephen L. Doll

1990

Published in:

Section 3 Newsletter June 1990, No. 82
The Northwest Technocrat, 4th quarter 1990, No. 321

Director John Carpenter, it must be said, has not been a consistent contributor of socially significant film fare. His films, most notably the "Halloween" series, generally fall into the category of ho-hum sensationalist hype, capitalizing on murderers, witchcraft, and other banalities designed for little more than short-term diversion and box-office return.

In his most recent effort, "They Live," however, Carpenter seems to have, knowingly or unknowingly, risen above the mundane in his adaptation of a Ray Nelson short story, "Eight O'Clock in the Morning," to jiggle the sensitivities of the sleeping masses and to nudge at a few preciously held Price System icons in a manner that Technocrats should find refreshing and fraught with meaning.

As the story opens, we see down-and-out backpacker Nada, (portrayed by pro wrestler Roddy Piper), fresh out of his dried-up job in Denver, plodding into the outskirts of a smog-shrouded metropolis. After the increasingly familiar scenario of rebuff at the unemployment office, Nada finds day labor at a construction site and befriends a black worker, Frank (Keith David), who, on a similar quest for sustenance, has had to leave his family behind in Detroit (this is starting to sound more familiar all the time).

As the work day draws to a close, Frank invites Nada to spread his bedroll at the local shanty town, which, naturally, is the only place the drifting day laborers have to call home. Food, along with a blind preacher's dire admonitions of impending doom, is provided by a church across the street, and over dinner starry- eyed Nada and his somewhat jaded acquaintance debate the virtues of the system that has brought them to such mean estate. "I still believe in America," Nada remarks as he tries to catch a glimpse of the city through a miasma of smog.

Frank is unconvinced, as he talks about the wife and two kids back in Detroit whom he hasn't seen for six months. "We gave the steel companies a break when they needed it. You know what they gave themselves? Raises. The Golden Rule!" he snorts. "He who has the gold is the rule. Everyone's in it for himself and out to do you in at the same time."

But this is America. Even the deprived denizens of this tin-and- cardboard Utopia are not to be denied the benefits of modern technology as they gather around the communal television for the night's entertainment. On this night, however, the viewers are irritated when their commercial for false fingernails "in seven looovely hues!" is interrupted by an irritating signal-jammer with a disturbing message.

"We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness," the hacker intones. "The poor and the underclassed are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. We have been lulled into a trance."

Nada is transfixed as the distorted image on the screen continues. "They have made us indifferent to ourselves and to each other. We are focused only on our own gain."

As one of the crowd curses and reaches to turn off the T.V., the fading words of the speaker ring in Nada's ears. "Their only hope for survival is to keep us asleep, keep us selfish, keep us sedated."

As Nada reflects on this, his attention is drawn to furtive comings and goings at the church across the street. He enters the church to the strains of "Rock of Ages" to find, not an enraptured congregation, but a tape recorder churning out gospel music, a transmitter, and a much-harried group of men, one of them the hacker who has been interrupting the T.V. reception. About the time Nada comes across several boxes of odd-looking sunglasses, the wail of sirens is heard, and the police descend upon the place. Nada manages to escape, grabbing a box of the sunglasses as he heads out the door. The hacker is not so fortunate, as the minions of the law converge on him and the blind preacher and proceed to bludgeon them to death. As a helicopter whirs overhead, a bulldozer, accompanied by shield-wielding riot police, decimates the commune.

Morning finds our hero once again stalking the streets, a pair of the sunglasses in hand. Blinking into the rising sun, he puts them on. And then the fun begins.

As he looks up at a billboard, the colorful computer ad is replaced by a stark black-and-white sign that reads "OBEY." Startled, he removes the glasses and the ad reappears. Glasses on, the command is back. He looks at another billboard with a swimsuit-clad model. "MARRY AND REPRODUCE," it demands.

Bewildered, Nada stumbles up to a newsstand and, bespectacled, begins thumbing through a magazine. Every page reads, "CONSUME." A look down the street. Billboards shout "NO FREE THOUGHT." "BUY." "NO IMAGINATION." "STAY ASLEEP." Nada spots a wad of money in the news vendor's hand. Jefferson and Hamilton are replaced by sheets of paper bearing the epithet, "THIS IS YOUR GOD."

