they live (1988)

[Avanti]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZaB2jpPVLU

my guess

is that those

who would love

the message

of this film

are real revolutionaries

or

have real revolutionary

thoughts

[Jimmie Higgins]

My guess is that you will receive 10,000 cheers from the members of this board for that opinion - it's an awesome movie.

[hetz]

A pretty shit B movie with no plot and a stupid premise.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I'm here to chew bubblegum and contradict the popular opinion. And I'm all out of gum. Well... actually I fucking love this film as well but I can't help but cringe at some of the race and gender representations.

[Avanti]

A pretty shit B movie with no plot and a stupid premise.

interpret

allegorically

and relax

[Yuppie Grinder]

It's a good movie but it appeals more to illuminati/nwo/reptilian zionist conspiracy theorist sorts than revolutionaries.

[Avanti]

It's a good movie but it appeals more to illuminati/nwo/reptilian zionist conspiracy theorist sorts than revolutionaries.

ask yourself

why illuminati

nwo

reptilian

zionist

theories

are more

popular

than marxism

today

amongst

new

discontents?

it's

not

and never

was

a matter

of who is right

but

it is a matter

of who best

can capture

the senses

of the public

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

It would probably be one of my favourite films if it weren't so goddamn misogynistic.

WIMMIN! CAN'T TRUST 'EM, AMIRITE?

[GoddessCleoLover]

Not gonna waste my time watching a grade B horror flick with anti-Semitic and misogynistic overtones. Truth be told, I avoid remakes of 50s grade B flicks. Never found John Carpenter flicks entertaining.

[Yuppie Grinder]

That's a bullshit argument, Avanti. Yea, antisemitic conspiracy theories are more popular in the US then Marxism. That doesn't mean that way of thinking isn't incredibly reactionary or removed from reality.

[skitty]

A pretty shit B movie with no plot and a stupid premise.

You mean Young R's aren't really aliens?:rolleyes:

[Jimmie Higgins]

Never found John Carpenter flicks entertaining.:ohmy:

In movies, John Carpenter was one of the better things to happen to the mainstream in the 1980s.

I generally love his movies and thought that Wes Craven was the less-entertaining horror-auture of that time.

That being said, I think those who truely love the message of "People Under the Stairs" are the true revolutionaries :lol:.

Redistribution of wealth, expropriate the insestious gentrifying landloard rulers of the US.

[Avanti]

That's a bullshit argument, Avanti. Yea, antisemitic conspiracy theories are more popular in the US then Marxism. That doesn't mean that way of thinking isn't incredibly reactionary or removed from reality.

the question

is not

whether they

are bullshit

but why

they are more

popular

right-wing

conspiracy theories

have militias

black helicopters

alien rulers

your life will be

an action film!

marxism got...

...

...

...noam chomsky

[Rugged Collectivist]

That's a bullshit argument, Avanti. Yea, antisemitic conspiracy theories are more popular in the US then Marxism. That doesn't mean that way of thinking isn't incredibly reactionary or removed from reality.

Avanti's on to something here. You can have the most factually correct and logically sound ideology out there, but it matters little unless people actually embrace it. In a society of crazies, the guy who's right is seen as crazy.

[Avanti]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/picture.php?albumid=1136&pictureid=9904

campesino

wanted to post this

but he's restricted

[Os Cangaceiros]

I'm here to chew bubblegum and contradict the popular opinion. And I'm all out of gum. Well... actually I fucking love this film as well but I can't help but cringe at some of the race and gender representations.

I haven't seen this film in a while, but what race representation are you refering to?

I'm not going to argue with the gender thing, as the one female character of note in the film had a totally pointless role.

Anyway, I think one of the things that John Carpenter does well is create a good atmosphere in his films. In "They Live", it's an atmosphere of economic malaise/collapse, in which the downturn is ejecting people from rural areas into the cities in order to find work, cities in which they live in neo-Hoovervilles and face repression by the police, etc.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

It's a good movie but it appeals more to illuminati/nwo/reptilian zionist conspiracy theorist sorts than revolutionaries.

David Icke did use to watch V while on drugs. Where what was originally intended to be a story about the rise of fascism in the U.S. became one of enslavement to reptilian alien overlords... but after all, the aliens, can be seen as an allegory for the bourgeois. They are "free enterprisers", as a character says, ruling with the complicit acceptance of a select few who benefit from their rule (comprador scum). Overall I think, despite being in some ways heavy-handed and not entirely well-thought out, conforming to some genre stereotypes and all, that the film is good and is not without merit; Carpenter obviously, judging from interviews, has his heart somewhat in the right place, bogged down though he unfortunately is by the common liberal U.S. conventionality.

In the mouth of Madness was definitely his best work, though. The story which They Live is based upon, a short piece of fiction called "Eight O' Clock in the Morning", is a rather poor work, however; reading like a high-school essay of sorts; and apparently there was an anti-communist adaptation in comic-form, where the alien reptiles were red...

[bcbm]

the movie is worth it for the 45 minute fight scene in the alley alone

[piet11111]

How is they live anti-semitic ?

I havent seen it in ages but i do not recall it being anti-semitic.

