(John
Carpenter/1988/USA)
Roddy
Piper is a homeless construction worker living on handouts from a
missionary in Los Angeles. How he manages to stay so buff and trim
and keep his immaculate hair I’ll never know but after finding a
box of magic sunglasses he discovers a hidden truth about the reality
of the world around us. Advertisements subliminal messages are
revealed in big bold font CONSUME, OBEY, CONFORM, STAY ASLEEP.
The glasses also allow him to see aliens in their true form walking
around amongst humanity and seemingly in control of everything. It’s
a great analogy for a ruling class that dominates the general public
through the illusion of freedom. On the surface everything is fine, a
functioning democratic society but in reality the rich are an ugly,
alien race subjugating humanity through media manipulation and a
consumer led, capitalist system of illusory comfort.
It’s a
huge swipe at how we have constructed society for ourselves and
there’s much deeper thinking that could be done on the subject but
the film sets up the premise and then steps away from any expanded
commentary in favour of good old kicking ass. They Live is late 80’s
trashy, pulp fiction with a paper thin plot that plays out for action
and one liners and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. The
beauty of this film is that it is so light in terms of narrative but
at its core is a clanger of science fiction thinking. In anyone
else’s hands the movie could have been a complete duffer but
Carpenter uses the force of the underlying ideological punch to carry
the muslin thin narrative along to its heroic conclusion.
(3/5)
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