John Carpenter

“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 … Read more