Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
John Carpenter’s ‘They Live’ was supposed to be a warning (theringer.com)
108 points by skanderbm on June 19, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 74 comments



I wonder how many people familiar with OBEY iconography variations[0] or OBEY Clothing actually watched They Live.

It's a pretty corny movie, but it's quite good.

And regarding warnings, I can't help but feel Idiocracy is also one we're not paying attention to.

[0] I own a t-shirt with futurama's hypnotoad, and I love it


Obey Clothing was founded by Shepard Fairey, most notably known for his Obama Hope poster in 2008.

Shepard often cites They Live as inspiration for his art, with his Andre the Giant Has A Posse campaign starting in 1989.

As an aside - one of my favorite works of his is Greetings From Iraq[0], from 2005. It satirizes a classic Yellowstone National Park postcard from the 1930s[1], in a criticism of the Iraq War.

[0]https://www.icaboston.org/sites/default/files/styles/origina...

[1]https://www.discovernw.org/mm5/graphics/00000001/DYNW_PLU106...


I know that Shepard Fairey is familiar with They Live, my (abstract) question is how many people familiar with him know of the movie.


I did finally see it for the first time last year, and I think it could use a modern remake. The best parts were the messages he saw while wearing glasses, and everything else was just okay for me.

In particular I found the ~15 minute one-on-one fight scene to be tedious after five minutes, and the pacing seemed really uneven, like it felt like they really took their time for the first hour, and then tried to shove all the rest of the plot into the last thirty minutes.

Clever idea and some great imagery with the messages, though. I'm glad I saw it for that.


At first I didn’t like the fighting scene. Then I realized that the protagonist said many times that he would never renounce fighting these aliens. That scene, though seemingly corny, is exactly the proof he would do anything. I think that’s’ brilliant!


Regarding Idiocracy, I think it gets more than enough attention. It's a funny movie, and a lot of its satirical barbs land, but its basic premise is a eugenicist lie that would cause a lot of damage if people took it too seriously. Moreover, even as social critique, it is rapidly becoming dated; broad-brush anti-intellectualism is certainly a problem, but it's not the problem - the political events of the past half-decade have reaffirmed that it's just one of a variety of types of toxic irrationality.


"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"

Max Headroom and Brazil were a couple of other 80's scifi films which were uncannily prescient.


Aside from the obvious drone tech, none of that is prescient, it's just a common problem in societies.


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.


Zizek is a performer. There's not a lot of substance in his many (is he at 100 yet?) books. It's blather and bad jokes interspersed with paeans to violence. It's ironic that someone who rails against capitalism publishes at such a frenetic rate while covering the same ground. I'd call it intellectual consumerism.

The article is also weak. They Live works because it's so stripped down, almost a fable. But as a serious look at modernity, there's not much there. The idea that "the rich are aliens" is creepy. It mainly serves to make their murder morally permissible.


If you think there isn't a lot of substance I don't think you've actually read any of his stuff. Sublime Object of Ideology and his work on Lacan in general are well-respected. There's not a lot of nonsense in his theoretical work at all.

When he engages the public, or whatever you find on youtube which is what I suspect you've seen of him based on your impression, he does indeed joke around a lot. But this has to do with his inherent distaste for 'preaching'. He's no fan of climbing on a pedestal and pretending to speak from a position of authority, he's said himself he's always considered that authoritarian.


> Sublime Object of Ideology and his work on Lacan in general are well-respected. There's not a lot of nonsense in his theoretical work at all.

Well respected by some and not others. Lacan as a philosopher has boosters and detractors...much like Zizek (and every other philosopher). I'm with the detractors.

I've read 1.5 of his books (not the one you mentioned) and I tried to watch an academic lecture on youtube. I've read various secondary sources (which are mostly highly critical and I found convincing).

Your argument comes down to "anyone who doesn't think highly of Zizek is dumb/hasn't read him/doesn't understand him". It's so low effort.

> When he engages the public, or whatever you find on youtube which is what I suspect you've seen of him based on your impression, he does indeed joke around a lot. But this has to do with his inherent distaste for 'preaching'.

I have no problem with intellectuals making jokes. Zizek isn't funny.

> But this has to do with his inherent distaste for 'preaching'. He's no fan of climbing on a pedestal and pretending to speak from a position of authority, he's said himself he's always considered that authoritarian.

Most people who "don't like to preach" end up, you know, not preaching.


Zizek has always struck me as the Deepak Chopra of philosophy.


The Black Mirror episode "Men Against Fire", again with glasses that turn people into monsters, is a good counterpoint. In the one, the monsters are the truth; in the other, the monsters are the lie.


