I wonder how many people familiar with OBEY iconography variations[0] or OBEY Clothing actually watched They Live.<p>It's a pretty corny movie, but it's quite good.<p>And regarding warnings, I can't help but feel Idiocracy is also one we're not paying attention to.<p>[0] I own a t-shirt with futurama's hypnotoad, and I love it
<i>"They Live, meanwhile, sort of became reality... Drones in the sky, conspiracies in our heads, militarized police in the streets, economic inequality in every corner of society, media that seeks to control our minds"</i><p><i>Max Headroom</i> and <i>Brazil</i> were a couple of other 80's scifi films which were uncannily prescient.
Slavoj Zizek noted the importance of his film in “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema.” I highly recommend the film and “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” as an explanation of our current world systems.
I've had bad luck showing They Live to youngsters. I don't know if it's the style or the message but they all seemed bored to death.<p>I love it but then again I am a borderline paranoid old fart
<i>But the meta-narrative of "They Live", about the fear of being controlled by some massive conspiracy only you and a select group of “awakened” radicals can see, is a different matter. That is the story of how many of us now see reality. While the text of "They Live" isn’t all that scary, the subtext is among the most terrifying aspects of life in the modern world.</i><p>So, it's important not to fear the actual deficiencies in democracy and self-rule that majorities of people in many nations recognize, but it's totally rational to fear the fear of those actual problems. "Meta-narrative", indeed.
"Wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.<p>⇐ Thoreau (Walden)
So on the one hand, They Live should not be regarded as 'Cliffs Notes explaining the oppressive power structures underpinning the so-called civilized world.' But on the other, The Thing is about 'the ways we are undone by our inability to see and understand other people.' The author seems to want it both ways.
<i>"...in They Live, ideology is not imposed, Zizek postulates. Rather, Nada puts on the glasses in order to see how things really are, because ideology is "spontaneous relationships to our social world" and therefore indivisible from reality. The glasses, therefore, finally remove ideology from the equation."</i><p>Except that in <i>They Live</i> ideology <i>is</i> imposed by the aliens.<p><i>"In the movie's most notorious scene, Nada tries to impose this truth on another person, brawling with Armitage for several minutes in order to force him to put on the glasses. This endless fight scene, possibly the longest in cinema history, is a metaphor for the struggle to achieve enlightenment. "To step out of ideology ... you must force yourself to do it," Zizek concludes. "Freedom hurts.""</i><p>But Piper's character didn't have to force himself to put on the glasses. There was no struggle and it didn't hurt.<p>Zizek is amusing and I agree with many of his left-wing sentiments, but a lot of what he says is pure bullshit, concocted to sound profound with zero substance to it if you think about it for half a second.
The author vaguely stumbles through the partisan goal posts with loosely associated leftisms. Globalism isn't a concern. It doesn't mount any propaganda, because: "Look over there, it is capitalism!"<p>If that's not enough, the buffet also includes the tired trope of associating right wingers with anti-semitism. Somehow Trump is mixed into the smorgasbord.<p>There's some irony in him missing the broader point of the film while arriving at a conclusion about ideological blinders.
Control is the driving force behind evolution. The total control of thought is inevitable. With that we will enter into a new metasystem where we will be the second most intelligent lifeform.<p><a href="http://metamn.io/gust" rel="nofollow">http://metamn.io/gust</a>
The fight scene where RRP forces the other guy to put on the glasses was the inspiration for the cripple fight episode of South Park. And that really is the best thing to come out of the film.
Really, it was every bit as shallow and superficial as it seemed. "People I dislike are like evil space aliens". "No, it's YOU GUYS that are the ones like evil space aliens." There was no more depth to it than that.