I do remember when he had his sunglasses on and saw on the money "this is your god" that was something that clicked with me as to a lot of people thats true.

[Althusser]

the question

is not

whether they

are bullshit

but why

they are more

popular

right-wing

conspiracy theories

have militias

black helicopters

alien rulers

your life will be

an action film!

marxism got...

...

...

...noam chomsky

Ok..... should we all become reactionary right wing conspiracy theorists now? Because it's cool or something.

[Avanti]

Ok..... should we all become reactionary right wing conspiracy theorists now? Because it's cool or something.

no

but that explains

why they are

so popular

i have offered

my own coolness

to the left

cyberpunk + anarcho-primitivism

technoshamanism

neotribes

communicating through myths and dreams

defending

their squat territories

sleeping at day, hunting at night

[Green Girl]

I really enjoyed "They Live" and want to thank Avanti for bringing it to our attention.

Amazingly the movie is from 1988!

The sunglasses that lets one see through the aliens human masks to see them as they really look.

And to see behind the advertising and store fronts for the subliminal messages used to manipulate human behavior. These sunglasses were later upgraded to contact lenses.

The aliens were using subliminal messages that the sunglasses/contact lenses revealed:

obey
stay asleep
buy
do not question authority
watch TV
no imagination
currency = this is your god

Isn't it curious that this pretty much describes the behavior of most Americans?

The aliens were called "free enterprisers". I have never heard of this movie before, was it suppressed because of its anti-capitalist themes?

It also makes me wonder could "our" capitalists be aliens?

And could the selected members of the working class called the "human power elite" in the movie be doing their bidding?

Something to think about as capitalists do not behave like any human beings I've ever known. :)

[Green Girl]

Ok..... should we all become reactionary right wing conspiracy theorists now? Because it's cool or something.

I thought the subject of conspiracy theories were the evil doings of capitalists especially the super rich who want to destroy the working class, how the super rich killed politicians, how the military industrial complex starts wars for oil and other profiteering, how they use false flags to take away freedoms and stomp on protesters rights, and how the right wing who apologize for the illuminati are ruining our country and the world.

The so-called conspiracy theories I'm investigated have been pro-worker, anti-capitalist, and many are warnings and how to fight and defeat the capitalist one world government.

[Jimmie Higgins]

The aliens were called "free enterprisers". I have never heard of this movie before, was it suppressed because of its anti-capitalist themes?Not at all; most (male) kids who grew up in the 1980s have fond memories of this movie. It's pretty trendy with Gen-Xers, especially ones with a progressive "anti-corporate" sentiment. Shepard Ferry's famous Andre the Giant "Obey" stickers are an overt reference.

It stars a wrestler and mocks things that are silly and rediculous about our culture (particularly in the yuppie Regan-era), it's an 80s cult favorite.


The aliens were using subliminal messages that the sunglasses/contact lenses revealed:

obey
stay asleep
buy
do not question authority
watch TV
no imagination
currency = this is your god

Isn't it curious that this pretty much describes the behavior of most Americans?No, I don't think this describes most Americans, or at least it is missing a major component of every day life that does lead to a need to kick back as well as to demoralization and pessimissm: work, work, work.

What I thought was revealed by the glasses was not what most Americans are like, but what the subtext of advertising is: with the glasses he could see the adverts for what they really are. The same with revealing the aliens: we are not all the same, there is an alien force at work that shapes this world. In it, radicals would be inclined to see the alien forces as capitalist relations that turn human activity against overall human interest, and turns that activity over to an alien interest (exploitation and accumulation). I think the movie was probably suggesting that the alien force at work is "bad morals" in a populist sense: being greedy, selfish, snobby.

[piet11111]

So how is they live anti-semitic ?

[Will Scarlet]

I guess the idea of a shadowy 'alien' cabal secretly controlling the world especially through finance is historically an anti-semitic idea.
I wouldn't say the film is anti-semitic on that basis, but I don't know if there's more to it than that.

[Green Girl]

So how is they live anti-semitic ?
I don't think it is. I enjoyed it a lot, I would characterize it as anti-capitalist.


I guess the idea of a shadowy 'alien' cabal secretly controlling the world especially through finance is historically an anti-semitic idea.
I wouldn't say the film is anti-semitic on that basis, but I don't know if there's more to it than that.
It makes me sad when people assume that all bankers or financiers are Jewish and that they want to control the world. I am part Jewish and I've known many working class Jews and none of us were ever involved in finance. In addition I would wager there are more non-Jews in finance than Jews. The people who want to control the world are the extremely wealthy and are from all races.

I have heard before of so-called Jewish conspiracies and when one actually researches them they are class conspiracies, nothing to do with religion or race.

In the movie the aliens were called "free enterprisers" which means to me that the aliens were bourgeois.

Will, I am glad that you also don't believe They Live is anti-Semitic. :)

[GiantMonkeyMan]

It's only anti-semetic in the sense that anti-semites have to perform mental gymnastics to have products of the culture industry conform to their world views.

[piet11111]

Gramsci guy said it had anti-semitic overtones but he probably abandoned this thread.