The idea that "the rich are aliens" is creepy. It mainly serves to make their murder morally permissible.

One hopes you can muster this ardent sympathy for the millions of people killed in wars that the rich started and by healthcare deficiencies that the rich have arranged over the last several decades.


One would hope that you could come up with a better theory than "the problem with the world is rich people" but one would be wrong, apparently.

Rich people are, in fact, human. They are drawn from the general population.


Well yeah, they're human, that doesn't mean they're incapable of inflicting widespread suffering.

It ain't poor people buying politicians, starting wars and pushing propaganda though the media.


Ummm, isn’t that literally what marxists and communists believe?

That the proletariat must rise up and overthrow the bourgeois


Some of them believe that but it's not a Marxian belief.

Marx's argument is "structural". The contradictions of a capitalist economy and society are the problem. The bourgeois are a symptom of that, not the cause. Killing all the bourgeois wouldn't solve the problem in itself, a radical restructuring of society is required.


That which is necessary is not always sufficient.


> Zizek is a performer.

Most definitely and I think he'd agree.

> There's not a lot of substance in his many (is he at 100 yet?) books.

Which books specifically of his are you speaking about?

> It's ironic that someone who rails against capitalism publishes at such a frenetic rate while covering the same ground.

He himself has said that he makes a good slave, he just needs to know who his master is.


> Which books specifically of his are you speaking about?

How many of his ~70 books am I required to read before forming an opinion? I've read one and a half, the one being one of his "philosophical" books and the half being a more accessible political one. I'm confident that no one who has anyhting to say writes like that.

Give me Chomsky, give me Butler, give me Rorty. I don't have to agree to appreciate a thinker but I have to be convinced there's thinking going on.

> He himself has said that he makes a good slave, he just needs to know who his master is.

This clowning bullshit is a good reason not to take him seriously. Bad jokes are perhaps Zizek's greatest sin. I can forgive anyone almost anything if they're funny. But no, it's dud after dud.


> How many of his ~70 books am I required to read before forming an opinion?

I like to follow the rule that I only talk about things which I know about. I think it's a pretty good rule. So I personally wouldn't talk about an entire person's collection from such a limited introduction because it would feel a tad bit hasty to me. Instead, I would talk about the works that I had read--this might prove difficult if you can't recall the names.

> This clowning bullshit is a good reason not to take him seriously.

It's a dad-joke that he told at a talk. Heaven forbid the man try and add some levity to situations.


So I need to read all ~30,000 pages of Zizek before forming an opinion. Or at least a negative opinion. Wonderful system you've developed.

> It's a dad-joke that he told at a talk. Heaven forbid the man try and add some levity to situations.

It's not funny. Anyway, like I said, it's a performance. The fact that you (and he) would agree with that judgement doesn't make it any less damning. I watched part of a lecture he did on youtube. Absolutely unwatchable. If he has a point he's unable to communicate it. But the real point is mystifying the audience, creating the impression that they're witnessing a genius thinking out loud, and the terrible jokes don't help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHP1OwivAL0 if anyone is "interested". Notice Avital Ronell (sex offender and NYU professor) introducing him. It's bizarre how Zizek bullies her through the starting of the lecture while playing it off as a joke between friends.


> So I need to read all ~30,000 pages of Zizek before forming an opinion. Or at least a negative opinion. Wonderful system you've developed.

You can do whatever you want. But commenting on the entire bibliography when you have read less than 2.5% of it seems premature. Just say that everything you've read of him lacks substance rather than everything he wrote?


Reading a book and a half is very fair, I would bet most readers can form an opinion in a few paragraphs. If a guy sucks after a book and a half he probably sucks.


> So I need to read all ~30,000 pages of Zizek before forming an opinion.

By all means, form an opinion that the man and his book and a half that you went through aren't for you, but I just think it's deeply anti-intellectual to discredit the entire collection of work he's put out. You're discrediting books that you likely don't have the requisite knowledge to review which is the problem that I take with it.

> The fact that you (and he) would agree with that judgement doesn't make it any less damning.

What's damning about it? I really don't get this part.


These content-free, persistent, aggresive dismissals of Zizek make me curious to read his writing and see what freaks you out so much that it pushes you to post multiple sets of paragraphs to scare people off it.


If you want some "content" you can listen to Chomsky on Zizek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVBOtxCfan0

Or read John Gray on Zizek: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/07/12/violent-visions-...

It's not like these critiques are uncommon or hard to find.

