They Who?

Nineteen Eighty-Eight was a damn fine year, but it's generally not conceded, among the conspiracy-minded, to be a year when anyone got "Red Pilled." No, that peculiar, Matrix-derived designation for the time when the Red Pilled finally, finally, finally, see the world (to adapt a line from Mel Lyman) "as it really is," was still in the future. All the pilling, red, blue, or otherwise, would come along in the fullness of time. This was pre-internet, and conspiracy bulletins were still xeroxed and sent through the U.S. Mail.

John Carpenter's They Live is a film about being red-pilled in a big way: put on some magic sunglasses and see the world for the nightmare that it really is. Namely, a stark, brutal hellhole of subliminal manipulation, wherein the advertising billboards and TV commercials are concealing hidden messages to "CONSUME" and "OBEY." (Among other such messages.)

What's worse, the programming is being done by a shadowy elite, an ALIEN elite, who hide behind human disguises (much as in the earlier V), and somewhat in the manner described in the theories of New Age guru and conspiracy researcher David Icke (who has spent three decades preaching that an extraterrestrial force that takes the form of reptilian entities controls, behind a masked facade of shape-shifting power brokers, politicians, finance ministers, corporate heavy-hitters, and big name celebrities, a worldwide totalitarian nightmare of pedophile rings and Satanic abuse cults, blood-drinking secret cabals that rule the world. (Or are going to? Or are at some stage of accomplishing the same? I get confused.)

That's an oversimplification of Icke's work, of course, and he examines quite a wide array of fascinating and controversial topics, including the "illusory" nature of what we perceive as "reality." This isn't an essay on David Icke, though.

They Live has gone from being a forgettable Eighties action sci-fi horror flick, with a deeply satirical undercurrent, to a full-blown cult phenomenon and the source of endless internet memes. Believers in the concept of the "Shadowy Cabal," or the Ruling Class (in a sense, even the skeptical are hard-pressed to deny these things, and admit the influence from "on high" to a greater or lesser degree) see the film as being fundamentally "true." No matter the fact that it has some ridiculous and hackneyed scenes (such as a fight over wearing sunglasses that turns into a knockdown, drag-out brawl), they see it as a film having, essentially, truth underpinning its storyline.

Professional wrestler the late "Rowdy" Roddy Piper plays "Nada" (literally: Nothing) a drifter down and out and wandering into a job on a construction crew, where he meets his buddy Frank (Keith David). A series of controversial pirated broadcasts are occurring, wherein a bearded man preaches about some sort of alien force that is subverting the world and taking over. The transmissions and the general flow of weird revolutionary dudes seem to come in and out of a nearby church. We've previously been treated to a scene where a blind street preacher (Raymond St. Jacques) is harassed by law enforcement for preaching in a public park.

The cops brutally raid the revolutionary church building, and Nada finds a box full of strange sunglasses. It's here that the film passes over into pure cinematic fantasy: the "magic glasses" give Nada the power to "see" the world around him as it truly is: a hellhole of mind control and alien infiltration. He makes it to the posh home of a wealthy woman, "Holly" (Meg Foster), who stabs him in the back (she pushes him out a window). All he wanted to do was for her to try on his weird sunglasses.

Piper is a vacant, lost performer here, although he is a perfect stand-in for Kurt Russell, whom Carpenter usually utilized in those days. His dialog is terrible, consisting of lines like, 'I'm here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum." He refers to the ghoul-faced aliens (who look like zombie skeleton people with huge, pinball ball eyeballs), as "formaldehyde face." All of this is action comic book-level cliche stuff, straight from an old issue of "The Punisher" or "Wolverine." Later, Nada and Franl brawl endlessly over whether or not Frank will put on those damn Red-Pilling sunglasses. It seems an interminable scene and gratuitously dumb.

Alien Nation

There's not much else in the way of characterization. The revolutionaries are generally gunned down as terrorists by the cops or special forces r whatever after they bust in. Holly ends up paying testament to every man's most misogynistic and distrustful fears. The plot for world domination by the interstellar invaders is revealed.

Carpenter has stated that his inspiration for making They Live was disgust over Reaganomics and the general flow of consumerist, modern America. A Hollywood exec told him, What's the big deal? Everyone sells out." He used a version of this observation in the movie.

Hard Right groups and conspiracy believers have used the movie as a tool, utilizing footage and images of its themes to bolster their own beliefs and teachings of the New World Order and the "Shadowy Cabal." This is often a theme infused with anti-Semitic ideas, many of which have gained purchase recently with the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

This is an assertion that John Carpenter roundly rejects, saying it is alien to his concept of the film and why he made it in the first place. Be that as it may, it has become something that is often utilized, infused with whatever meaning or undercurrent the believer in said idea wishes to read into it.

As far as the theme of mind control, the Neuralink chip implant should make the accomplishment of that so much easier. In a world of AI, where public opinion can be swayed by chatbots that aren't even actually human, an interface that allows mind-to-machine hookup and control will go a long way to capturing the masses. All of this was science fiction when They Live was made.

Of course, we're all bombarded, every minute of every day, with a deluge of competing messages. In the Internet age, we can pick and choose whose propaganda we want to consume, customizing our consciousness until we become a part of somebody's well-oiled weapon.

As far as extraterrestrials, it has been a little over a year since Major David Grusch testified in front of the U.S. House of Representatives about the U.S. Government's top-secret UFO retrieval programs. Major Grusch, who has a high-security clearance, stated baldly and with no equivocation that sources close to him had confirmed the existence of crashed extraterrestrial UFO technology in the hands of the American intelligence apparatus. He also alluded to the government having in its possession "alien biologics."

Alien biologics.

So, apparently, They DO live.

Now, the question is:

They WHO?

They Live

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