Then Nada catches a glimpse of a silver-haired, Brooks-Brothers type businessman at the newsstand. "What's your problem?" the man snaps. He turns to Nada, presenting instead of a human face, a leering, pop-eyed, skull-like apparition. Nada backs away and enters a store where he spots another apparition on television, this one the President of the United States, exhorting the nation to "ACCEPT!"

As he turns away, wryly murmuring, "I shoulda known it'd be something like this," he collides with another skullface who haughtily pulls her mink around her and sniffs, "Excuuuse me." This is too much. Nada gives voice to what he sees through the glasses. Immediately the woman lifts her Rolex to her lips and whispers, "I've got one that can see!" Alarmed, Nada looks around the store, and a dozen of the creatures are moving toward him, barking his description into their expensive watches-cum- communicators.

As Nada heads out the door, he is corralled by two police officers (also creatures). He overpowers them and takes off down the street. As he runs, he glimpses a transmitting device installed atop a "WAIT-WALK" signal. "SLEEP...SLEEP...SLEEP..." it soothes as it whirls.

Awake now, thanks to the sunglasses, Nada falls in with a band of renegade humans, among them the scientists who have discovered the truth. And the truth is that Planet Earth is nothing more than another conquest of an intergallactic corporation, bent on controlling the universe through their own version of free enterprise. And humans are nothing more than grist for their muiltidimensional corporate mill -- except, of course, for their human apologists who have sold the rest of their fellow race into bondage, for which they are amply rewarded by the aliens. Says the human who tipped the police off to the goings-on at the church when confronted by a gun-wielding Nada, "Hey, what's the threat? Hell, we all sell out every day!"

After the enterprising aliens destroy the humans' underground control center (and most of the recalcitrant humans in the process), the rest of the film is devoted to Nada and Frank's search for the aliens' transmitter that blocks out the humans' true perception of their subliminal brainwashing. By accident, the pair stumbles onto the aliens' subterranean city, and Nada singlehandedly succeeds in destroying the transmitter. Unfortunately, in true modern hero fashion, he also succeeds in getting destroyed himself, but not before the world has its eyes opened to the alien threat.

The disturbing thing about this crazy film is that, except for the alien conspiracy plot, it's not crazy at all. Although the film hardly stands as an epic cinematic achievement, if we look beyond the shoot-em-up histrionics and brief frontal nudity that seem to have become a hallmark of any movie rated closer to the end of the alphabet than "G," Carpenter has succeeded in merging a fanciful plot of alien domination with an all-too-real scenario of a society in extremis. In the aliens' earthly marketplace, wars are not only handy for dividing the masses and diverting attention from the real culprits, but good for business. And pollution is not only good, but planned, as the aliens attempt to simulate the atmosphere of their home planet.

The dialogue could be straight out of the Price System Survival Manual. ``Keep us asleep. Keep us selfish. Keep us sedated.'' Keep us divided, in constant conflict with each other. This, too, is good for business.

They're all there, all the wiles -- brainwashing, domination, intimidation, duplicity, frivolity, in the face of deprivation -- all manifestations of Price System manipulation that Technocracy has been pointing out for over fifty years.

So, far in their attempts to educate the citizens of North America about the futility of continued fealty to Price System dictates, Technocrats have not been faced with automotons wielding billy clubs and blackjacks. The conspiracy of silence initiated by the Hearst Corporation years ago has been marvelously effective in keeping the lid on. And Price System devotees require no transmitting device to lull us into apathetic complacency. Advertising, media hype and the inculcation of greed have served exceedingly well to convince us of a deceptive freedom and prosperity, as we blithely rush to enslave ourselves to the culprit that has created the pollution, the waste, and the human degradation.

The sweep of events, however, is catching up, snapping its fingers in the faces of a growing number of North Americans who are beginning to wake up from the trance. And Technocracy is there to help them deal with the realities.

"They Live." Check it out. There is, after all, no they, only us. To paraphrase, we have met aliens and we are they.

Sunglasses on, everyone?