What I find more "curious" is the backlash you get for criticizing Zizek. Somehow I don't think I'd get any backlash for forming a positive opinion after reading only "2.5% of his books" but apparently it's "anti-intellectual" to form a negative one.


A good intellect has a sense of humor-- keep this in mind.


You piqued my curiosity -- he's not funny and is a gasbag (bonus for a speaking voice that is not pleasant to listen to).


For the mind of the average consumer, whose worldview has nearly been entirely shaped by the ideas presented in Hollywood movies, yes the narrative that Zizek presents through those same Hollywood movies can be entertaining and inspire a sense of understanding.


If you haven't seen "They Live", I recommend you watch it on a double bill with Alex Cox's 1984 masterpiece "Repo Man"


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.

I love it but then again I am a borderline paranoid old fart


Range is something you develop later in life, or not at all. Young people in each generation like mostly stuff that is made for them.

There are people who say "2001: A Space Odyssey" is unwatchable because it has low pace. They just don't have patience to watch a movie like that and they take out their phone to do something during the scene.


It was unwatchable because it relied on you having read the book to know what was going on. I would usually recommend reading the book and skipping the movie.


We are also much busier these days. Asking someone to spend time watching 2001 is asking for a lot.


2001 was intentionally slow to make you feel how boring space travel is. It's a clever idea but it's a movie for a much slower paced world with fewer options for things to do.


Probably. The same trick of deliberately boring the viewer for creating a sense of immersion had been used 19 years before, in the (excellent) film 'Stray dog'.


My cousin has had the same reaction when showing anything he liked as a kid to his kids. I believe things like pacing, dialog, time-era and camera work are something that they can't get over. I remember a time when I couldn't stand Westerns, 60/70s movies and anything that was monochrome. Then, about high school age I started really enjoying cinema and animation. I watch even the worst of B-cinema movies with joy.

In the end, I felt this way about cowboy movies because I couldn't relate to the time/age depicted. It felt like a long long time ago that I didn't understand or want to. I believe today's kids feel the same way. No smartphone? No computers? Ancient tube TVs? People meeting up and talking instead of using discord or whatever? I can see why today's kids just don't enjoy the movies of 30+ years ago. The time presented in the movies is completely foreign to them despite it being no so long ago but in reality, culturally, it was long ago.


I have found that with film, music or art, young people (or anyone really) have to be receptive before they're able to appreciate the experience. It just won't "click" if they're not ready. I've tried. I've tried to get youngsters excited about "the canon" of great cinema (yes, I consider John Carpenter to be on the short list for must-see horror films).

There's no easy way to encourage receptivity. The best thing you can do is to just be accessible when it happens and be ready to discuss.


I watched it a couple years ago at age 19 and didn't like it (rated it 1.5 out of 5 stars according to my stats). From my memory:

- The all-macho, no-internal-monologue protagonist is really dull and dated. The one liners are lame, most of his problems are solved via fist or gun. The kind of unaware character parodied by Duke Nukem.

- The concept of waking up and seeing through lies of the media is banal, and now associated with teenagers and stoners. Everyone knows that advertising and the news are run by agendas.

- The media has changed. When we think of someone being brainwashed by the media we think of the all-encompassing internet, not billboards and newspapers. A billboard being revealed to say CONSUME and OBEY has the subtlety of an overly-labelled-political-comic. The specific imagery has been appropriated by fashion brands, advertisers, and artists like Banksy endlessly. I remember OBEY sweatshirts and hats being everywhere in middle school.

- The specific plot, 'a guy discovers the media is run by a conspiracy of aliens so he teams up with a friend to shoot up a tv station', is today more reminiscent of a number of mass shootings and anti-semitic conspiracies than anti-capitalist revolution.

I have friends that like the movie for what it is, but I wouldn't expect the average young person to be enamored with it without a lot of historical context (yuppies, Reaganism, the role of the red scare in classic sci-fi, Edward Bernays, analog synthesizers, etc).


> Everyone knows that advertising and the news are run by agendas.

I really want to emphasise this point. The reason They Live might not resonate with younger audiences is they've already internalised its message. Ironically, mass culture has been the greatest disseminator of the ideas the film has about mass culture.


I watched it for the first time last year and had a lot of the same opinions, and I'm significantly older. I still think the general concept can be good, it's just that this version hasn't aged that well and could benefit from a modern reimagining.


A great, but awkward, feature of the film is that it starts off feeling like a rather earnest documentary about urban poverty, and then gets bigger and more sensational throughout the movie. It doesn't surprise me that some people get put off by the beginning.


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.

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.


