“One of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood Left.” Slavoj Žižek’s verdict on They Live demonstrates that even philosophers have off days. Whether Žižek had been smoking genetically re-engineered skunk or not, one thing about John Carpenter’s 1988 film is indisputable: if you want an allegory for the notion of false consciousness, you’ve found your baby.
It’s an allegorical tale of a decent, hard-working all-American dude struggling to find work in an economic downturn discovering that the country is actually run by a cabal of extra-terrestrials. Keeping the populace subdued through television, advertising and so on, enables the aliens to squeeze the juice out of the planet.
And then one day our hero Nada (Roddy Piper) gets his hands on some magical spectacles he’s not meant to have got his hands on. After putting them on he is suddenly able to see things for what they really are. Where previously there was an advertisement featuring a pretty woman or something else desirable, with the glasses on Nada can see the truth – “Obey,” it says in big letters. “No Independent Thought,” says another. Or “Marry and Reproduce.” Or “Consume.”
So, glasses off – a bright “new dawn for America” to use an overheard phrase (borrowed from Ronald Reagan, president at the time, and clearly not Carpenter’s choice). Glasses on – a grey world of slogans and imperatives. Think The Matrix with no budget and far less in the way of special effects.
Carpenter’s story is told through two allegorical leads – the guy living the fantasy and the guy who sees things for what they are. On one side Nada, a regular guy working any job he can get and committed to the American way – “I believe in America; I follow the rules,” he says at one point. On the other, Frank (Keith David), a construction worker with a more socialist philosophy. “The golden rule,” Frank says, is “he who has the gold makes the rule.”
They’re a good pairing, or they would be if Carpenter got them together early on, but he doesn’t, leaving pro wrestler Piper largely to carry the movie on his own. And while he may have the physicality and presence you’d expect, Piper isn’t that great at the acting thing. They Live would probably have been better if the roles of Nada (which means nothing in Spanish, tellingly) and Frank had been switched.
But don’t go thinking this is a character-driven piece of didactic political sci-fi escapism, it isn’t. Neither Nada nor Frank are particuarly stable as characters. Frank’s early radicalism is completely absent much later on, when Nada tries to persuade him to don the magical spectacles, and the supposedly radical Frank won’t. Why not? Makes no sense. Though this does lead to the film’s big fist fight, a standout which Carpenter lets run because both Piper and David were so committed to making it real.
The plot’s a bit weird too. Carpenter runs his story twice, first showing us the situation for the working man – benign coercion with a backstop of state violence should the workers get uppity. Then tells us the same story all over again, this time as a sci-fi allegory featuring the magical glasses, aliens etc.
How strangely like clockwork this movie runs. In a 90-minute movie act one ends (Nada about to put on the glasses for the first time) at bang on 30 minutes. At bang on 60 Nada convinces Frank of the reality of the alient threat, and off the two men head into the third act, the all-action showdown at the TV station that’s really one of the aliens’ mind-control weapons.
This is more “mass media is bad” posturing by a writer/director locked firmly into the mass-media machine. (There is, of course, a whole essay to write about movie directors who take the TV-biz bad/movie-biz good line but let’s not get into that here.)
Carpenter’s “just get it out there” style of writing is to an extent the saving of the film. It lacks nuance but it gets the job done, much as Piper’s meat-and-potatoes acting does. Carpenter’s camerawork and editing have the same quality of just banging the necessary details onto the screen and leaving the viewer to do most of the rest of the work, though the music, also by Carpenter (and Alan Howarth) indicates the required (“Obey!”?) direction of travel – it’s rangy, growling and synth-driven, and pulses along in a neo-noir-ish groove. It’s the best thing about They Live.
The biggest problem is where Carpenter is coming from philosophically. His is a standard 1960s countercultural, anti-materialist argument and he delivers it as if it hadn’t been made before, when it so obviously has. Let’s just name the “Plastics” speech from The Graduate as one f’rinstance.
It’s politics done with a jackhammer, but that’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of contemporary resonance in its depiction of a mass swindle of humanity conducted by an invisible global elite. Run it through your own personal culture-wars algorithm and see what pops out.
They Live – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
