They Live = John Carpenter's "Little Red Movie"?

[Mr.Smashy]

I posted about to the Thing/Fog thread earlier, but it got passed by (I hope...unless it is just a really stupid post...). I am just curious if anyone else noticed this.

I noticed that "They Live" seemed like a big metaphor for a communist (specifically Leninist) revolution. While it was obviously anti-Reaganomics or whatever...I thought that this stream of thought has been overlooked. Bypassing the great wrastlin' inspired fight (Roddy clotheslines his buddy to help him!), there are a number of elements in the film that can be viewed as symbolic of different elements of a lenisist revolution. If this seems more political then bad movie related for you, just keep in mind that most movies supporting communism are artsy and/or french, so Roddy Pipper being in one is certainly some sort of hilarity.

NOTE: I don't want this to get political. I am just talking about the comparison without either supporting or not supporting one side or the other in the political debate.

Having not seen the movie in about a good 1/2 year, I will nevertheless attempt to run through the comparisons.

The rebels (ppl making sunglasses and distributing them) & Roddy Piper = The Vanguard Party. The vanguard party is required to go out there and help forment the revolution. They are professional revolutionaries (none of the rebels seem to have jobs) and will go away after their mission is complete (well..and the dictatorship of the proletariat dissolves...but Roddy gets electrcuted in the end to save everyone...so the comparison is there).

capitalism falling apart = Marx made some kind of prediction about overproduction and capitalism collapsing, which would instigate the revolution.

the aliens (with some humans..) = bourgeoise (they are the elite which runs the show and exploits everyone else...and they must be killed. Just like the aliens)

the sunglasses = communist theory (that allows you to see the true nature of the capitalist world. IE once you put on the glasses see the aliens/bourgeoise and you can see all the subliminal messages and stuff hidden in the writting and such)

the satalite that sends the sleep message(or hypnosis or whatever) = false conciouness that blocks class (or human) conciousness

alien's plans = ecconomic imperialism (lenin went on about that)

the need for violence to overthrow the regieme = pure marxist revolutionary rhetoric

I am sure that I could go on,but I would have to see the movie again.

Sorry about how the writting devolved into crap, but I am leaving work asap.


Any thoughts?

[Mofo Rising]

Yeah, right.  Next thing you'll be saying the beloved children's classic "Animal Farm" is about communism too.  Go back to Russia!

Well, you could have a valid point.  But I see it as more of the all purpose conspiracy theory.  A small but powerful group of people are controlling society through some sort of veiled technique.  The only resistance is coming from a small band of freedom fighters who are able to see through the veil, while the rest of society remains oblivious.  Really, you could trade out the particulars with anything.  For instance, one small cell of the greater conspiracy has to do with the American Dental Association.  The radio receiver/transmitters in my fillings, combined with the slow-acting dosing of widespread water fluoridation allows mind-control rays to easily bypass my mental defenses.  Most of these rays are broadcast from the television, which is why an organization made up of public access broadcasters are our one of our last hopes.  Even they're being invaded from within, though.  See VIDEODROME for details.

Anyway, something I like doing to make bad movies more palatable is to ascribe symbolism to everything on the screen.  You don't even want to know the mental hoops I had to jump through to make a coherent JOHNNY MNEMONIC.  I also always thought it would be fun to make a webpage devoted to the overanalyzation of movies, but in many ways I'm a very lazy man.

[Mr.Smashy]

Yes, I think you can take some of the same features and apply them elsewhere, and communism certainly does not hold the only claim to many of the elements that can be found in the film. Still, I have always been interested in finding communism in pop culture after realizing that the smurfs were such anti-semetic revolutionaries(speaking of children's classics). Still, the elements are there (intentional or not) and you must admit that there certainly was a political/ecconomic edge that you didn't see in other movies (be it Videodrome [awesome film] or whatever).

On a side note, a friend of mine just came back from comic con in San Diego where she met mr. Carpenter and had her photo taken. Had a I known she was going in advance (she decided to go sometime before she left and after I saw her last...damn it) I would have thrown this question out for the man himself.

Hmmmm....maybe you've inspired me there Mofo. I was going to build a site for my digital photography....maybe I will also have a section devoted to over analyzation....alas...I am pretty lazy too..

[peter johnson]

This reminds me of "The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play", the name of the author escapes me at the moment.  
This is a real, serious, genuine book that uses Marxism and Freudian psychology to analyse the life and work of Frank Zappa.
Talk about deconstructionism . . .
It is a very difficult read, but for some reason I forced my way through the whole thing, bilge though most of it is.
If one is willing to go to the mat, it would seem to be possible to force just about any sort of theory on any sort of cultural artifact -- I am reminded of Criswell:  "Can you prove these things DIDN'T happen?".  Well, no, you can't.  Nobody can prove a negative.  You can only advance more plausible expository theories that can supercede less plausible theories.
Personally, I like the Leninist POV here 'cause it makes me giggle.