    > self-rule
Chomsky argues that democracy, at least in the US, is by and large not characterized by self-rule: https://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_not...


There was a fairly definitive study out of Princeton:

The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...


Pretty sure that was (part of) the parent's point, actually.


Yes I was legitimizing that real concern


I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all outta bubble gum.


I originally knew that quote as "I have come here to chew gum and kick ass, and I'm all outta gum.", which sounds much cooler


> I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all outta bubble gum.

I have fond memories of playing Duke Nukem 3D modem to modem and hearing him say those words.


"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.

⇐ Thoreau (Walden)


Mostly unrelated shoutout to Flashback, the 90s game that totally ripped off They Live’s glasses but was great anyway.


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.


"...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."

Except that in They Live ideology is imposed by the aliens.

"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.""

But Piper's character didn't have to force himself to put on the glasses. There was no struggle and it didn't hurt.

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.


Except that in They Live ideology is imposed by the aliens.

He thinks that ideology is good so for him the glasses are ideology, not the cut-through-ideology tool.

But Piper's character didn't have to force himself to put on the glasses. There was no struggle and it didn't hurt.

Using the glasses did cause headaches, but in the real world it's just the same. Once you rebel against bullshit your life becomes very uncomfortable real soon.


"He thinks that ideology is good so for him the glasses are ideology, not the cut-through-ideology tool."

But he's deluded. Regardless of his beliefs, the aliens have in fact imposed an illusion (or "ideology" in Zizek jargon) on him, and the glasses do in fact let you see through that (as he himself does later). He can think whatever he wants, but that doesn't change these facts.

"Once you rebel against bullshit your life becomes very uncomfortable real soon."

So, contrary to Zizek's contention, it's not his "enlightenment" that causes problems, but his trying to fight against those with power. A lesser man might have thrown away the glasses after seeing the truth, or perhaps consciously and deliberately started cooperating with the aliens, as various traitor characters did in The Matrix and V, for example.


So, contrary to Zizek's contention, it's not his "enlightenment" that causes problems, but his trying to fight against those with power. A lesser man might have thrown away the glasses after seeing the truth, or perhaps consciously and deliberately started cooperating with the aliens, as various traitor characters did in The Matrix and V, for example.

He has nothing to lose, for everybody else:

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html


Challenging or questioning your own ingrained ideology can be uncomfortable, regardless of what society thinks. We've all got things we believe very deeply but haven't really questioned, and when we are forced to defend them we tend to get angry. Getting past the anger and actually looking at the idea is usually tough.


I think the message of They Live; is that our rulers complete lack of empathy for ordinary people means they might as well be aliens. Also I don't think it was a vision of the future; it was about society at the time.


I think the message of They Live; is that our rulers complete lack of empathy for ordinary people means they might as well be aliens.

I'm more interested in what the movie tells me than in the message the author was trying to convey. If you look at it from the rulers perspective, it will depende on whichever the rulers are. I prefer to look from the perspective of the individual and how propaganda and the need to conform affects my ideas, conscience and behaviour.


It's still a common trope, that the rich are lizards, commonly popularised by David Ike for example


You are over-analyzing allegory.

Zizek does it too, but he is entertainer-philosopher. Some of his readers take him too seriously too.

I like Zizek, but you should not try to value him as a analytic philosopher who thinks things carefully trough. He has the ability to take unique and insightful viewpoints.


I will love a remake, I feel the message of the original is lost because of the incredibly corny and low budget production


I'd like to introduce the writer to ... all of cyberpunk over a beer or weekend.


As I read this, I felt like my head fell into the cheese dip back in 1957.


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!"

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.

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.

http://metamn.io/gust


4th... agi, mice, dolphins, humans


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.


Really? The core idea I got from the movie is that our desires are driven by advertising - that maybe the constituent parts of our personality are largely just impulses instigated by external forces to consume various things, to work, spend money, and propagate to keep the economy in a state of constant growth for the benefit of the wealthy who don't need to work - landowners, large stock-holders, etc. The campy, stupid action movie aesthetic is sugar coating for what I found to be an interesting theme.


> The campy, stupid action movie aesthetic is sugar coating for what I found to be an interesting theme.

Hehe. I think you’ve got it backwards.

You have Rowdy Roddy lined up to do a film. You come up with a campy corny idea of him fighting about sunglasses.

After that, you come up with some off-the-shelf ‘theme’ to sugar coat the campiness.

Real honestly, I would have watched 2 hours of that sunglass fight. That WAS the movie. Best damn fight ever. Wish it had lasted two hours.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: