Why John Carpenter’s They Live feels more rel­e­vant than ever

On 4 Novem­ber, 2018, John Carpenter’s They Live turns 30. This date also marks the two-year anniver­sary of the 2016 US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, where a for­mer real­i­ty TV star was elect­ed. Carpenter’s film is a polit­i­cal and social thriller pos­ing as an alien inva­sion sci-fi. Aliens have invad­ed earth and employ cod­ed tele­vi­sion trans­mis­sions to assist them in their desire to con­trol the human population.

Accom­pa­ny­ing these mes­sages are what appear to be a pre­cur­sor to the mod­ern-day drones which now con­trol our skies. The true con­flict, not only with­in the film, but also sur­round­ing it, is the con­trol­ling influ­ence of tele­vi­sion and how this con­flicts with ideas of free will in the West.

One con­flict addressed in They Live is that of film ver­sus tele­vi­sion. Begin­ning in the late 1970s, the com­pe­ti­tion for view­er­ship suprema­cy actu­al­ly brought about a change with­in film­ing meth­ods, as most films would even­tu­al­ly be watched on a tele­vi­sion. Tele­vi­sion is bet­ter viewed with dif­fer­ent aspect ratios and view­ing qual­i­ties than film. Accord­ing to film his­to­ri­an Emi­lie Bick­er­ton, in order to retain home view­er­ship after a film had been shown in the­atres, films were pre­emp­tive­ly shot to accom­mo­date a tele­vi­sion view­ing experience.

A fur­ther issue was that tele­vi­sion had a greater sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to adver­tis­ing and the demands of tele­vi­sion exec­u­tives in a man­ner that cin­e­ma – espe­cial­ly inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma – did not. They Live is a cri­tique of both tele­vi­sion and adver­tis­ing, with Car­pen­ter ral­ly­ing against rat­ings hun­gry net­work exec­u­tives and the insid­i­ous, con­trol­ling influ­ence of adver­tis­ing. It’s a work that com­bines sci­ence fic­tion and hor­ror ele­ments in which Car­pen­ter makes a com­pelling state­ment relat­ing to the real world – that film can be a weapon which fights the social coer­cion of television.

In They Live, we are nev­er explic­it­ly shown that humans can read or are direct­ly affect­ed by the trans­mis­sions. What we do see, how­ev­er, is that the aliens have posi­tioned them­selves as the upper class elite, and humans emu­late these hid­den alien over­lords. This is very sim­i­lar to how adver­tis­ing ide­al­ly works in the real world – indi­vid­u­als are exposed to prod­uct adver­tise­ments, as they them­selves respond to the adver­tis­ing oth­er peo­ple are influ­enced by and make the same or sim­i­lar deci­sions and purchases.

The genius of Carpenter’s film lies in how it shows the adver­tis­ing mod­el trick­le down from pow­er­ful aliens to ordi­nary humans, effec­tive­ly mark­ing it as an inci­sive com­ment of 1980s yup­py cul­ture. They Live has been her­ald­ed by both Lib­er­als and Con­ser­v­a­tives as the exem­pli­fi­ca­tion of 20^th cen­tu­ry adver­tis­ing and social con­trol, just as Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis was embraced by the Nazis as well as Allied coun­tries for its por­tray­al of the dan­gers of moder­ni­ty. The ques­tion of what it meant to be a human being in a time when you were expect­ed to be a cog in the machine was a rel­e­vant and impor­tant question.

Both Metrop­o­lis and They Live speak to the dif­fer­ent ways in which the major con­flicts of their respec­tive days chal­lenged pop­u­lar notions of iden­ti­ty. Dur­ing the 1980s, the issue that endan­gered free will was exter­nal manip­u­la­tion which came in the form of tele­vi­sion trans­mis­sions, and their pre­scrib­ing of lifestyles which were ben­e­fi­cial to the pow­er struc­ture. Giv­ing these issues a plat­form is what good film does; it makes impor­tant issues promi­nent in an approach­able manner.

Car­pen­ter tapped into the anx­i­eties of the 1980s in a total­ly unique man­ner; the com­bi­na­tion of wrestling the­atrics in the form of pro­tag­o­nist ​“Row­dy” Rod­dy Piper’s one lin­ers and action scenes, com­bined with social com­men­tary sur­round­ing sur­veil­lance and brain­wash­ing con­tribute to the argu­ment that They Live is one of the most impor­tant and per­ti­nent social satires of the lat­er 20^th cen­tu­ry. Now more than ever it is vital that we heed Carpenter’s warn­ings; to ques­tion whether the deci­sions we make are tru­ly our own, or if tele­vi­sion and adver­tis­ing are coerc­ing us.