[Mr.Smashy]

Yeah. Giggling is pretty much the whole reason I even brought it up. I still find communism and facism funny in their own unique horrible ways.

[Steve.]

Yes, and the zenith of that humour was the picnic at Stalingrad.

[Steve.]

Peter - do you know if the Zappa tome is available in UK? (sounds weird - the book I mean, not our beloved Blighty. Although...)

[peter johnson]

The Zappa book should be available in the UK -- I'm on my work computer writing here, but I'll make a note to myself to read all the book info & will post on this site.
****
It would be very cool to pose the question/thesis to Mr. Carpenter, though, as I'm sure you're aware, one of the tenets of Marxist-Leninist cultural analysis is that one quality of these images would be their unconscious realization, that is, Mr. Carpenter being a member of this society he would have no choice but to reflect the Class Struggle in any deeply realized art.  In other words, in the Marxist-Leninist-totalist world view, NOTHING is NOT about the revolution/Class Struggle.  Therefore, even if Mr. Carpenter were to strenuously DENY any and all aspects of Mr. Smashy's analysis, the analysis would still be equally valid, given the Leninist world-view.  It is the ultimate tautology:  It is true because it is true.
You can't prove Mr. Smashy wrong.

[peter johnson]

This book was first published in Great Britain by Quartet Books Ltd.   The author's name is Ben Watson.  The American edition I have was published in 1993 by St. Martin's Griffin of New York.
Aside from the absolutely raving scholarship, it has genuine (and genuinely exhaustive) history of the production of different albumns and compositions and when sticking to straight facts is riveting reading.
Good luck in finding a copy -- mine is the only one I've ever seen.  Large-format paperback.

[Andrew K]

I can attest from personal experience that marxism still holds the academic world in a suffocating death-grip.  From the overt marxism of the Frankfurt school and Gramsci to bastard offspring such as postmodernism and deconstructionism, it has solidified its position as the dominant ideology, yet its adherents continue to fool themselves into thinking that they are rebels. Of course, marxism is all too prevalent in film studies and criticism as well; just as Stalin and Pol Pot were able to knock off millions of human beings and get away with it, you can make a crappy, Manos-ish film, and still get hailed as a genius, just as long as it can be explained in Marxist terms. Hence, a movie as dumb and dreary as They Live gets intensely overpraised by the critical establishment, just for conforming to the Reagan-bashing, anti-capitalist ideology of present-day academic marxism.

[Nathan]

Andrew K wrote:
>
. Hence,
> a movie as dumb and dreary as They Live gets intensely
> overpraised by the critical establishment, just for
> conforming to the Reagan-bashing, anti-capitalist ideology of
> present-day academic marxism.

"Over-praised?"  Since just about every review called it brainless, I don't know what you've been reading.

While They Live is undoubtably anti-capitalist, I don't think it can be called Marxist simply because it proposes no alternative to capitalism.  Nobody ever stops to wonder what to do with society once the nasty aliens are dealt with (because, naturally, human nature would NEVER lead a human to exploit another human without that icky alien influence, right?).  Presumably the economy would then become a kinder, gentler breed of capitalism, right?

That's one of the problems with They Live -- there are such holes in both the plot and the informing socioeconomic paradigm, that viewers and reviewers are apt to fill in the holes with their own extrapolations and assumptions, like frog DNA into a dinosaur gene, and then criticize the Frankensteined amalgam rather than the movie itself.

Nathan

[Mr.Smashy]

Which is one of my major problems with marxist-lenninism. I like how you bring that up though. It is a great point I never even thought of. Hmmm...so far we have found the class struggle in the smurfs and they live...what could be next? HAH!

(NOTE: Despite being Canadian, I am not a Communist....or even a socialist.

[Flangepart]

Hummmmm.......You know, that leads me to a movie idea. What about a post-invasion movie? I mean...we start at a meeting of world leaders (The surviving ones), and just listen to the interactions. The audience is never given flashbacks! All we see are the resaults of the invasion, and the reactions of the survivors...FROM THAT POINT ON. All we learn about the events up to this point are from the interactions of the people who came through it in various degrees of sanity. Ever walk into a heated argument half way? Thats what i mean. It would keep the audience attention if you feed them ideas and images that, like the old potato chip slogean, "Bet ya' can't eat just one!" Yhat do ya' think?

[Mr.Smashy]

Yeah...But it is still a John Carpenter film. Let's not take this too seriously. Looking at his film career I doubt anyone can be concerned that this is a continual theme throughout his work.
The communist metaphor may work for "They Live" (which was taken from a short story I want to read to see how much was taken from it), but I don't think anyone will see Jack Burton as a proletariat revolution against the Lo Pan bourgeoise.


BTW Andrew K. Read a book called "Reflections on a Ravaged Century" by Robert Conquest (what a name!). Great book that you will probably love.
And yes, I didn't like film studies at University as I saw a lot of films that weren't that good, but the word Bourgeoise could be thrown around when you spoke about them...ack.

[Steve.]

Many thanks, Peter. I'm on the trail.